Children And Cell Phones Do Not Mix

In the fast paced world that we live in where almost anything can happen, parents are feeling more and more compelled to protect their children. They often do this by getting their child a cellular phone which makes it easy for their child to call them in the event of an emergency and it helps the parent to be able to communicate with the child every moment of thday. However, in many cases, having a cellular phone also makes it easy to do things that a child shouldn’t be doing.

A big problem with cell phones is that they come with so many advanced features like text messaging, camera phones, and internet access. You may be listening out for inappropriate phone conversations that your kids are having, but you may never hear one. That’s because they’re texting inappropriate conversations, and you will never know it because they can delete their messages.

In an extreme case, it is possible for your child to be taking nude pictures of themselves and picture messaging them to friends, to a love interest, or could be posting them up on the internet. They have know coined this type of activity as “sexting” which simply means “sex texting”. These acts are not anything to be taken lightly, as your son or daughter could be charged with child pornography offense, sentenced to jail time, and have to register as a sex offender in your community, making it diffucult if not impossible for he or she to ever get a job.

Your child may perhaps be begging you for a cellular phone. However, if your child is a teenager, keep in mind the number of cellular phone related traffic accidents. While there may be good reasons for you child to get one, their life is a better reason not to get one. You should also keep in mind other motives that your children may have for getting cellular phones.

Your child may insist upon his or her need to get a cell phone. If this is the case, drive your child to the nearest unemployment office and have him or her begin looking for a job. You may even want to get the little tike some business cards to help him out. If your child wants to be more adult like by having a cell phone, then your child should also be more adult like by gettinga job and paying their own bills.

If you are insistent on letting your child have a cell phone for security reasons, then you should look into getting an older one from a cell phone reseller, or even a pawn shop. Most companies will still activate older cell phones that do not have the text messaging or internet capabilities. By doing this, you will ensure that you can find your child no matter where they are, and theyll be able to make all the phone calls they need without the added hazard of unsupervised internet and messaging access.

No matter how hard it may be, be a good parent and do the right thing for you and your child!

Parental Anxieties Of The Internet

The parental anxiety of the internet, its vast applications and information, are in equal measures a bane and a boon. From the positive angle and especially in today’s context, parents would want their child to be able to manage a computer. While most children may have no interest in the various computer languages or be overly concerned with the vast applications, they would certainly know how to create their email id and access the internet.

This too is good as it gives the child the power of connectivity and a link that can provide a huge data of information to help them with their assignments. In fact, the internet has ’shrunk’ the world to a level that they can even learn about other countries and cultures seated at their desk, something that the earlier generation used to glean from the National Geographic magazine, not even the television. Unfortunately, this free information and net connectivity is not minus the misuse, which are the main cause of parental anxiety of the internet.

Any parent knows that full access of the internet will open the windows platform, but also opens doors of concern. For instance, the pornographic sites leave a lasting impression on the impressionable minds, and this cannot be erased overnight. The urge then is to know more, and a contrary cycle is set into motion. But for this, it just would not be fair to deprive the child of the internet entirely, and parents would be wiser in trying to counseling rather than in exercising a ban. Tell them about the rules they violate unknowingly, and tell them the truth about why they should avoid.

While we understand that parents would like to protect the purity of thought and the innocence of childhood, this is the best recourse left to the parents to defer their anxiety level. This is necessary too as some unscrupulous sites actually lure children towards porno-sites in the guise of URLs titled with the information that they would normally seek. The larger anxiety of parents is of their children falling pray to cyber stalkers, paedophiles, sex maniacs, who can entice and lure children on chat lines.

For restraining part of the parental anxiety of internet, it is well said that arming the children is equivalent to teaching them. Therefore, instead of relying on a gadget that only blocks certain sites, open their mind with a vast array of your talks, aligning and spelling out all your fears for them. Place it on the children as a ’shared parent child responsibility’ instead of relying on cyber laws that are applicable only after the damage is done.

Parents should understand that even counter-technology is just a tool, and not some magic wand. However, their anxiety today of the internet can be at ease knowing that the tech-savvy children no longer consider it a new world, but just an alternate environment that ties them to the real world. So real in fact, that the parents should also be prepared to accept that their children have already read this article.