Some Smart Smartphone Advice For Parents

I was wandering through cyberspace looking for some information regarding teen smartphone use and came across this web site.  There is simply too much good information here for me to even try and summarize or condense into an article.  Neither of my kids have a smartphone, but both have a regular cell phone and iPod.  Both of them spend way too much time on them, and we have had to put rules in place in our house that we had not thought were necessary.  I don't want to take anything away from the article, but do want to make a couple of points.  First, nothing in my nearly thirty years of being an educator has had an impact on students at school the way the cell/smartphone has.  Nothing!  I won't belabor this, but for the most part it has not been positive.  We have a generation of kids who "need to know" right now!  We have some kids in our school who have an addiction to their smartphone and the messages they anticipate are coming from folks via text or Twitter.  We also have kids who are handcuffed in some respects by parents who text them while they are at school.  That's right, the worst violators of our cell phone policy are parents who text their kids during school!  Whether it is to check if they picked up the check for lunch money, confirm after school plans, or to give them a motivational message for a competition after school, parents are putting their children in a position during school hours where they violate the cell phone policy.  DON'T TEXT YOUR CHILD DURING SCHOOL  HOURS!  The  kids don't wait until after school or lunch to check it.  They check it right away.  There are many students who discretely carry on conversations with friends while instruction is going on, and some of them are really good at remaining undetected.  When they are doing this, they are not learning.  Some students use the "I need to go to the bathroom" excuse to leave class to check out what is going on, again, missing out on instruction.  Like so many other things they confront, teenagers make poor choices when it comes to using these tools.  Yes, smartphones are great tools, though I am looking forward to the day when I toss mine away.  But, they are an obstacle in school and right now, education is losing the battle.

Generation Smartphone: A Guide for Parents of Tweens and Teens