I'm just curious about this....

Do those of you here have rules about your kids and their phones?

Our son is a great kid. We trust him as much as a parent can trust a teenage boy. By that, I mean he hasn't done anything to break our trust, we know and like his friends and don't worry about who he's with, etc... but we aren't so stupid as to think we can go on autopilot from here on out. Kids - even the good ones - do dumb things sometimes!

He has a girlfriend, and we like her just fine, but we realized they just seem too 'connected'. Because of his cell phone, she is essentially always "with" him, sitting in his hand in that little electronic device.

I remember having a boyfriend at his age. He lived in the next town over so I only got to see him about once a month, and had to wait on SNAIL MAIL letters from him for us to have any sort of 'discussion'. That meant that when I was with my friends, I was actually *with* my friends and not also in a constant state of distraction because I was in communication with the guy I was nuts about who wasn't even in the room.

It seems 'off' to me that thanks to his phone, the girlfriend is the first person he greets when he wakes up and the last person to whom he says goodnight.

His girlfriend, quite literally, is always in the palm of his hand.

That just didn't seem healthy somehow. So last night, we made some new rules about his phone. Nothing drastic... just that it gets plugged in to charge overnight in the kitchen. He tells his *family* goodnight last and doesn't head to bed and 'visit' with her for awhile before he falls asleep. He comes upstairs and eats breakfast with us and has time with the people actually *present* in the home with him before striking up a conversation with the girlfriend across town.

He didn't fuss with us about the new status quo at all, and I think he actually appreciated that now he isn't totally tethered all day and can use us as the excuse/reason that he can close the 'connection' for a time and have his own thoughts. He's still sound asleep, and his cell is plugged into its charger here with me on the island in the kitchen.

I told him we won't go through his texts on a regular basis or anything, but that we did reserve the right to read them if we felt we needed to. I have a friend who does a 'surprise inspection' of the things her daughter is texting about once every 4-6 weeks and I don't think that's unreasonable.

Are we just old fuddy duddies, or have others of you felt the need to put some restrictions on texting for the mental health of their kids?

You bring up a great perspective with cell phones that I really have not thought much about since my daughter is not emotionally connected to her cell phone (has not had that long really). But for those that are on it constantly, and are emotionally charged from texting, chatting all day long, I can see where a kid becomes dependent on that kind of stimulation.
A good case where a kid really should have limited minutes and texting. I can see where this can get out of hand.


We were at the beach recently, and I couldn't help but notice this girl nearby us (with a group of friends) who literally checked her phone every five minutes or so. She could have been expecting an imp call, or I suspect that she does that all the time. It really was obnoxious.

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Interesting. We have the exact same thing with our 15 year old daughter and her boyfriend. It had bugged me a little, but I never really considered taking the phone away at night. She charges it every night, with it in her bed. She actually sleeps with it. I think I will have a discussion with my DH about this. I actually think that's a great idea. We have told her repeatedly that as long as we're paying for the phone we can go through her texts at any time, but have never actually done it. She's the same as your kid, very trustworthy and we do trust her. But we, also, are not so naive to think that she's immune to the dumb things teenagers sometimes do. Thanks for posting.

Lisa

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I see this problem and recognize it. People are truly connected. For good and bad. I "talk" to my cousins and nieces on FaceBook every day they live in Italy. Years ago I would not have been able to. On the other hand I see these what I consider somewhat unhealthy and somewhat codependent relationships forming because of situations like wowitsdark's and I see too that these are definitely good kids and they are just following the trend and taking full advantage of modern technology.

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Glad we aren't the only ones bothered by this!

With our son, it's not even that he is on it 24/7 that is the issue. The girlfriend has two jobs and doesn't text on the job, so there are long stretches where he isn't 'connected' to her, and even when she isn't, it's not like all he does all day long is text...

But I just think it's healthy to be *with* the people you are *with*, and not have your mind always multi-tasking with a dozen other people. I think there is something to be said for not always needing *input*. From the phone to the MP3 player, it seems like their brains don't often have time to just *be*... and it just doesn't seem like a recipe for good mental health.

We recently took a large group of teenagers from our church on a week-long trip, and we confiscated electronic devices at about the time we left. If they wanted to call home we gave them their phones so they could make those calls, but our goal was to get them to interact with each other and not with their buddies/girlfriends/boyfriends back home. We played word games on the bus for hours and hours. They laughed and talked and really bonded in a way I'm not sure they would have if we had allowed the 200 people from 'back home' who weren't even on the trip with us to dictate their interactions.

