The Day I Confiscated my 12-year-old's handphone

Recently, I have read an article entitled "The Day I Confiscated my 12-year-old's handphone". Basically it is about a mother talking about how and why she confiscated her daughter's mobile phone. The author bought a mobile phone for her daughter when the latter was aged 12, mainly to communicate with her and to coordinate picking her daughter and her younger son up from school when the author was tied up in meetings. However, her daughter began to use the phone excessively, and the cost for the phone every month shot up sky-high and in the end, the author decided to confiscate her daughter's mobile phone.

My mother saw this article in the Today paper and highlighted it to me. She thought that I would also have the same problem. However, I think that this is not true at all. Firstly, I think that girls use mobile phones much more than boys simply because they have so many things to talk about and so much to talk on any topic under the sun. Now with the availability of mobile phone, they can talk for 24 hours a day. However, this does not apply to boys because we just do not talk so much. For your information, women talk on average 4000 words a day while men in contrast on average only 2000 words a day. See the difference?

However, this may not be the fault of the author's daughter, regarding the article. This is because she has just received a brand new mobile phone and along with it, free access to chatting all day long. She certainly used that power over-extensively until it has started to resemble an addiction. I also think that the girl does not know that there are charges while using the mobile phone, and therefore has racked up the phone bill perhaps while not even knowing it.

I think that the girl should exert more self-control when using the mobile phone. She can chat and message, but not too much, and also at appropriate times like when she has nothing else to do, not in the early hours of the morning or during school. The author should also educate her daughter on the fact that money is charged for messaging, calling or receiving calls from others and if she uses up so much money, it has a very great adverse effect on the whole family.

I actually have a solution for the author. I think that since the daughter is using a prepaid card, her parents can assist her in kicking the habit by giving her a fixed amount in her prepaid card, say 20 dollars for one month or whatever the author thinks is suitable. If the daughter uses up her money due to chatting unneccesarily, then she will just have to make do until the next month.