Tips to Keep Tabs on Your Teen’s Texting

These days, it pays for parents to monitor theirr children’s Internet usage, as well as the people they hang out with and the movies and television shows they watch. Monitoring your child’s cell phone is becoming equally important, according to the Daniel Island News.

A lot of inappropriate information is being transferred between teenagers, primarily through text messages back and forth. In many cases, kids with cell phones which have texting capabilities stay up talking to their friends all night. In South Carolina, one parent found that her child received somewhere around four hundred text messages in only fifteen days – that many in barely two weeks’ time.

This number is not particularly surprising when compared to nationwide statistics. Every year in the United states, over 158 billion text messages are sent. That amounts to more than three hundred thousand text messages every second.

Instances of children ten and up texting until all hours of the night is innocent compared to some of the other things which teenagers are sending to each other through cell phones and mobile devices. One example of particularly in appropriate cell phone behavior reported by the Daniel Island News are instances of teenagers using text messaging as a way to write notes. Instead of asking someone “Do you like me? Check yes or no,” now children are sending lascivious pictures to each other, in some cases partially or totally nude, telling the object of affections that this is “what they can get” if he or she likes the “photographer” back.

There are also cases of “homemade porn,” reveals the Daniel Island News, wherein teens use the cameras on their wireless devices to record themselves doing thing that do not need to be recorded.

However, there are several things parents can do to keep their children from engaging in any of these activities, plus many others. This list includes:

• keep a close eye on the monthly bills for your kid’s cell phone, paying close attention to dates, time, length of calls, number of text message, and recipients of calls and texts;
   
• monitor the messages and photos coming through your child’s cell phone, paying close attention to whether or not your child has sent or received anything inappropriate;
   
• consider not allowing your children access to their cell phones 24/7, perhaps by having everyone turn their cell phones in at the end of the day, in a place where they can be charged and the parents can monitor them;
   
• further think about only allowing your child to use the phone during special occasions, events, or activities;
   
• always take the child’s levels of responsibility and maturity into account before letting him or her have a phone;
   
• finally, parents should learn text speak themselves, so they always know what their children are talking about in their messages.
  

(June 20, 2008)