Photo by - prima-vera source; www.sxc.hu
I know from my own personal experience, I started getting the “Mom, can I get a cell phone” question when my son was in third grade. It seems to be, that more and more kids are getting cell phones and at early ages every year in Colorado Springs. And being that it’s that time of year again, where students are headed back to school, there are more of these questions being asked. So how do you go about deciding what is the best avenue for your child?
There are cell phones just for kids with limited services and buttons on the cell phone. Verizon offers the Migo phone for kids, with an optional chaperone service. This is a kid-friendly phone that lets parents keep in contact with their children. The flyPhone by FireFlyMobile has a PIN protected parental controls. Parents can chose to limit incoming and outgoing calls to phone numbers that are stored in the phone book and prevent additional numbers from being added. They can also restrict texting and have pay as you go plans, which can help parents control costs.
Then there is the option of adding a cell phone to your existing mobile service. AT&T has the Smart Limits for Wireless service, which can provide your child with the freedom and security of a cell phone but with sensible boundaries.
Either avenue you go, there are pros and cons to the subject.
The positive side:
• Some kiddie cell phones have parental controls.
• The Wherifone uses a GPS device, which can track the whereabouts of the child carrying the phone.
• Camera phones can provide a certain measure of security. There have been cases where children have scared away potential abductors by trying to photograph them.
The negative side:
• Older children often have Web-enabled cell phones, which can give them access to the Internet when parents can't monitor their activity.
And then there is the cost. If you think your child can handle the responsibility of staying within your plan, here are some things to consider before choosing one:
• When phones are Web-enabled, parents can often find themselves surprised by the size of their phone bill.
• If a phone is Web-enabled, kids have access to games. Cell phone gaming is the newest market for companies and is expected to be big business in the next few years. Keep in mind, too, that there is a billion-dollar cell phone pornography business in Europe and Asia, which is expected to hit the U.S. market soon.
• According to the market analysis company, The Yankee Group, the biggest trend among teen cell phone users is prepaid subscriber identity module cards/family-plan hybrids.
Safekids.com talks about an application that can be downloaded to the child’s phone, called Glympse. Glympse, joins Loopt and Google Latitude services, that uses cell phones’ GPS capability, to tell people where you are. This is free and has a different approach, unlike Loopt, which requires the senders and recipients to sign up for the service and download the application.
Either direction you go, there are many places on the Internet that can help you make informed decisions.
Comments
By high school, it's probably safety-wise that they have a cell phone. Perhaps even middle school. But I can't imagine they need one prior to that time. Or maybe I'm just from the old school.
We recently decided that it was time for our eldest daughter to get her own cell. We spent quite a bit of time agonizing over just these issues you are highlighting.
On recommendation from a friend we got Meg a Tracfone Motorola W376 camera phone and loaded a years airtime window on it. The phone cost less than $30 and has Double Minutes included so it's really a bargain.
We decided to do the prepaid thing for various reasons: no surprise bills, no unexpected roaming, Meg gets her own minutes (over and above the limited minutes we buy) so she gets to think about managing her money and minutes to get through the month.
All in all, it is working well: she's got a cool phone, she stays in touch and we have peace of mind.
I'm not sure I'm parsing the sentence correctly, but I wanted to put it out there that Glympse requires neither the sender nor the receiver to sign up for a service. The sender only needs the Glympse application on the phone - then they can share their location with whoever they want for however long they want (up to four hours). Once it's on the kid's phone, the parent can just ask them to send them a Glympse when the kid's out and about.
I agree that safety is important, the world has changed, as parents we can't be sure that our kids will be safe walking home from school or even in a mall full of people. I bought my daughter a Net10 prepaid phone which is great because it's always 10 cents per minute and texts are only 5 cents but she can't stay on the phone 24/7 because the minutes we buy are limited.
My daugther got our grandson a Kajeet Phone (prepaid service for kids). They have great parental controls and GPS. He is a little young but very active in after school activities. With no pay phones around their hands were tied ... only option is to give a child a cell phone. This is a safe service and Grandpa and I can give him $ toward using with his phone now. He likes to text and has unlimited. Now to find a good plan for Grandma ;) kajeet.com/gwen for a 15% discount
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