Some parents forbid young children from owning smart phones (cell phones with Internet access), while others disagree and believe that they are important tools for keeping in touch. Which point of view do you think is better, and why?

In my opinion, it is absolutely the wrong idea for parents to allow their children to have smart phones. They are immensely distracting, expensive, and unhealthy.

Cell phones have the power to distract young students from schoolwork. Rather than paying attention in class, students try to sneak opportunities to play on their phones. Instead of thinking about schoolwork, they obsessively text each other and try to check sites like Facebook. This takes time away from valuable studying. This is a problem both during school and afterwards, when youngsters should be working on their homework.

At the same time, smart phones can be extremely costly. Many plans require parents to pay abusively high monthly rates. At times, these rates can climb even higher if children use too much data due to things like downloading songs on the Internet. Rather than wasting money on a phone, parents should use the funds on better causes, like tutors for their children, or a home computer on which supervised learning can take place.

Finally, smart phones can be dangerous for young children. We are still unsure medically what the long term effects of exposure to cell phones are, particularly onvulnerable groups such as children. It would be better to be safe than sorry. The less exposure children have to potential toxins, the better. At the same time, kids are sometimes targeted on social media sites by dangerous strangers. If parents allow young children to have smart phones, it might be difficult to protect them in the long term from these kinds of threats.

While older children may sometimes need them to stay in touch with their parents due to their many obligations outside of the house after school, there is little cause for younger children to own them. Parents should encourage their children to read and think in their spare time, developing their minds. Smart phones are unhelpful when it comes to this goal.