When Should a Child Get an E-Mail Account? I created an e-mail address for my 11-year-old two years ago. My now 8-year-old got one at 7, as a reward for completing a "reading chart" for second grade. If I'd known she wanted one as badly as she did, I'd have set the bar much higher. In some ways, an e-mail account seems like a no-brainer for any child who's old enough to ask: they can get mail, why not e-mail? Spam is a solvable problem, so all that's left is a communication channel for friends, grandparents and a constant stream of offers from Moshi Monsters. The possible problem lies not in the e-mail account itself, but in all you can do once you have that account. Without an e-mail account, you have to ask a parent to sign you up for everything from Club Penguin to Facebook. With an e-mail, you're free to do all of those things on our own. I've talked to several parents of late who (like Wendy Sachs, who wrote "The Secret Life of My Sixth Grader" for CNN.com) have unexpectedly discovered their children on Twitter, Instagram and similar sites. Some of these children knew their exploration wouldn't be approved. Others were just responding to an invitation from a friend. The common storyline was this: the e-mail account was created for a young, highly supervised child - and it's that same child, several years later, who's leveraging something his parents don't think about much anymore into something they didn't expect. My own (surely temporary) solution, for my relatively young and not particularly Web-savvy children, has been to funnel their e-mail addresses through mine. They get an e-mail, I get an e-mail, and because I set up the accounts, only I know the passwords. In one case, I used a delegated Gmail account; in the other, an account through zoobuh.com. Both of them know I can see their e-mail. Neither is concerned (and neither gets much e-mail to begin with). My older daughter suggested setting up e-mails for her two younger siblings (6 and 7) this past weekend. After some thought, I said no. As much as I like the idea of their practicing writing, spelling and typing by e-mailing Grandma, I found my 6-year-old clicking "connect with Facebook" on a game on my iPad over the holidays. He had no idea what it meant, but if Clash of Clans asked him to do it, he was there. It made me more leery of giving him access to a world he doesn't understand. My e-mail work-around only works with children who aren't trying to circumvent supervision with their sharing efforts, and I know it. A Web-based e-mail address is an easy thing to acquire and an entire online identity is just a few clicks away. I know that what's simple for me now won't be, very soon. But right now I'm concerned with those first few steps into the Internet beyond the walls of what we've pre-approved. When did you set your children up with an e-mail address, and how has it played out? Have they used it to sign up for services without your knowledge, or found other ways to surprise you with their online explorations? How do we give our kids a good start for their inevitable lives online?