As a proud father of three, I am constantly wary about disclosing my offspring to unnecessary amounts of any one thing. Fifty years of existence have taught me that large amounts of any one thing, regardless of what it is, may be counterproductive. I was wary of the thought of my offspring having cell phones, and I should have been. I observe young kids (many that could even be in elementary school) gawking at their cell phones for prolonged periods of time, dead to the outside world. Children must be going out, enjoying life, interacting with people (physically), and just experiencing life. The excess of technology our children are being persistently bombarded with every hour is kind of frightening.
With my own offspring, I restrict them to one hours daily on the tube, one hours daily on the computer(with school work as an exception) and one hours daily for Xbox. I find these restrictions are completely acceptable. My children, unfortunately, do not. When they started at Mount Caramel, they were noticing their friends with iPhones. Obviously, they started begging me to buy them cell phones of their own. I was first skeptical of the notion. Recent mobiles are like tiny laptops, and I knew they would spend all day playing around with their phones.
My view began to alter when my children explained to me about many of the productive features of phones and PCs. They explained how the internet can be used for collaborative note taking, tutoring, books online, and other things. When it came time for them to begin their SAT prep, they explained that there are plenty of iPad test prep apps. Who might have thought an iPad could be a tool for test prep? I told them that I might buy them mobiles, and if they ranked above a twenty-eight on their SATs, they would be allowed to keep them and I might pay for them through higher education. They accepted, and purchased an program called Watermelon express. I would highly vouch for it to all the students out there. I'm pleased to report that my children actually got well better then their goal, and I have an enormous cell phone payment!
