A new study has shown that one in 10 schoolchildren get a mobile phone at the age of five. Many children have to wait until they are 11 however, according to the survey.

Parents will spend £125 on a childs mobile phone and around £246 on their own. 1,420 parents with children aged under 16 were consulted by uSwitch comparison website.

Interestingly, the study noted that 42 per cent of those surveyed didn't monitor the amount their children spend on the mobiles, while just 25 percent put a cap on their children's contracts. Less than one in 20, 3 percent will disable data on their child's phones, even after the recent scares with data charges enforced by some providers.

Ernest Doku, a telecoms expert at uSwitch said “I'd imagine that many parents have bought their kids smartphones just to stop them commandeering their own when bored.

“Asking networks to place caps on their mobile bills takes about five minutes and is a very sensible precaution, especially if your child has a data-hungry smartphone. Make sure that when they’re at home, your kids are browsing the web using wi-fi instead of consuming data by connecting to the internet via 3G or 4G.”

Kitguru says: Clearly many parents aren't taking precautions with data transfer, which may sting them at a later date.

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