Teen Cell Phones

Great input all! I am still not convinced she 'needs' one, for various reasons, she is virtually never without one or the other of us, even at school functions, but I'm starting to think maybe when she gets into high school, a prepaid phone with the restrictions 2manyks imposes would not be a bad idea. Of course, I'm not convinced she'll be able to keep minutes on it so I can contact her, but that can be one of my conditions. Anything to get her to learn to take a longer view, she still seems to live in the immediate present most of the time. I love the idea of giving it as a privelege and using it as a tool.

My step son recently ran up his cell phone bill to 3500 bucks. Thank goodness it was under his mom's plan. Anyways, it was taken away until he could pay it off. Well, we were used to being able to call him and tell him to come home, check up on him, etc. His mother decided to find out what ATT had. SHe stated that they have something called a "smartphone" coming out. Meaning it will only allow phonecalls to home or specific numbers and I am not sure on how it works on incoming. Anyways, we also wanted to get one because it can have a locater on it so if he's lost we can find out exactly where he is. IN any event, we did get him one for Christmas under our verizon plan, I monitor it every day so he can't go wild with it!

I have an almost 11 year old son who has a prepaid phone and he works/does chores to buy his own minutes. He is very active in sports and piano lessons etc. so he has a phone if something lets out early he can notify me. His school does not allow cells on the premises, but I feel he really needs one during his extracurricular activities. So far he has been very responsible with it...just my 2 cents. Blessings, Michelle

I posted a thread like this in another part of this board. I came to the consensus that my children, 10 and 12, do not need a phone right now, and certainly they would not be doing chores around the house to "earn" one. In my family, chores are your responsibility, no ifs, ands, buts, or expectations of priviledge. If mom and dad don't get paid to do them, neither should the children be expected to be paid to do them. Now, going above and beyond doing extra hard things for what a child normally would...such as wearing masks and shoveling out the hen house...they do get paid for those special jobs like that...but washing dishes...doing trash...heck no! There are plenty of adults out there ready to pay children their age for special help, and that is how they will earn any money for the priviledge of a cell phone...be it mowing a yard, walking a dog...etc. Virgin mobile has a good pay as you go plan, however...$6.99 a month, 10c a minute, any time. You pay $6.99 a month...put in however much money you choose to use...$15 to $500...and then every 90 days, you are expected to put $20 in the account to keep it active. They have cool phones with cool features...and are not contracted...even on their "monthly rate" phones...so should I choose to go with a plan, I'll do that vs. Cricket, like I was thinking of letting them have. Just my .02, sorry it was so windy. haha

Well I technically did not buy my son a new phone, however I got a new one for Christmas and I gave him my old one. I set up a pre-paid account on his. I feel better that he has it because he can contact me at work if he ever needed to. I will not let him take it to school and he usually asks if he can call someone too.

This is a hot topic in our household right now.... I have a 13 yr old adopted daughter (through foster care - not that is matters) :)... I bought her and her brother phones two years ago and love using them as leashes. This Christmas they wanted fancier models as the two yr contract was up. Fine. Last day before Christmas break I see a missed call on my cell phone and it's the dreaded special prefix the school district has. I call; and said daughter is in hot water as her phone was used for crank calls and as the rumor spread she was involved with arranging for a kid to get a butt whooping. She didn't make the calls, but it was her phone and she knew what was going on. I think it's a liability to me, and another thing they have to be mature to handle the responsibility. I let Mr. Principal know her consequence was no phone upgrade and she would not be bringing a phone back to school until some point in the future. She got her just desserts; as that day someone stole her phone, I suspended the service and she is living phone free. That's been my experience. :)

I agree with Kristi; "In my family, chores are your responsibility, no ifs, ands, buts, or expectations of priviledge. If mom and dad don't get paid to do them, neither should the children be expected to be paid to do them." Any minutes she buys would be paid for with allowance, or money she earns working for Dad, babysitting, etc. I really appreciate the post about the crank calls, however, as that application had not occurred to me, and I know for a fact that she has used friend's cells to make crank calls. I can see that if we do get her a phone, we are going to have to have a solid list of rules, expectations and consequences in place before she gets it. I DO like the idea of the smartphone with limited numbers and tracking, but I suspect that will be out of our reach financially. My cell is prepaid, I almost never use it, and I think since I got it two and a half years ago I have spent a total of maybe $250 in required 'top-ups', and when we had a plan that was two to five months worth. (My husband's phone use went way down when he had to PAY everytime he ran out of minutes too! :bullwhip: )

I wanted to add my 2 cents. I was in middle school when colimbine happened and as a parent now if anything ever happened and my child did not have a cell phone to call me on I think I would be very mad at my self. I hope and pray nothing does happen but just in case, I will want to hear my baby's voice. Rachel

I think maybe it just depends on the kid. My nephew (12) got one not too long ago. He's a pretty responsible kid, and rides the bus to and from school, so my sister and her husband wanted to be sure he was safe and could call if something went wrong. So far so good.

