Tween electronics thoughts..

Like most kids her age Mya is an electronic freak. The kid is more informed about all things tech then I ever could be.
Because of this I have been VERY reluctant to give her a cell phone or any other real tech savoy device. Her Nana (brads mom) got her an Itouch for a holiday last year. I was pretty livid about it. (I'm a firm believer in your kids should not have nicer cars, phones, or things then you unless they have a job)
So I let her hook up to our wireless yesterday for the first time and made her keep the volume all the way up. Without wireless it's basically useless.
Turns out she can skype on the darn thing! Hello how does this sooo defeat the purpose of my not letting her have a phone..
Anyway so I discover this and now I want to bash the thing to bits. I just do not trust her. Not because she has done anything superbly wrong but we are talking about my kid. She has been known to skim by on rules at times like I did as a kid. Nothing to warrant any real worry but enough to make me still keep all her tv and computers activities out in the living room.

Would it be bad for me to take this thing away? I just don't think she is ready or responsible enough to have it.

What about the parental controls? It will ask you for a password to access certain apps and Internet access. Believe me, after dealing with my 12 year old cousin this weekend with her iPod Touch, I know how you feel. I wanted to hide it from her.

O bought herself an Ipod touch with her paper route money. We do not have wireless and she finds tons to do on it. She has downloaded several free game apps that don't require internet. She loves the picture, video and music stuff on it. She can't do the face to face technology because it requires internet. Personally, there's alot less to worry about with the internet part shut off. She has accessed free internet at the library and a few other places but we're with her. Luckily for us, though, she's a rule enforcer not breaker or skimmer.

Kylie got one for Christmas. She CAN be a rule breaker/skimmer at times, but most times doesn't. She has broken the rules that she is not allowed to get on UTube or download ANY songs/content without permission. When she did that it was taken away a week the first time, the second time two weeks. She hasn't done it since. She was going through such major withdrawal those two times that I don't think she'll do it again.

so you think I should set stricter rules?
or should i yank the whole thing??

Wellllllllll....I'm not going to be much help at all. Evan has had a phone since he was 4 (the Migo for kids). Both he and Izabella have one. Evan rarely uses his and Izabella just got a Blackberry Curve a few weeks ago. I upgraded to a Droid X and when I did I eventually gave her my purple Blackberry.

I think the main thing is trust. If you feel she may be a bit shady then I would monitor like crazy. I 150% trust Izabella but I still pick up her phone and go through it sometimes. One time I found a friend of hers had sent her a txt and used the word "a$$". I informed her that she needs to either tell her 9 yr old friend to either clean up her language or lose her number. I just let it be known that there is NO privacy in this house when it comes to phones or facebook....like EVER. I also get into her FB and set up an email that alerts my phone to every message or post sent to her. Nope, no privacy.

My sis has a 15 yr old who's privacy she "respects". Now her dd is interested in many boys and like to "walk the dog" at weird hours of the night. They live in the country but a few of the boys live in the area. I told her to STOP respecting her privacy and the root of all of her issues with her dd are all in that cell phone her dd carries around. Take away the communication and you take away the problem. Hello! She will ground her but then she still has her phone. Like I said, she doesn't care that she's sent to her room because she still has all of her friends at her fingertips.


Sorry, I went somewhere else with this one.

This post has been edited by Crystalina on Jun 1 2011, 11:57 AM

Let her know that that cell phone (and every single thing on it) will be eyeballed by you as well. Whenever, wherever and however many times you need to. And then DO IT!

Set the parental controls. She can still use it to listen to music, play angry birds, etc.. Maybe even allow the internet to play Words with friends.
I honestly don't see the point of using the Internet on things like that if you have a computer. I hate using the Internet on my phone or using apps for Twitter if I can just go check it on the computer. The only time I use those is if I'm out of the house and I get a confusing reply on Twitter and I go on to check what they replied to. Plus, I can live without checking something on the Internet for 8 hours while I'm at work.