Parents: Why don't you let your children have cell phones?

Question

I'm not talking about really young children, but teenagers. What are reasons you wouldn't want them to have a cell phone? Is it safety, cost, independence?

Answer 1

we won't let our kids have cells bcuz for 1 there not that responsible&to young.there r so much more things in life to enjoy,rather then a phone ur always payin for&texting.when they r 18&done w/ school ect.,then they can get one if they have a job.basically if u get a cell for a teenager,well..thats just saying that they can do what they want 2 & talk 2 whomever.

Answer 2

some parents might just think like hey if my child has a cell phone they might call whoever they might get like a freakin high bill but i think a kid atleast at the age of 11 should have a cell phone because some freak might kidnapthem and they can call on their cellphone to contact for help

sorry my answer is so long

Answer 3

Some parents won't give teens cells phones becuase parents think teens are too immature and irresponsible to handle a cell phone. They'll abuse the priviledge by texting non-stop even though they don't have a textin plan and will lose or sometimes break the cell phone causing parents to have to buy them a new one.

At least that's why i couldn't get one until I was like 12

Answer 4

I can see why parents are so uptight when it comes to teenagers and cell phones. I got one when I was 11, but I had to pay for it myself. I think that parents only want their kids to have it is for either emergency or to show responsibility in their kids.

Hope this helps your question!

♥Jbfanatic94

Answer 5

it is mostly saftey. and a hole lot of hassle. i got my first phone the summer going in to 8th grade with no problems. my sister got one in 5th grade and there was some whole conflict in her school over nasty text messages and voice messages ect. ect. a cell phone is believe it or not a responsibility. she also dowloads a lot of c**p without telling my dad and her phone bill came out to like $100. it is a mix of cost and saftey because who knows who she is texting and what is she saying.

Answer 6

I would allow my child to have a cell with limited programming, just to me, dad and 911.  I do not like that kids today (and adults for that matter) are so absorbed by texting or talking on the phone all day all the time.  We are losing touch with people and life around us with our eyes on a pad all day long.  Not a step up for society IMHO

Answer 7

Cell phones for teenagers are what we grown-ups refer to as "Pandora's Boxes". We provide them with a cell phone for the single purpose of safety by providing communication between them and us, and for the most part, this purpose is served. However, what really happens, and what becomes all the reasons for NOT buying them phones, is that they immediately use these cell phones to evade us and perpetrate all manner of mayhem. I cannot tell you the number of times that my daughters have used their cell phones (sometimes successfully, sometimes not) against us. They do things like text from one place and say they are at another. They set up play dates with their friends that we don't know about. We take them to their friend's house, and when we expect them to stay there, they call for a pickup from somewhere else they're not supposed to be. They ignore our calls, often due to a "dead battery" or "a bad reception area", or "the ringer was turned off", then miraculously their phones work just fine when they want to call and get us to allow them to stay out later or do something else we would rather not have them doing. Teenagers take the phones we provide for them and do terrible things to them, such as drop them in toilets, leave them in their friends car, get them stolen, loan the battery to a friend, drop them from the second floor of the mall to the first floor, or any number of other destructive things. If they have camera phones with the capability to sending and receiving pictures and video clips, they immediately begin to send x-rated pictures and video clips to each other, to their MySpace account, their MyYearbook account, their Photobucket account, their YouTube account, total strangers, and any number of other image-sharing sites. The phones also become a fashion statement, and the teens, especially the girls, will pull out all the stops when it comes to getting a new phone to replace the crappy "old" phone just so they can impress their friends. The phones become a means to cheating on tests through texting, they become a distraction from all manner of other things like cleaning their room and communicating face-to-face with other humans. And worst of all, every single thing on this list is done on mom and dad's dime. We spend hundreds of dollars a year to provide this perk to these ungrateful twits and the very first thing they do with it is throw it in our faces, and the next thing we do is spend years dealing with the expense and complication with zero parental control features provided by the carrier. (Verizon, if it makes a difference.) Unfortunately the fact that they can call us any time from any place outweighs all the bad.