I'm all about compromise. Went through this w/ my goddaughter who was then 15 (she begged me and her mom for a phone). So, in the end we compromised and went in together to get her a phone (not top of the line mind you, but a regular, black, generic phone. She has to pre-pay the minutes each month (we give her $5 each to help) and after the minutes run out, the phone only allows her to call the police and 911. That only happened once...it so happened that night she was late coming home and was grounded for not calling (her mom knew the minutes had run out). That was all it took, she really keeps tabs on the minutes now..I think it's helped her learn about budgeting with very little money at stake.

Our ds (age 16) has provided lots of challenges throughout the pre-teen and beginning teen years but he has had a cell phone in his pocket since he turned about 10 ... 1) to be our "leash" as many of you represent it so you always have contact and 2) for emergencies but we have had several instances in these years where we have gotten the phone call with coded words "What do you mean I have to come home now" ... which is in turn our request for action to "something is going on - come get me" without him looking like a nerd in front of his friends ... and one of those calls even found one of his peers being arrested for setting a field on fire one night ... he chose to call home for a ride ... teens don't always make the right choices but give them all the ammunition they can to do so along the way! Limits can be set (text #'s, hours, minutes, etc.) but responsibility only is earned when given to earn.

My son lost his phone a couple weeks ago. There wasn't much I could say since they do get lost and the poor child was SOO upset about it. He had Easter money to help buy a new one which I felt was responsible of him. There is one phone now that allows parents and kids to pick the numbers they will pay for. Such as I will always pay for calls to me and a couple other people. His friends he could call from the house phone he pays for. Same with text messages. I thought this was a totally awesome deal, and the minutes are reasonable for a pre-paid. I doubt I can post who makes these phones, we got it at Target though.

Get her a Firefly this year. Next year when she goes to highschool, she will be due for an upgrade and you can get her a regular cell phone if you feel she is ready for one. They allow parents (with a password) to add to the address book only who they want. So unsavory friends, bioparents, etc cannot be added unless by you. They have a mom, dad, and 911 button which is the only people a young child really needs to call in a true emergency and are easy to use. There are no text msg features or games so the phone is just to feel safe. If the only people they can call is mom, dad, grandparents, school, and 911 they won't be using up alot of minutes trust me. heehee. We added my son's to our account last year for 9.99 a month. This month he was due for the upgrade and we got him a free razor phone which will be his birthday present in May. Kim

My daughter (11 yrs old) bought a Kajeet phone with her own money. The Kajeet phones are designed for tweens, the parents can control how much money the kid has to spend on calls, the parent can log onto the website and block times of day, make exceptions for some phone numbers, etc. Also you can set it so that the money for calls to mom and dad are free to the kid (money comes out of the 'parent wallet') but the calls to others come out of the kid's 'wallet'. So they may run out of money texting friends, but can still call home. I don't know how well the features work (the blocking times works fine, that one I've used). I didn't think a child would need a cell phone either but the times that I've had it unblocked and with money on it, it has been very useful. She wants to go spend the night at friends' houses and lots of times families don't have land phones anymore and what if their phone isn't charged or gets mislaid or who knows what. What is changing my mind about her need for a phone is how often she has borrowed friend's cell phone to call me and I was glad she called. For example yesterday the school bus got stuck in the snow. I waited in the wind and rain and hail for twenty minutes, then my mom appeared with an umbrella and the news that my daughter called (using a friend's cell) and said they were stuck. If she'd had her own phone I think she'd have called right away, and I wouldn't have spent 20 minutes freezing. Then again this morning the darn bus didn't show up. After a half hour I went off to feed the horses but she went to the house and called the school and then the transportation office (this kid really likes to go to school) and found out the bus was on its way now (after having to stop to put on chains). It would have been really convenient if her phone hadn't been blocked and out of money because she carries it with her all the time and we could have called sooner (we didn't want to leave the bus stop). Of course, I could learn to have mine with me, that would help too!

My son also has Kajeet, it was my understanding the safe list (or whatever it is called, the three people they can always call) can be left unblocked. I think this is a truly wonderful kid phone personally but still need to figure some of it out.