by Daniel Sanchez

Created on: June 04, 2009

I think that age is unimportant in giving a child a cellphone. I am a 14-year-old, and I've only had a cellphone since my 13th birthday, but I am personally sick of the way they've injected themselves into, well, everything. Being a computer geek, I think the more expensive smartphones are ridiculously useful, but whether or not it's a 6-year-old or a 16-year old, it all depends on responsibility and maturity.

For example, if you walk around texting everywhere you go, into streets, while driving, in class, etc, etc, your probably shouldn't use one. I think calling while driving shouldn't be outlawed, but texting and such has to go. It may sound odd coming from a teenager, but I hate texting. I'm sick of bad grammar, unintelligible acronyms and some idiot with a new phone blasting ringtones at high volume in class when a teacher isn't around. It's much easier to simply call someone and not drag a 3-minute conversation to 10 minutes. I do think picture texting is handy, although my cellphone camera is kind of depressing. It's the best camera I own at 2 megapixels, and I take tons of photos with it. Not photos as in pictures of my friends and I, photos like pictures of sunsets, twilight, trees, granite cliffs, things that are worthy of a picture.

On the other hand, a good time to give someone a cellphone is when they show responsibility, as in they use a cellphone as what it is-a tool. A cellphone is not a toy. It's treated by so many as one, it's ridiculous. So, basically, if you think your child is responsible, try giving them a pre-paid phone. If they show irresponsible behaviour with it, simply stop paying. It's a great way to see if they are ready for one or not.

Also, the more expensive a phone, the easier they tend to break. A $200 Blackberry Storm can break very easily, as opposed to say a first-generation LG enV. I have a enV, and it's been accidentally dropped many, many times and simply bounced and received a new scratch somewhere.

However, the curse of a geek like me is ridiculously high data charges. I would love to use my cellphone to check my email or something simple like that, instead of booting up my aging Toshiba Satellite. Even more ridiculous is how often wireless provider's contracts change. Before we ordered DSL from AT&T, we were stuck sharing a Verizon USB modem. It was a ok service, but my dad had gotten it new, with truly unlimited bandwidth for $40 a month for two years, but just recently, before our contract was over, they changed the terms to 5 gigabits a month, and $1.49 a megabyte afterwords. Now, 5 gigabits is ridiculous. In case you didn't know, 8 bits equals 1 byte, the standard unit of data. 1 kilobyte is not 1,000 bytes, it is 1,024 bytes, because 1,024 is a power of two and 1,000 is not. This means that you get far less for your money than most people know. Even more ridiculous than the bandwidth meter is the overcharge. $1.49 per megabyte is reasonable on a cell phone, which don't consume much data, but on a computer as the modem was meant for, most people would use a single megabyte checking their email.

It all narrows down to:

1. Are they responsible?

2. If so, do they use a lot of data/internet usage?

3. If they do, costs may be high.

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