Apparently my aunt wants to buy my 11-year old cousin a cell phone, so she can keep in touch when she’s out. My traditional mom is aghast at the concept and thinks there has to be some alternative, and asked me to see what I could find. I vaguely am aware of those family radios / walkie talkies, but I don’t think their range is that great. Is there anything other than a traditional cell phone plan that would fill the need here?
Any thoughts from the Doper parents? Other options?
There are special cell phone models aimed at children that allow only connections to a fixed list of numbers set by the parent. In the cell phone plans available here incoming calls are free for the person called, so those can be allowed safely, but I guess that calls from unknown numbers would be blocked for an American kid-safe cell-phone.
What exactly is your Mom’s concern? frivolous conversations in the schoolyard? passing text message notes in class? I get the impression that if your Mom is very traditionalist, then she doesn’t know a lot about cell phones, and may have some incorrect ideas. May she still thinks airtime is hugely expensive?
Imho, the benefits and safety advantages of being able to call 911 from anywhere (site of an accident, kidnapper’s car trunk, fight in the park etc) , call parents for immediate pick-up if alcohol/drugs/sex activity that thefamily doesn’t approve of is going on, or even call kids to come in for dinner, greatly outweigh the potential drawbacks. But I have a hard time understanding the drawbacks here, gossip? being spoiled? I didn’t have one in my day, so it’s not necessary?
Please enlighten us…
dagnabit! hit post when I wanted preview… Where’s that self-slapping smilie.
Alternatives to cell phones:
Pager:
Cheap. Near universal coverage; kid can’t call cavalry if not near a phone. Parents can request kids check in.
2-way pager & email devices (Like RIM Blackberry)
same coverage as cell phone. Text only device. Can be more costly than basic cell phones.
Walkie-talkies:
cheap, no fees, coverage within 1 to 5 miles from home. Only good if parent’s radio is on. Can lose signal inside/behind buldings. Channels open to use by other folks, and eavesdropping (Spelling?) Need to rely on other end to call cavalry. Limited battey life. Very good if you live outside or near the edge of cell phone coverage area.
You also need to know that in the short term future, wireless carriers will be required to be able to communicate the position of the set to 911 services. Having this capability will make it possible for them to also offer location tracking service to parents. Perhaps your traditionalist Mom would approve of being able to check if Junior is at really library, or at the house of that boy…
Hope that helps…
Mother of a teen with cell phone. We have one of those family plan things where the minutes between family members don’t count against your familys plan minutes.
I’m a conservative, very traditional parent. I’m curious what her concerns or objections to a cell phone are.
[ul]
[li]Since the calls to family members don’t count against plan minutes he can always reach us.[/li][li]He turns his phone off and leaves it in his back pack at school or during church, or other events or meetings where a ring would be inappropriate or impolite. The thing takes voice mail so even if you can’t “talk” you can always leave a message. If he violates this, the teachers will confiscate his phone and he knows it.[/li][li]The phone tracks how much time and to whom he is talking. If he goes over his share of plan minutes (or if he came up missing) he or we can look and see to whom and how long he is talking. Additionally, you can check the accumulated talk time whenever you want depending on how controlling you are. I’ve never checked his because we’ve never gone over our minutes. No reason to pry if he’s not abusing the priviledge. [/li][li]We do have a rule (odd, perhaps to some) that all the numbers programmed to his phone have to be duplicated on either his dad or mine. So that if he does come up “missing” we have a quick way to get in touch with his friends. While I have never had to call around looking for him, I have on occassion when I had his phone scrolled through his contact list to see if he’s doing as we ask and keeping numbers on someone elses phone as well as his. (He is.) Keeping my phone sync’ed with his serves him well, as when he forgets to charge it, I trade and let him take mine. [/li][li]He’s never stranded without a ride and if he is driving he doesn’t even have to get out of the truck to contact help if he’s in an accident or has mechanical problems with the truck.[/li][li]If he is waiting for a ride and feeling nervous about the surroundings all he has to do is talk on the phone and he’s less likely to be perceived to be a “lone target”. He has not had to do this, but I have.[/li][/ul]
I’m having a hard time imagining what the pitfalls might be.
Cells with blocked incoming outgoing calls? Sounds spiffy (though I’d want a pin number overrride so I could call the teen from any phone as his or her parent).
Thanks all, you’ve provided some good ammo. I think her objection can be summed up as “But she’s only 11 years old!”.
