Should teens bring phones to school?

If you’re like me, you put off buying a cell phone for your kid for as long as you can. Especially if you have teenage daughters and you know how much time they spend on the phone. You can see yourself taking out a second mortgage just to pay the cell phone bill.

Of course, when you start hanging out and hanging out with friends, not to mention dating, numerous scenarios arise where a cell phone can come in handy. Thinking back to my own younger days and some of the situations I found myself in, having instant access to my parents would have been a very good thing.

One of the most recent debates about cell phone use is whether or not teens should be allowed to bring their phones or iPads or whatever the latest incarnation is to school with them. There are certainly pros and cons to the subject.

Obviously, the most beneficial use of a cell phone is instant access to a parent in the event of an emergency. If a child becomes ill or needs to leave school for some other reason, it eliminates several previously necessary steps to contact responsible parties.

Similarly, if a child misses the bus home or is stranded somewhere. Some newer phones come equipped with GPS devices, making it easy for parents to locate their children at any time.

In more extreme cases, such as the recent events involving school shootings and other violence, cell phones were instrumental in helping police and other rescuers locate students hiding in classrooms and closets.

Of course, any technology can be used for nefarious purposes. Students have been known to take advantage of cell phone internet access to find test answers and use text messages to communicate those answers to their friends. Such devices can also be used to facilitate the new problem known as cyberbullying, where hurtful and offensive comments are sent or posted about certain students. There have been documented cases of students committing suicide or other drastic acts due to problems with messages or texts sent through cell phone use.

Also, texting or surfing the web can become a distraction from what is being done in class.

The newest and most disturbing trend in texting is known as sexting, where students send suggestive or even sexually explicit images of themselves to their boyfriends or girlfriends. The problem is pretty obvious, but it is amplified to the extreme once these images are out in the open and distributed (which they inevitably always will be). Teens need to be told multiple times that they shouldn’t put anything online that they aren’t prepared for the whole world to see. Once it’s online, consider it gone. You will never get it back and it will always be on someone’s hard drive somewhere.

Cell phones can also inadvertently make children the target of violent attacks, especially if your phone is one of the more expensive models. Being mugged and robbed of such items is nothing new, and parents should think twice about sending their kids to school with the Cadillac phone when the Chevy version might be a better option.

Of course, some schools and states take the decision out of the parents’ hands by banning cell phones altogether. This may seem like an extreme reaction to many, but this author would argue that previous generations grew up just fine without the benefit of cell phones in the classroom. In fact, it could be argued that as a result, we had a healthier level of social interaction as a result of not being tied to Facebook and having to converse face-to-face.

On the other hand, as a parent of a child who has suffered serious medical issues, I can also see the added benefit of the child having the ability to communicate instantly, especially at times when going through school channels to get access to a phone. . it would be problematic.

So which point of view is correct? It is up to you to decide, based on your knowledge of your child, their behavior and your level of responsibility. Managed in the right way, technology is our friend. If handled incorrectly, it can become a serious problem. Make the determination that is right for you and your family.

For more information on the subject, see the following online discussion.