Kids and Mobile Phones
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Back in August I wrote about the phenomenon of kids losing sleep because they’re awake at all hours talking and texting on their mobile phones. Over at Science Daily they reported on more evidence along those lines:
A new study finds that cell phone use after bedtime is very prevalent among adolescents, and its use is related to increased levels of tiredness after one year.
According to the report, a recent study by Jan Van den Bulck, PhD, shows a direct link between cell phone use and tiredness among the 1656 school children studied. The numbers relayed by the Science Daily article are a bit hard to follow, but the conclusion is clear. According to Dr. Van de Bulck:
Communication and staying in touch are important for young people, and they now have the technology to stay “connected” more or less permanently. Taking a mobile phone to your bedroom is not trivial. They spend a lot of time “connecting” to other people, and some of them do this all hours of the night.
You can download the study from here (registration required).
Clearly, what is needed is some kind of control over when kids can use their phones. Some parents do it the “old fashioned” way; at bedtime every night they insist the child leave his or her phone outside of the bedroom, such as connected to its charger in an open area like the kitchen or living room.
Other parents rely on technological solutions. Namely, parental control services in which they can set “down times” during which the phone will not function. Typically, parents will set aside bedtime hours as down time, but some even use the feature to block phone use during school hours or study time.
Ideally, the service won’t completely block access to the phone. For example, Parent Patrol lets the parents set “always available” status on some contact numbers (such as parents and other trusted adults). Those “always available” phone numbers are not affected by the down time status of the child’s phone. This ensures that the child can use the phone to call those people (or be called by them) in the case of an emergency or other urgent need, even during a “down time.”
Parents who think that simply using a pre-paid plan is enough to keep their kids from over-using their phones should think about this. The problem is not just that kids tend to use their phones too much, but that they use them at inappropriate times. Using pre-pay alone has no affect on that second, and perhaps more important aspect of kids and phone use.
Further reading:
Happy holidays to everyone, from all of us at the Kids and Mobile Phones blog! Be sure to check back in the new year for more information and discussion on this important topic.
Anastasia Goodstein is the author of Totally Wired; What Teens and Tweens are Really Doing Online. She also has a blog related to the book and its topic (although she has recently ceased posting to it).
Goodstein was recently interviewed by Nora Young, the host of CBC Radio’s culture and technology show “Spark.” In the interview, Goodstein discusses some of the differences between what young kids do online, and what tweens and teens do; and she posits that most of it is basically harmless. While it’s true that virtual worlds include a lot of brand and product marketing that is targeted at kids, the host of the show points out that there’s nothing new about that.
A lot of what Goodstein says can be applied to mobile phones. After all, in some respects the only real difference between a phone and a personal computer is the degree of portability. You can talk through your computer (using Skype or webcam chatting) and you can surf the Web on many mobile phones (although the experience is, for most people, awkward and unpleasant in terms of usability).
The interview gets particularly interesting when Goodstein points out that parents (read: adults) are coming to this kind of technology later in life. As a result, they have a very different experience than do kids, who are growing up with it. She calls kids “digital natives” and grownups “digital immigrants.” She says this to underscore the extent to which parents often don’t “get it” when it comes to why kids are so involved with online and virtual communities. The typical parental response is often to disapprove, or to become paranoid about the risks and dangers, primarily because it is a world that we are not native to.
However, that doesn’t mean Goodstein endorses a wide-open, laissez-faire approach to kids online. At about the 12:00 mark in the interview, the host asks her what she thinks of people who don’t understand and don’t like all this online stuff, and who think that kids would be better off if they were kept away from it all. Goodstein replies:
I completely support setting limits, and I think that’s absolutely necessary on screen time, but to go to the extreme of unplugging kids feels like something a digital immigrant would say.
I would say the same thing about mobile phones.
You can listen to the interview here (running time, about 13 minutes).