11 year olds have social lives, too. 
Well… yeah. Who else would pay for it?
I don’t think there is anything wrong with an 11 year old with a cell phone. It would make me feel better about her safety. The best bet is to add a phone to an existing plan because mobile to mobile minutes are not charged. I would get insurance on the phone as she might just loose it or drop it.You can also get a phone where you purchase minutes as needed. We used to use Tracfone and there are others.
[QUOTE=DougCWe used to fight entire wars without mobile communications, and I can’t help but wonder what does an 11-year old kid need it for, just to walk down the street. Two reasons mentioned were “accidents” and “from the trunk of a kidnapper’s car” but honestly, how likely are those things to happen? Once a day? Once a week? Once a year, maybe? How about UFO abduction, nobody mentioned that…
~[/QUOTE]
Well just because the chances of something are low doesn’t mean it’s stupid to make contingency plans for it’s eventuality. Why buy car insurance? I’ve never been in an accident. Why buy health insurance? I’m healthy. Why lock my house at night? There’s never been a break-in in my neighborhood.
I do think a kid (or an adult) with a cell phone, and thus the ability to quickly communicate with parents/police/rescuers of any kid is safer.
My husband’s job is developing wireless applications for soldiers in the field. Now that the technology is available the military has no intention of fighting wars without it.
How often does it have to happen to be worth the $0/month extra a phone for the kid costs with many “family plan” type cell phone contracts?
-lv
I can tell you why my kids got cell phones at about 11- because it has become much more difficult to find a working pay phone since cell phones became popular. I don’t think they’re going to be abducted by aliens, and I’m not worried that they are going to be kidnapped. I would, however, like them to be able to call me when baseball practice ends an hour earlier I’m expecting to pick my son up, or when they’ve already been waiting an hour for the bus home from school.
The fact that people managed their lives without the benefit of a modern convenience at some point in the past is not a valid reason not to use that convenience today. After all, people got by fine (and some died early too) at some point in the past without:
-electricity
-automobiles.
-indoor plumbing & running water
-wired phones
-ambulances with defibrillators and recussitation drugs
-air-medevacs and trauma centers
-door locks
-home alarm systems.
-organised police services with cars and radios
Look at it this way: one way to measure risk is to define it as:
Risk from event = Probability of event x degree of harm from event.
Even if an event is low probability, if the degree of harm is very high, then the risk can be said to be high, and worth mitigating. Your child being abducted, sexually abused, then killed is a very high degree of harm. Even if the probability is very low, the risk is still significant and if a risk mitigation strategy is easily available, then it is worth adopting. On the other end of the spectrum, your child missing the buss, finishing practice early, or having their buddy who is to drive them home being too drunk/stoned to drive safely, are relatively high probability events, with relatively low degrees of harm, and therefore still risky enough to be worth mitigating.
And finally, I would wager that most folks would agree that the level of harmfull activities involving young teenagers has increased significantly in the last 20 to 30 years, specifically: degree of violence and proportion of violent incidents involving lethal weapons and minors, propagation of of drug and alcohol use in early teens, sexualization of early teens and sexual predation on youg teens and pre-teens. How did we deal with such events back then? The individual child involved did their best, hoped someone would see and call for help, and often wound up dead. Society went on, shook their heads, and tsk’d tsk’d. The individual kids and parents had a tragedy on their hands that, today, could possibly be averted. When it’s your kid, you don’t care about odds and probabilities, and rates changing. All you care about is that it not happen to your kid.
Twenty bucks a month seems like a reasonable cost to me…
Twenty or thirty years ago (when I was around 11), the parks, movie theatres and bus stops all had working pay phones nearby. Many stores had pay phones either inside or on the outer wall. They’ve become more rare because of the popularity of cell phones. If I had to live in a world exactly like this one, except for no cell phones, our lives would be much different than they are now. My son would not be able to take the bus home from school- I want him to be able to reach me if there is a problem, and it’s over 5 miles from the school to home. My daughter would not be attend a Manhattan high school-should there ever be another emergency that makes it impossible to leave the island , I’d want her to have a chance at calling me so I could give her instructions. They couldn’t join a team that had practices outside of walking distance, unless I was able to remain the entire time. I couldn’t call and ask them to stop at the store on the way home. Cell phones aren’t exactly a necessity- certainly my kids and I ciould live without them. After all, there are people who live without any phone at all… We would not, however be living the lives we have now.