I know times are different and that every generation seems to be 'going to the dogs' to the adults who aren't keeping up with the times, but the whole cell phone/texting thing does seem like a very, very significant change when compared to any generation before ours. I'm not remotely against technology and wouldn't prevent our children from having phones at all... but even beyond the potential naked photos and inappropriate text messages, I just don't know that kids are likely to *build* depth in the relationships in the room with them if the option to seek out others they find more interesting without even leaving the couch... well... I'm just not convinced that's good for them. It's human nature to gravitate towards that which is most appealing, and let's face it - Mom and Dad aren't as appealing as their friends and girl/boyfriends. And yet, it's the familial relationships that will (or should!) last for their lifetimes. In times past, by default, you *did* interact with your family whether they were most interesting to you or not, and long-term, that's what cemented families together. Now that your family can be in the room with you and yet you never speak to them (yet you send 1000 messages to other people during that time......)....

I dunno. I'm just not convinced it's going to ultimately result in *better* adults to raise a generation of people who never really *had* to develop the skill of attending to those who are *here* and *now*.

Who even knew that was something we were developing ten years ago??? It was just *life*!

I have had some thoughts on this over the last few months as well. It seems everywhere you go, the people are texting the entire time and it seemed like my kid was getting right in the middle of it, if he wasn't texting half of the population of the high school he was calling them. We made rules similar to WID about the phone and the IMing that was going on.

Once we talked about how there isn't any real alone time any more because as long as someone has your cell phone number or your IM name, they are as good as wherever you are. In the bathroom, the bedroom, church, school, car, store...you get my drift. He got it as well. We, as a family always "had" more people with us as his attention could never ignore the buzz of the cell or the ding of IM.

He understood what we were trying to say and the rules became texting while out of our home, cell phone used outside of our home and never to bed.(actually he often leaves it in his car). If someone needed to get him while he is home, they can call the regular land line so there was some sort of monitoring of time and attention.

In the beginnng, cell phones were used for emergency use only. Now they are a necessary item so in our home as long as he in our physical home, they are back to being an emergency item and a convenience item not a required item..

He also seemed relieved. I don't think he liked being "with" his girlfriend constantly. Our home is peaceful and we are able to have conversations with him without the constant buzz.

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Very cool, usnamom. I think that all sounds very wise, and it's interesting that yours also seemed almost relieved.

A downside to cell phones that my mom pointed out is that she doesn't get to talk to anyone but the person she calls. My brother and his wife are a cell-only family. We aren't. When she calls here, anyone could answer the phone... the kids, DH, or I. She gets to chat a bit with that person before asking for the one she actually *needed* to talk to (and 99.9% of the time, that's me! But she gets to speak to my husband on a regular basis since he answers the phone much of the time... and the same goes for our kids).

Mom realized the other day that she hadn't talked to my sister-in-law for weeks, simply because the person from their household she *needed* to get in touch with - my brother / her son - has his own number and so she calls him directly and they discuss what they called about and hang up. She rarely has anything specific she *needs* to talk to her daughter-in-law about, and so those incidental conversations you have with whomever answers the phone never take place.

I LOVE Facebook and how it has made the people I enjoyed from my past part of my *current* life. It's weird to think that I have a lager circle of *current* heartstrings because the old friends and the new friends are *all* today's friends. I know my friends list of 200+ people isn't huge by some standards, but for the most part I don't accept, willy-nilly, people I didn't really *know* well at some point in my life. It's interesting that I *see* my current friends and the rapport that they have with their *past*-life friends through their interactions on facebook. I think it's a lot of fun.

I guess another 'situation' that has arisen with technology is the fact that it's also very easy to be distracted, agitated, whatever by *strangers* thanks to message boards! LOL! At least our kids are texting people they actually *know*! LOL

Wow, I wish some of you ladies could sit down and explain this to some of the adults that I deal with on a day to day basis.

Over the last couple months I have witnessed some very strange incidents of people using cell phones in a "stalkerish" manner. One had to be dealt with on a disciplinary level at work. Having to speak to a 30something man about repeated prohibited cell phone use while on duty was very uncomfotable to say the least. And it got just plain weird when he told me "I have to see where my girlfriend is and who she is with." I'm pretty sure at that point I had the "Oh boy, we got a strange one here" look on my face.

Another time I was having lunch in the employee dining room and one of the young bussers from the restaurant came in for break. She immediately started calling someone. Several someones as it turned out. None of whom answered. And was totally pi$$ed that no one was answering. Went into a rant that they all knew what time her break was and that she would be calling. Why wouldn't they answer??
Um, maybe because your behavior is more than a little scary and they are trying to distance themselves.

I do think some people have gotten to a point where they are trying to regain what access others have to their time and thoughts. Hopefully in your teaching your kids another form of impulse control, they will think about it before they give others that much input in their day to day lives.

*Please excuse any grammer or spelling errors. I laid my glasses somewhere and can't remember where. And also I'm not that good at spelling and grammer.

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