Cell phone is a huge responsibility, when in the hands of a kid. It raises the risk of texting and driving, exposure to inappropriate content, schoolwork disturbance and huge mobile phone bill. However, it does not mean that you should not give a cell phone to your kid. So, the big question is what you need to do, to let your kid use a mobile phone and at the same time keep a watch on it? The answer is, a Cell phone carrier. Cell phone carriers have a set of parental controls like tracking the location of your kid, alerts when your child gets a message from a new number etc. Carriers, offer more parental control, here is what they do.
Keep a Track of your kids
The major phone carriers allow you to track your kid’s location and set zones where your kid is allowed to go, thus giving you a alert automatically, if they leave the zone you set. Major carrier’s Family Locator use GPS or Triangulation with the use of cell towers on your kid’s phone to locate them.
Talk Time
Parents can put a cap with the phone carriers T-Mobile and Verizon. The remaining carriers lets you limit the phone calls at specific time or days. Some carriers will even limit the number of incoming calls too. Though you exert a control on the incoming and outgoing calls, your kid can still make emergency calls like 911 and pre-set contacts at any time.
Texting
If you do not have a plan for unlimited texting then your mobile bill is going to hit the sky. So, protect your kid from unwanted texts with number blocking. All the major carriers allow users to exert a cap on the texts and block messages or only picture SMS or SMS from only certain numbers.
Entertainment
Mobile phones provide entertainment in many forms like games, videos, music etc. Downloading them on mobile phone will cost extra money so, parents need to put a cap on them or limit their child’s usage. Many phone carriers offer big entertainment and they make a big deal out of it however they allow users to cap on it. With the mobile carrier Sprint you can turn “on” and “off” this feature. All mobile phone carriers have content filters with which you can exert a control on the content that your child views.
Driving Controls
Driving and using cell phone can be very risky. If you are worried, your teen might text and drives then you have to control them. Phone carriers “Drive Smart” and “Drive First”control your teen’s phone automatically when their car reaches a certain speed.
Monitoring
Phone carriers offer mobile controls. The mobile phone carrier Sprint with its “Sprint Mobile Control” allows parents to check the content their kids download, who they are talking and texting to and receive alerts when your kid does late hour texting, call unknown numbers etc.
This is how mobile phone carriers exert parental controls.
