Nowadays, almost all people use cell phones, including children. When parents decide to give their children a cell phone, they need to monitor them and must be wise about when their children can play their cell phone. Why do we have to do that? It is because using a cell phone too much or unwisely can have negative impacts so that parents need to be able to prevent the negative impacts from occurring.
Read also: Parent’s Guide When Giving Cell Phones to Children
As we know that a cell phone has a lot of advantages, but we also know that it can have bad impacts. I understand that when parents give a cell phone to their children, it is because they need it for communicating with each other when they are not together with their children.
And we also know that by giving a cell phone, it means that children can access anything such as music, pictures, games, music, and even videos. So, parents need to monitor the use of cell phones on their children because if they do not do it, their children may have negative impacts from it.
Paying Attention to the Children’s Maturity and Needs
When you give a cell phone to your children, you have to make sure that they are mature enough to have it. How can we know it?
Well, there are several signs that you can consider giving a cell phone to your children as you are able to read below.
- Your children have been responsible and can be trusted to handle their stuff.
- Your children have understood and followed rules.
- Your children have been able to judge positive and negative sides from various aspects and have opinions on various things and can be invited to discuss.
- Your children have an understanding that a cell phone has functions that must be used properly and responsibly.
Not only seeing the readiness of your children, you also have to consider how important a cell phone is for your children. Sometimes, a cell phone is needed by children for example, when they go to school and go home using public transportation. A cell phone is also useful when you want to contact them when they are not at home, such as when they are playing in their friends’ house.
Children who have health problems or children who live far from their parents also need a cell phone.
The Things that Must be Agreed Before Giving a cell phone to Children
There are several things that you, as parents, need to talk and agree with your children before you give a cell phone where it is done to prevent the children from the negative impacts.
- You have to explain to the children that they may not use social media before they are 13 years old. If they are old enough, then you can give some rules about the things that they do not do when they are using social media such as posting hate comments to others.
- You need to give a clear limitation about the functions of a cell phone for your children, for example they can use it for contacting an online public transportation when they are going home.
- You have to decide the time limitation for using a cell phone in a day so that your children will not be addicted to gadgets.
- You have to limit the monthly credit of your children’s cell phones. Make sure that you adjust the credit with the main use of your children’s cell phone.
- You also have to explain to them that accessing pornographic content is not good and tell them about unhealthy friendship in cyberspace. Why do we have to explain about it? It is because these elements are very dangerous for your children’s physical and mental health.
- You need to explain about the danger of radiation from a cell phone and also the rules that they need to obey to reduce the radiation effects.
- Even you are able to limit the ability of the cell phone, for example by not giving internet data. By doing it, your children’s cell phone can only be used to send messages and make a call.
Is there any other tip? Well, you are able to discuss the consequences that your children will receive if they do not obey the rules. When they get older, you can make new looser rules so that your children feel that they are trusted by their parents.
So, after you read this explanation, I hope that you can be wiser when you give a cell phone to your children and make sure that they are safe when they are using it.
