Understand Mobile Phones and Texting
Most mobile (cell) phones today are small computers with rich feature
sets. Before you buy a phone for a child or teen in your care, ask your-
self what are the features on the phone, and what services do these fea-
tures enable? Look at the answers from a safety perspective: Which
safeguards are in place, along with all those cool features?Here are some cell phone features to think about before buying:➟ Does the phone have Internet access? Depending on
the age and maturity of a minor, this may or may not
be desirable.➟ Does the phone offer filters that block content that
could be harmful to children or offensive to you? Is
the filter turned on? If the filter isn’t on by default
and you think it should be, ask the sales person to
turn it on for you in the store and help you set appro-
priate filter levels.➟ Which services do the filters cover? If the phone has
TV, find out if the service allows you to set ratings
restrictions on shows. Find out how this feature treats
unrated programs. Are there filters that apply to music
services?➟ Does the phone or device have location (GPS) capa-
bility? (See Figure 11-8.) You should be able to block
this capability or limit it if you choose to, so that
your grandchildren can’t allow people to track their
location.➟ Does the phone have a camera? The rising image
quality in mobile phone cameras documents a lot of
poor choices. While most teens use cameras sensibly,
others document extreme behavior to look cool for
each other, take and swap inappropriate pictures or227Chapter 11: Grandparents Rule!