Should You Buy Your Child A Cell Phone?

Up until very recently, very few children had their own mobile phones. This was partly due to widespread reluctance amongst parents to let their children have them, and partly due to the prohibitive cost of both the handsets themselves and the phone calls made on them.

Affordable phones with pay as you go contracts, and the introduction of specialised phones for children with parental controls built in have changed all this, however, to the point where nearly half of all children under the age of 15 in the UK have their own cell phone, and this figure is growing all the time.

Mobile phones can be a good way for parents and children alike to get in touch with each other in an emergency, or if one of them is running late for whatever reason. Some phones have a GPS chip installed in them, which allows parents to see where their children are at all times via a laptop computer or PDA connected to the web.

Giving a child their own cell phone can be a good way to teach them responsibility, and the value of money. A pay as you go phone will give children an immediate sense of how much their phone use is costing them, and will convince them of the need to limit their phone use for financial reasons.

One of the reasons why parents are often reluctant to let their children have mobile phones is that they worry that they will distract them from their schoolwork, or expose them to unwelcome influences.

Its perfectly natural that a child should want to talk on the phone for hours to their friends, and that they can do this without realising how much it is costing them, or more likely, you.

Thankfully, there are things that you can do to prevent this from happening. Most of the mobile phones that are aimed specifically at children, such as the Firefly and the LG Migo incorporate parental controls that allow you to restrict mobile phone usage to numbers and times that you approve of, block access to the internet and game downloads, and feature large speed dial buttons for emergencies.

If you do buy a child their own cell phone, it is a good idea to set some clear boundaries for their usage of it, such as not allowing them to use it in the classroom, at the dinner table, or after a certain time at night.

By: Neo Nashville

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