Cell Phones For Kids?
As anyone who reads this thing regularly (all 2 of you) know, my son is 8 years old. Last year he got his first cell phone. Some people think 7 years old is too young for a cell phone, but I obviously disagree. I do, however, think that 7 is too young for a camera phone, or text messaging. Anyway, with that said, let me introduce to you the Firefly phone from at&t, previously cingular. I purchased the Firefly phone for my son because I liked the overall idea of it. He could only make and receive calls from numbers that I programmed into the phone myself. (You could program the phone online, too.) There were only 5 keys on this phone, 6 if you include the emergency 911 button on the side. He could not dial random numbers, or any numbers for that matter. I thought it was great. For a while.
The Firefly is made out of hard plastic. When it drops, it breaks. After he broke his 3rd phone, I realized that something had to change. At $40-$50 per phone, this was starting to get expensive. The thing is kids drop things, kids play rough, “stuff” happens. You’d think they would make the phone a little less breakable, if you know what I mean. Taking that into consideration, along with the fact that my son was now 8 and hated the little blue “baby phone” as he called it, I decided I’d start shopping around for a flip phone. No camera, though. I think if a phone has a camera on it, the child is more likely to play with it and this increases his or her chances of breaking it or it getting stolen.
Well, there was no way that I was going to shell out over $100 for a new flip phone from at&t. So I decided to check out the at&t Go Phones they had at my local target. I found a relatively decent Samsung for about $40. It’s a basic phone, no frills at all, but it’s a flip phone and it’s not as babyish as the firefly. Since it was a Go Phone, I simply removed the sim card, or “smart card” as at&t calls them and replaced it with the card from my son’s old firefly phone. Worked like a charm. And let me tell you, this phone has held up against a rough 8 year old boy, getting dropped numerous times and even being washed. I couldn’t even leave the firefly in the car in the summer time, for some reason anytime it got a little hot it died. Anyway, being concerned about who calls my son and who he would be calling, I looked into parental controls for his phone. For about $5 per month, you can basically do the same thing that you could do with the firefly phone on any phone on your account. But even better, you can designate a time that the phone can and cannot be used. 911 always works of course. So, if you are looking for a decent cell phone at a moderate price for your kids, I really wouldn’t recommend the firefly at all. It’s just not made to hold up.
