I'm strongly opposed to giving teens their own cellphones, unless they're in a situation where they simply have to be able to call parents for transport or other assistance - and even then, they should be on the simplest and most basic of plans, otherwise they'll waste so much time on talking, texting and sending pictures to their friends that their other responsibilities will suffer. After all, teens aren't noted for their maturity!
This is perfectly borne out by a news report from Wyoming.
In one month, a Cheyenne teenager sent 10,000 text messages and received about the same - all while her family's plan did not include texting.
That means the family's provider - Verizon - charged them for each incoming and outgoing text.
The girl's parents, Gregg and Jaylene Christoffersen, thought texting had been disabled, so one can imagine their surprise when they got the monthly phone bill and it asked for $4,756.25.
"It just hit us like a rock, like you're stepping into a bus," Gregg Christoffersen said.
The bill was legit.
Dena Christoffersen, 13, had apparently been sending most of these messages at school. That's more than 300 texts within an eight-hour period every day for the whole month.
Needless to say, it drew attention away from what she should have been doing: paying attention in class.
"She went from As and Bs one semester to Fs in two months," Dena's dad said.
Hours after the enormous bill arrived, Gregg Christoffersen took a hammer to his daughter's phone.
He and Jaylene also grounded Dena until the end of school.
And about time too!
Peter
3 comments:
I like the idea of a cellphone which can only dial say home, a relative, a cab, and 911.
I'd put the girl to work earning back the money, too, as soon as she was old enough to do something productive. Obviously school is wasted upon her.
Jim
The billing methods were the primary reason I delayed getting my kids cellphones for several years. At the time, prepaid phones were very expensive, and the cheap contracts had no way to prevent you from exceeding your minutes.
It is incredible that people put up with text at 5 or 10 cents each--text is essentially free to the cellphone company
My daughter rarely even uses her cell phone. I have to remind her to turn it on! But it's absolutely necessary that she has one, as we have no land-line.
And at her school, if a student is caught using a cell phone during class, it's confiscated until a parent comes into the office to retrieve it.
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