Growing up, I never had much to carry around in school. I carried my backpack with books and my plastic Mickey Mouse lunch box. Now I see kids carrying a rolling backpack with their laptops, listening to their iPods while texing their friend who is also walking right beside them.
What the hell?! And they're 9 years old.
Okay, I lied, I remembered carrying a pager. But it had no service; I made the alarms beep so I would look cool. My parents had no contact with me during school hours. If they wanted to contact me, they would have to talk to Mrs. (mean eye who smoked so much her voice was a raspy squeal), our school secretary.
As more kids carry mobile devices, like the lovely smartphones, parents take advantage of technology and use a software to monitor their kids' calls and texts. Programs like My Mobile Watchdog and Mobile Spy are amongst the many that are used to to track these transactions. These programs help parents create a list of contacts including : close relatives and trusted friends. When a foreign number from a call or text appears, parents would get an e-mail and/or text flagging that number. These programs cost about ten bucks a month with web access. My Mobile Watchdog will alert parents if their child has removed the software from their phone.
Law enforcement have started using these programs to help them track down as many as 44 sex predators in Colorado. An investigator for the Child Sex Internet Invistigations Unit in Jefferson County, Colorado, Mike Harris, uses these tools to catch sexual predators. He equipped his phone with the software and started going to social-networking sites to lure in pedophiles. The software documents every text message, every phone call, and any other data needed to testify against these CHESTER MOLESTORS in court.
(WOOHOO!)
Anyone heard of "sexting?"
Apparently, it's sending "sexy" or NUDE pictures through text message. If these pictures get into the wrong hands, people can get hurt. A related story to "sexting" was about a teen who took a nude photo and sent it to her boyfriend. She thought that if she sent it to her boyfriend, it would only be for her boyfriend to see. Oops. Her nude picture was sent to other teens in other high schools and she was being ridiculed and taunted. Ultimately, she collapsed upder all this pressure and hanged herself.
By the way, if you receive a nude picture of anyone who is under the age of 18, you are receiving CHILD PORN. Doesn't that sound icky?
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On a more serious note, it seems logical for parents to use cell phones to track their kids calls and texts. Everyone is so busy with their own careers, sometimes we just don't have enough time to spend with our kids. When our kids feel like they can't bond with their own parents, they go to someone else. Sometimes the communication is through social networking sites where pedophiles prey on their next young victim.
So let's weigh out the factors:
-spend about $10 a month to track our kids EVERY move...
-spend at LEAST 2 hours a day (FREE) to talk to our kids to build that bond/trust that both parties need??
My parents may have not trusted everything that I did when I was younger, but they also gave me an open line of communication. If I had any questions about ANYTHING (yes, I talked about sex with my Asian mother..*gasp*), I could go to them; not that creepy Tom guy on MySpace.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/20/monitoring.kids.cellphones/index.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/15/national/main4723161.shtml (to learn about "sexting")
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