Last weekend, in preparation for the new school year, we finally caved in and brought GG & BB smartphones – second-hand iPhone 5S’ to be precise. While they’ve been using a phone to communicate to whoever is at home while coming back from school, the phone they’ve been using using in Primary school was an old-school Nokia one as I felt they only needed a phone to communicate with us at home while walking home alone from school and this phone was more than adequate.

However, the parenting forums and facebook groups that I frequented all said that in secondary schools, a smartphone was more of a necessity that a luxury as whatsapp will be the main mode of communication. So after checking out the prices (ouch!), we decided to get iPhones for both of them so we’re all on the same iOS!

The children of today are digital natives – they can’t remember a time when they’ve not been surrounded by technology. They take to technology as if they are born to it and so can’t really understand us parents when we question them on the need for a smartphone while still young. I remember an incident when GG & BB were younger – they were in Primary 3 (around 9 years old) and I was chaperoning GG’s class on a learning journey. I was surprised to see at least half the class with smartphones with them, and of the half around a quarter had the latest version of the smartphone (mostly iPhone or Samsung). Some were carrying versions which were more advanced than me!

There are many pros and cons to giving your teen a smartphone (latest or otherwise). Some of these are:

Pros

Emergencies: Most teens, especially in a country like Singapore travel far from home for school once they hit secondary school. A smartphone (or any phone for that matter) becomes a tool for them to get in touch with an adult in their lives in cases where they get into situations they are not capable of handling. The phone also becomes useful in case they need to contact law enforcement in case of sticky situations with the phone’s geo positioning helping to pinpoint their location.

Tracking: A smartphone helps in parents track where their teen is after school. In our case, I launched the ‘Find Friends’ option on their phones and use it to track them when they get home from school. This is especially useful since they are travelling home alone for the first time in their lives. On their first day of school, I started tracking GG when she called me to let me know she’s left school and realized she was taking the wrong route home and immediately called her to check her location. I was able to track her all the way home and it was only then I was able to breathe a sigh of relief. This is so useful for working parents who do not have the luxury to being at home to make sure their child comes home on time. A parent can also check if their teen is spending time in malls (as seems to be the case of many Singaporean teens) instead of heading home straight from school. This would also be a boon when a parent travels for work and can track their teen even when not in the same country. Imagine the sense of relief the parent feels (I know what that feels like)

Responsibility: Having an expensive phone in their hands teaches teens responsibility. They have to take care of their phone and losing one will not make their parents buy another one as easily. So they start to learn to be responsible. Conversely, they learn about consequences also as when they lose their smartphone, most parents will not replace it and they will have to learn to live without things they are not careful about.

Learn about the world at your fingertip: Having a smartphone is quite useful for a teen, especially if they are students. The whole world is literally at their fingertips! When they have downtimes, your teen can browse the internet and learn so much. Youtube videos teach new skills, TED vidoes are awesome and I can go on and on…conversely, there’s so much smut online that the teen can get sucked into that too…

Cons:

Excessive usage of social media and games: I think all of us are guilty of this – we play games on our smartphones, but teens are especially susceptible to this. Most teens play games that are seen as ‘cool’ and ‘on-trend’ to the extent of not doing anything else the whole day when they are online. They are also very into social media and having x number of friends and followers is of paramount importance to them. Gaining or losing followers could mean the difference in having a moody and sullen teen or a happy one in the family. With a laptop/desktop, this is something that parents can control to an extent, but with social media and games on a smartphone, control is almost non-existent!

Huge Bills especially data: If you give your teen a SIM card with data and they are allowed to use it without any checks, then be prepared for huge phone bills at the end of the month as a couple of hours on Youtube or some of the more data-heavy games can easily use up a month’s data.

Limited attention span: Most teens already have a limited attention span and smartphones feed into this. Instead of getting articulated answers to questions, you will get single syllable answers or worse, grunts instead of words!

Cyber bullying, inappropriate content and predators: Enough said! Giving a smartphone to a teen is giving them a loaded gun! They love to see their face and name online and so it becomes a matter of time when someone posts inappropriate content and this in turn makes them vulnerable to online predators as well as cyberbullying. They need to be taught online posting ettiqutte before handing them a smartphone.

Health Risks: Listening to loud music which will result in long-term damage to their growing earbuds, weight gain due to the sedentary nature of this device as well as the potential radiation effects are all well documented. I’ve also learnt that playing violent games tends to change their personalities. BB has been playing a multi-player game which is more violent than I’d like and I can start to see his personality change – from being a soft-spoken boy, he has started to disobey us and also raise his voice and fight/argue which he almost never did. I am still not sure if this is due to his gaming habit or he is testing boundaries as he goes through puberty.

Managing smartphones

You can give your teen a smartphone and still, to an extent, control their usage. Here are some which we are doing with BB & GG

Smartphone curfew: Every night, before they go to bed or 9 pm (whichever comes earlier), they gave to switch off their phones and hand it over to me to be charged. The phone will remain switched off the whole night and they can switch it on in the morning after they are completely ready for school to check any messages that may have come overnight before switching it off once again. The phones are to be kept off when they are in school as both their schools are very strict about usage within school premises. Disobeying the rules will mean their phone will be taken away by the school and the offender will get detention.

Passwords: I have passwords for both their phones. Even better, since they have the finger scanning password, my thumbprint is scanned into both their phones and even if passwords are changed, I can access phones. Actually passwords can’t be changed without letting me know the new password. If this happens, phone privileges will be revoked.

Social Media: Since BB & GG are not yet 13, they do not have access to social media yet, but when they do, they have to add us as friends and we will vet their social media presence till the time they are mature enough to do it themselves.

Location Tracking: I’ve turned this on for both of them, but this only works when cellular data is switched on, which is normally switched off. I need to figure out a way out of this,

These are some of our smartphone rules at home. We’re also learning as we parent teens. If you have any other ideas on how to manage smartphone usage with teens, I’d love to hear them.