Today's cell phone accounts offer a variety of tools and services to keep Mom and Dad informed about their child's phone's activities. You can use these services to better manage how your child uses the phone and keep the monthly bill down to a level you are comfortable with. Here are some tips you can use even if you already have a cell phone for your child.
The major cell providers (TMobile, Cingular/AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc) all offer some form of parental controls. You should certainly examine the plans available in your area and for the phone model you've selected before you sign up. Here are links to the information pages of each of the big 4 providers:
TMobile offers "Family Allowances", a fee-based service, enabling comprehensive online account management. You can adjust how much time your child uses the phone, the amount of money they can spend on screensavers, downloads and ringtones, allow or block phone and text numbers. This is in addition to their "Web Guard" which is a free service allowing you to block adult webcontent. You may have seen their ad where the teens battle while washing the car, and Mom blithely adjusts their allotted text minutes downward. Cute.
Verizon has a very similar program called "Usage Controls" and includes content filters for free. You can also block content on their entertainment-focused "VCast" system according to age-related ratings (similar to movie ratings).
Sprint has named their parental controls "Wireless Web Access" and their website doesn't have an overview page. This page, where you select the model phone you are interested, then takes you to the related parental control information for that model. (If this is incorrect, please let me know but I couldn't find an overview page on their site.)
AT&T/Cingular offers a basic content filter called MediaNet which is free. Their parental controls run about $5.00/month and include the full set of features for checking and limiting calls, contacts, services as the other firms do.
You'll pick your carrier based on other issues besides parental controls but it's something important to bear in mind. Think about flexibility too, since you may change the configuration based on your child's use or abuse of the privilege.
Before you actually hand a new cellphone over to your child, there are a few areas to consider or discuss:
- Put the account in your name and not your child's. It makes changing services or cancelling easier.
- Tell your child that you will need to have the password for the phone and will check it regularly to look at images and text history. Even if you never actually check those files, make sure the password you're given works by checking from time to time.
- Check if the phone has a camera feature (while you are still in the store) and ask if it can be turned off and on by the account owner.
- Tell your child you are installing and using parental controls and show them the details on what you'll be limiting. This is not the time to be spying on your child.*
- Discuss cyberbullying and remind your child that electronic communications are permanent. Be kind online and in person.
- Discuss texting and Instant Messaging and your family rules. You should know the people you message with in the real world and never write anything that might be embarrassing if forwarded to the whole school.
- "Sexting" or peer-to-peer porn creation has boomed because of cellphones. Make sure your child knows never to take or send or forward an image of someone without their clothes on. It's embarrassing and illegal.
- Discuss who will pay the bill and what will happen if the charges go too high. (Parental controls can help prevent financial ruin from an overeager texting teen.)
- If the phone is lost (or goes into the laundry via a jean's pocket), will a replacement be purchased and who pays?
- Lastly, the main reason Mom and Dad give in and give the child a cell phone is to improve communications and for safety's sake. That means it must always get charged at night and must always get taken along with the teen. Too many times my teen (and my friends' children) forget to charge their phones!
*I get asked about third party monitoring software for children's cell phones. Such software, whether used to keep track of a child's cell messages and photos or a cheating spouse, are not programs I can recommend. Rather, I recommend parents seek to be open and honest about anything they use or add to a device to monitor their child's activities. When a product comes out that both monitors and reports to the child and parent, I will happily let you know.