Smart Parents Bought Their Kids Dumb Phones for Christmas

It is a good guess that a lot of moms and dads succumbed to pressure this Christmas – either from their children’s pleading or peer-pressure in the form of wanting to be the “cool parents” – and ended up buying their sons and daughters smart phones for Christmas gifts. If you are one of these parents who has recently given a smart phone to your kid, ask yourself the following questions and then click on the corresponding links to learn more about negative aspects of screen use and how to best keep an eye on your kids’ use of technology.

• Have you given your child his own cell phone? If “yes,” read the various information here and resources parents should use: https://www.missingkids.org/netsmartz/topics/smartphones
• Does your child use social media apps such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok? If “yes,” read the various information on these three links about why apps can be harmful: https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/social-media-parent-tips; https://www.pcmag.com/news/facebook-whistleblower-want-to-help-kids-keep-them-off-social-media; https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/investigations/11-lesser-known-apps-that-experts-say-could-expose-your-child-to-sex-trafficking/2382725/
• Do you know with 100% certainty that your children have never looked at pornography on their or a friend’s phone or computer? If “no,” learn these various ways to block porn: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/videos/5-ways-to-block-porn-on-kids-devices
• Have you told you child to never send photos online or over the phone that he or she would be too embarrassed to let mom or dad see? If “no,” read the various realities regarding sexting here: https://www.missingkids.org/netsmartz/topics/sexting
• Does your child become uneasy when you discuss what he is doing online or on his phone, or have you ever seen your child type “POS” on his screen? If “yes,” read the various information here, including what POS means: https://umobix.com/blog/pos-slang-meaning/

When their child turns the age of being able to acquire a driver’s license, smart parents do not hand their car keys to their 15-year-old and say nothing but, “Here you go!” No, first the parents sign up the kid for driver’s education training. Then the parents accompany their teen in the car when the child drives, never letting their son or daughter drive solo until they’ve demonstrated dozens of hours of safe, supervised practice. Their child would have to prove to them that he or she knew how to operate the brakes properly, knew the law for speed limits and stopping at lights, and could figure out directions of getting from point A to point B. Only after all of this teaching and reinforcing safety would mom and dad finally – yet reluctantly – hand the car keys to their teen and say, “Here you go!”

And yet, with something as dangerous as allowing their child to go on the “information superhighway” – which is full of x-rated images, evil people preying on youngsters, and immoral ideologies – parents often give their 15-year-old (or 12-year-old…or 9-year-old…) a cell phone or other internet-connected electronic devices with no training, no supervision, and no expectation to pass a “driver’s test.”

Parenting kids today is much more difficult than when you were 15 or 12 or 9, and your moms and dads had to parent you. Back then, children weren’t living in a society that was so grossly violent, blatantly sexual, and wickedly corrupt in what was allowed to be presented via media and electronic devices.  Particularly, this century’s advent of smart phones, texting, and social networking sites has added more concerns than ever for moms and dads. Children these days are being harmed with sexting; whereas my generation’s harmful sin was pretending to smoke candy cigarettes. Children these days text abbreviated, coded messages in secret in any private location possible; whereas my generation could only use the one family phone in the kitchen to talk out loud (in complete sentences) where all could hear.

It’s overwhelming to consider the 24/7 social media exposure, repeated pornography pop-ups on screens, and onslaught of cyber-cruelty attacks that kids encounter in today’s technological society. Mothers and fathers may be trying their hardest to raise their kids with Christian values, but what is counter-acting their efforts are not only what emits from screens but what weak morals and laid-back parenting are emanating from many of their children’s friends’ parents. 

Recent studies show that kids these days are looking at phones, televisions, computers, and tablets for significantly longer than just a few years ago. Teenagers are looking at screens for an average of 8.5 hours each day. The latest research notes that too many teen girls now spend more time on social media than on sleeping or school work.

Because parenting in today’s cyber-world brings about lots of issues, moms and dads need to set limits and create structure around screen usage, just as past generations of parents set limits and created structure for bedtime and meals. 

In dealing with the land mines that are out there when it comes to their youngsters being exposed to the debaucheries produced by technology, parents should begin by first not handing over a smart phone or other electronic device without establishing family rules. Realizing that doing what is good for their kids is more often than not the exact opposite of what the kids want, parents must create and adhere to strict tech rules that include a maximum amount of screen-time allowed per day and a parent’s right to read all online conversations.

It is also recommended a family create a parent/child contract regarding the use of devices, where everyone collaborates on designing a document containing the respectful and responsible behavior all family members follow when using technology. This contract must contain the consequences to be enacted when online/screen-rules are broken, such as losing the privilege of using the smartphone for a week.

Be warned that children are often smarter than mom and dad in knowing how to get around restrictions set up on household technology, so parents have to keep updated on technology and what kids are up to these days. Parents can set up their home router to limit late night access of their children’s devices to get online. Some moms and dads make sure all the family’s charging cords are only stored in the parents’ bedroom; thus, forcing the kids to “put to bed” their devices each night in order to be charged. Additionally, there are parental-control devices and programs that parents can purchase so to increase internet-use safety.

Smart parents must put forth the effort to learn a lot about technology’s dangers and clever ideas to keep their kids safer in today’s sinful-screens and cyber-cruel world. Of course, the most basic way for a parent to keep their child safe is to delay getting him or her a smart phone until no earlier than after he or she acquired a driver’s license. Prior to that, a “dumb” phone is all that is needed if there is a concern for the child to have the ability to contact someone in emergencies. 

“Smart parents” may be considered by their kids as “mean parents” when they don’t give their elementary school or middle school child an internet-connected phone and when they set up screen-time rules and technology controls at home, but performing these counter-cultural acts may save them and their youngsters hours of heartache and soul-harming in the future. Today’s culture’s early exposure and overexposure of screen-time by youngsters is such an easy problem to fix – if only more parents would grow backbones and act like the wiser, authoritative, impactful adults society expected them to be in all the past centuries.