I admit it. I am a bit of a techno-phobe. I am a "digital immigrant." I migrated to the wild world of the Web. Unlike my child, I was not born to it. In fact, at the moment, I do not have an active cell phone. I tried, I really did, but right now, it serves as an overpriced alarm clock.
On one hand, it seems like conspicuous consumption for a child to have a cell phone. On the other, a five-year-old was just abducted from her front yard in our neighborhood, then sexually assaulted -- in a quiet burb that seems to shout "American Dream."
Could one of the cell phones designed especially for children have helped in a case like this?
Would one of the new Amber watches have sufficed?
Also, it would certainly be handy for my ex-husband to call my child directly so he would resume daily contact with her, or so she could call him with just the push of a button. He would rather pay for half of the cost of a phone and half the monthly service bill than risk hearing my voice on so much as the answering machine.
I have included the URL for an article on msn.com about the issue of cell phones for kids.
What do you think? Should children have cell phones? How young is too young?
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/Elementary/?article=WhentogetCellPhone>1=10488
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
.jpg)
1 comment:
I don't know. It's kind of a toss up. I can tell you that I don't really like seeing fourteen year olds unmonitored on cell phones. I also hate these cell phone commercials were the parents are wusses bowing down to their children who run up high cell phone bills.
I know that I didn't agree with my ex-husband who wanted to give my 8 year old daughter a cell phone for her birthday. Luckily he was 'smart' enough to give her an unconnected cell phone as a test. She brought it to school, played with at school and got in trouble. So, he then didn't get her the cell.
I think they need to come up with a cell phone that has all the features that listed there.... programmable buttons and a camera. They also need to come up with a better method for teens. I don't like the idea of just anybody being able to contact my children when they are teenagers. Perhaps, a phone in which you set up the contact list and anyone that you don't want to contact your child you can take off the list... and they can only call those on the contact list as well.
I don't know, again it's a toss up.
Post a Comment