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Home > Blogs > Middletown School News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > April > 16 > Entry
Do you monitor your child’s cell phone?
Last week, I was at a store in Middletown and a woman and her teenage daughter were shopping for cell phones. The daughter was trying to talk her mother into a camera phone and the mother flat out refused.
Then today, I came across a Columbus Dispatch article about teenagers sending each other nude or explicit photos and videos via their cell phones.
According to the article, teens are “increasingly” using cell phone capabilities such as text messaging, cameras and videos to send sexually explicit materials and messages to one another. The teens interviewed in the article say they have received unsolicited nude photos and sexual invitations from classmates and share stories of those same photos being passed on after relationships go sour.
Yikes.
The mom I saw in the store last week was worried about her daughter taking pictures and then posting them online, though she didn’t specifically say she was worried about those pictures being inappropriate in the discussion I saw. But while they were looking at phones, it seemed like the majority of phones under the service they wanted did have cameras.
I’ve heard from many administrators who say that as phones becomes smaller and smaller and are able to take pictures and videos, it becomes more difficult to police at school and schools are always trying to keep up with the latest technology in policies and regulations. And stories of videos taken at school and posted to the Web are becoming more and more common.
I asked a local high school student I know about this story. She said most of her friends have camera phones and that a lot of girls she knows do send these types of pictures and messages using their phones — and that most parents don’t monitor the contents of their teens’ phones until he or she goes over their minutes or is already in trouble for something.
What do you think? Do you think a lot of teens are actually doing this or do you think it’s a minority of teenagers sending these explicit pictures and messages? Does your child have a camera phone, or even a cell phone? Should parents monitor their teens’ phones?
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