User blog:TalonsOfRain/My Essay on Phones

A problem in quite a few kids’ lives these days is the face that parents won’t let them get phones. I believe that this is wrong, and I am going to explain why by giving you three reasons it is a good idea to get your kid a phone; Communication, safety and growing up.

Has your kid ever been in this scenario? They’re at school, and their friend asks if they can come over after school. The kid needs to ask their parents for their permission, but they can’t because they don’t have a phone. Often, the kid will have to use someone else’s phone or have to use the office phone, which can be rather embarrassing. Or sometimes something might happen to person A when they’re far away from person B, and instead of the easy calling and asking for help, they have no way of communicating. It really would be much simpler to get your child a phone and save all the time and hassle.

A study from University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Jonathan Klick says that a one-third drop in crime rates in the 1990s might be due to cellphones providing a deterrent for criminals (1). I believe that this is true. It is a very good idea to get your kid a phone if they’re going off into the world by themselves. For one, it is much safer to have a form of connection everywhere you go, and two, like the article said, it is a deterrent for criminals. If something bad were to happen, your child could call you and tell you what’s going on, or they could call 9-1-1. Now, if there was no phone, how would you know what’s happening? You wouldn’t. Phones make people safer, there’s no doubt about it.

Kids and teens often feel left behind when everyone around them are getting phones and growing up. Often they will feel like everyone else has grown up and they are stuck back with the younger, untrustworthy kids. Kids will feel confused. Why don’t their parents trust them enough to get them a phone? Did they do something wrong? Also, kids at school can be rather mean to people without phones. People who don’t fit the mold. They’ll say things like ‘Why don’t you have a phone? Don’t your parents trust you?’ It can really make a kid feel upset and young. Who really wants their kid to feel left out and left behind? If you cancel out the problem in the first place, they won’t have to feel those feelings, and the problem is solved!

Now, some parents might say that the reason they don’t let their kids have phones is the lack of responsibility that they show. The thing is, what better way to teach responsibility than to get your kid a phone? If you think about it, setting rules and making sure that they are followed is a good way to teach responsibility, because if they break the rules and get punished, they probably won’t do it again. Another way to make sure your kids stay responsible is to use restrictions they can’t get in trouble with. Commonsense Media says, ‘Parents: you have several options for setting up parental controls for your iPhone. You can use Restrictions on the phone to turn on and off certain features. You can use Guided Access to lock the phone on one app. You can download parental-control browsers from the iTunes store. And, at the iTunes store, you can log into your account to restrict the types of content that can be shared and downloaded from the cloud. (2)’. There are so many ways to curb an irresponsible kid that getting a phone really should not a problem.

In conclusion, the pros of getting your kid a phone outweigh the cons. Getting your child a phone will allow them to communicate with you better, stay safer and keep unembarrassed. And there are so many ways to keep your child responsible that concerns about issues are really rendered unimportant as well. My hope is that all teenagers have the freedom of phones eventually, whether it be a smartphone, flip phone or other. I hope that parents will see the pros instead of the cons and listen to our pleas.