@GracieGirl,
Quote:Secondly, how can he talk to friends? Most people like to text and you can't text with a house phone. and cell phones make it soo much easier. Having friends and talking to them and hanging out is important too.
Gracie, if they had had cell phones when I was a teen, I don't think I would have even managed to graduate from high school.
Having friends, and talking to them, and hanging out, certainly is important, particularly at that time of life, in fact, that was probably
the most important thing in my life at that age.
The main reason I went to school was to see my friends, going to classes was sorta the price I had to pay for being able to do that. My friends were the main part of my world, and I wanted to be in contact with them as much as possible. I was on the phone with my friends so many hours every single night that my parents finally got me my own phone and phone line so people they knew would be able to call our house.
If I had been able to be on the phone and text with my friends all day, as well as all evening, I don't know that I would have really focused on school much at all. In my day, my friends and I were reduced to passing notes in class, which limited us somewhat, but, if we could have been texting surreptitiously, all day, forget it, that's all we would have been doing and paying attention to. Female teens, in particular, have an unlimited capacity to yak with each other--they did then, and they do now.
So, I can understand why a parent might not want a young teen to have a cell phone, or might want to really limit the use of a cell phone.
We managed to get help when we needed it, even without cell phones.