The Washington Informer: Regional

Are Kids Really Ready for Cell Phones?
By Sonya Pickett
WI Technology Writer

With each passing year, more and more children seem to have cellular phones at younger and younger ages. I can’t help asking myself: What reason could there possibly be for children as young as twelve to have cellular phones? I have asked around and shockingly found that there’s another point of view.

With each passing generation, youth seem to have more and more options of how to spend their time. A mere fifty years ago, our children’s social options tended to span only what options were available within their homes or the homes of their most immediate neighbors. Children rarely even knew anyone who lived across town. They attended class with their neighbors.

Today, there are YMCA’s, Boys & Girls Clubs, Police Activity Leagues, after school sports and related programs, tutoring centers, after-care programs, and regular visits with the non-custodial parent or grandparents. For growing numbers of today’s children, what to do after school differs according to the day of the week and may involve as many as four separate destinations each week. In addition to scheduled stops, children may have their own diversions and interests which may take them down the block on Monday but across the city on Wednesday. Children like their diversity.

Some changes in schedule require communication so that the family remains on the same page concerning the evening’s plan. A cell phone seems to solve this problem by providing a direct method of contact between kids and their relatives.

The reasons against cellular phones are compelling. Let’s be honest. As with adults, children will initially abuse most privileges. Cellular phones will be used for all of the wrong reasons and purposes. Kids will be “text”-ing each other from distances as short as three stores away from each other, “where r u?”

Cellular phones also present an attractive avenue for potential predators to get to know your child just a little bit better. It’s impossible to know who your child corresponds with from day to day. Should your child develop an improper friendship, her cellular phone could be just the key to arranging a meeting with a stranger met online.

On the other hand, all of these concerns relate to your child’s level of responsibility. At the end of the day, children are really everyday people with very few life experiences and a correspondingly compromised level of judgment. It is not that children look for ways to annoy adults or to “be bad.” Contrarily, like their older counterparts, youth want to have a little fun in their lives notwithstanding their acceptance that rules exist for a reason.

To argue that children are incapable of showing responsibility is to ignore the everyday behavior of most adults. Only a minority of pedestrians strictly abide by the simplest principle of “don’t walk against the light.” Just as few drivers actually abide by the posted speed limits. A morning’s visit to your local courthouse will reveal pages of adults who have been cited for traffic law violations and must attend court that day to explain their actions. Most intend only to contest the proposed penalty. For each individual who actually appeared in court, another instead chose to pay the fine, accept the points, and move on.

Everyday untold numbers of office employees incorporate their employer’s office supplies into their personal collections and use office resources to conduct personal affairs. Fax machines, phones, copiers, computers, and expense accounts go abused regularly. It’s against the rules, but largely overlooked conduct when the abuse does not create an obvious disturbance to the business. If this is the level of responsibility shown by adults, why do we expect so much more from children who are learning from these same adults?

The threshold question for parents, regardless of the age of their children, is whether they intend to empower their children enough to make responsible decisions. By this, I mean, will the adult tell the child how many minutes are available for use, what is the charge for going over the minutes, and exactly how do text messages or downloads count against the available minutes? Will the adult show the child the cellular phone bill every month so that the child can acknowledge his or her use from month to month in order to evaluate whether the past conduct is consistent with expectations?

It is unfair to tell a child only to use a cellular phone to call family members or to only use the phone in case of emergencies. That’s no different than telling a college student only to use the car to go directly to class and home. That’s not the purpose of a phone or a car. Phones are intended for conversations with loved ones and other interesting people. Cars are intended to allow drivers to travel to any location the driver needs to go more conveniently than walking would allow.

In the case of most parents, the answer is “no.” Most parents expect only to get involved when the child fails to follow the rules and only to punish rather than to regulate. Rather than show the child that six hundred minutes were used when five hundred were available, too many adults think it sufficient to tell the child that too many minutes were used. This is not the fault of the child, but rather of the adult.

Parents who intend to fully involve their children with the regulating of phone usage will find it far easier to discuss the second most important issue: just who does your child call? These parents will find their children far more willing to discuss which phone calls are to family and which are to friends and acquaintances. It simply becomes part of the contract: Discuss who you are calling in order to renew your phone privileges for the next month.

This regular interaction will decrease the likeliness that the child will make the number available to undesirable contacts. The child will know that you the parent will monitor phone usage and can enforce your authority as necessary. Additionally, by implementing simply rules like, “no answering calls from blocked numbers,” you will be able to discern with whom your child talks most often or for long periods of time. When an individual calls particularly often, you now have an informed basis to determine whether it is time to invite over the acquaintance. To enforce your point, restrict calling that particular number until the meeting is accepted.

Allowing children a cellular phone is a daunting and potentially dangerous prospect. However, it can be done in a responsible fashion largely without regard to the age of the child. If a child is old enough to use a home phone responsibly, the child will soon after be old enough to use the cellular phone responsibly.   By reviewing your bill with your child together, discussing all aspects of responsible and irresponsible use, you can use the phone as a tool to encourage responsibility at a rather young age. The caveat here is the need for both the parent and the child to stay involved in the experience. Discipline never works unless children understand what they did wrong and exactly why it was wrong.

In closing, the decision to provide your child with a cellular phone requires a weighting of the several considerations which led you to consider the purchase: your need to stay in contact with your child, cost, your child’s desire for the phone to call friends, your child’s level of responsibility and willingness to abide by rules, and your willingness to take the time to cooperatively (but not accusingly) monitor the phone’s use with your child.

Where a particular parent falls in making the ultimate decision is between the parent and child.