How should parents monitor their teen’s cell phone minutes and text messaging?
Problems with teens and texting:
* Textual (sexual) harassment
* Text messaging is used for cheating in school
So therefore youth pastors needs to make parents aware of:
* How to monitor minutes and text messaging usage
* Two software programs that can be used to track all text messages and phone calls.
According to my last month cell phone bill, I went through about 3000 txt messages and I really don’t have that many friends and I am not that cool. However students go through about 5000 to 6000 text messages a month. Whether good or bad, txt messaging is one of the preferred methods of communication for teenagers.
The article This Kid’s A Text Maniac, in the New York Post and in the OC Register, demonstrates how one teenage gal received and sent 14,528 text messages in a month.
The OC Register columnist states: “Texting is becoming more and more popular, and growing at a spectacular rate. Text-messaging is now hard-wired into our culture. It’s in our DNA — particular among young people.”
Bottom line: Teenagers are the biggest demographic group that is text messaging and parents need to know and understand why teenagers are text messaging like crazy.
The three biggest problems I see with text messaging is: 1) students cheating on test through text messaging, 2) textual harassment, and 3) high cell phone bills.
It is our job as the youth pastor to inform, equip, and educate the parents and expose to them the teenager text messaging phenomena. Regardless how the parents monitor their child’s text messaging is up to them, but we should make them aware.
Also I think youth pastor need to maximize and utilize text messaging in their youth ministry by using Txt Signal. For $10 a month, Txt Signal gives youth groups the ability to get one message out to many people in just moments.
© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.
