There’s a debate going on in the Pandora household – Is it time to let the kids have cellphones, and if we let them have cellphones should we let them text?
First, is everyone sitting down? Okay, here it is. I do not have a cellphone. Now, everyone take a deep breath and I’ll explain. There really isn’t a specific reason for my not having a cell phone. I just never bought one. And while there have been times having a cellphone would have been handy, those situations were never drastic enough to make me take action. Also, as a stay-at-home mom my time during the day is spent, well, mostly at home. Go on, you can laugh now. (FTR, Mr. Pandora has a work cellphone.)
But now the issue has come up in relation to my 15 and 12 year old – mainly my 12 year old daughter since my 15 year old could care less about talking on a phone or texting.
Everybody still with me, or are you still stuck on the fact that I’m a mutant?
I have several concerns about kids with cellphones. First, imo, kids should only have cellphones for their parent’s convenience. What that means is if kids aren’t answering their parent’s calls then the cellphone should be taken away. It’s a privilege, and should be treated the same way as the keys to the car. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been with parents who are beside themselves because they can’t reach their kids on a device they primarily bought to be able to reach their kids. Another little wrinkle that I’ve witnessed – many times – is how often kids have called their parents to tell them where they are only for the parents to discover that their kids were lying. Yeah, I know this has been going on well before technology, but there’s no denying that cellphones have made the “I’ll tell my parents I’m going to the library, and then meet you at the party” ploy a lot easier. I even know one parent who went so far as to track their child’s whereabouts via a GPS program on their cellphone . Not sure how I feel about that, but I’m leaning towards if you’ve reached the point where you’re tracking your child whereabouts through GPS, perhaps you should consider grounding them.
My second concern is the drama, fighting and bullying taking place through the technology. And while I may have trouble getting my son to talk, I can’t shut my daughter up. I’m really not complaining about this, she is a fount of information, most of it harmless, but some of it quite disturbing. This is the way it seems to go: Person A has a problem (real or imagined) with person B. Begin texting. Person A then recruits others to their side and they join the texting war. Sometimes person B forms their own posse, but sometimes not.
I realize that these sort of arguments have always taken place, but what concerns me is how they are now taking place silently. Two kids yelling horrible things at one and other attracts attention. Saying the same vicious things through texting remains under the radar, and many of these attacks are fueled by kids unknown to the victim. In many ways texting has become the bully’s new playground.
I witnessed this tactic this past summer. Two 13 year old girls had an argument. The texting began, only one of the girls put together a network of support that swamped the other girl. And what started out as an argument over something stupid, and typically childish, ended with explicitly sexual name calling and rumors which quickly spilled onto FaceBook. When the adults finally got wind of what was going on one little girl was already devastated. And while this may be likened to nasty messages written on the bathroom wall, the shear volume of the attack isn’t so easily scrubbed away.
Another little cellphone “game” that disturbs me is the “let’s take an embarrassing picture of someone and post it everywhere.” Again, most of these pictures are harmless and silly, but some are not.
So, I have a dilemma. In many ways joining the modern world would make my life easier. In others, I would have to take on more work by keeping a vigilant tab on what’s going on in the silent world of finger tapping. A part of me knows this is inevitable, and a part of me resents the technology that makes the secretive world of teenagers more secretive.
So… any thoughts, ideas… or recommendations for which cellphone plan I should consider? Or are you still shaking your head and saying, “Pandora doesn’t own a cell phone? How is that possible?”