[guatemama94]

Anyone with a teenager care to comment or give advice??? Well my DS is one and he is texting like *crazy*!!! I told him that he is 20 texts away from the monthly limit (250) and that he can send or receive only 1 text a day until July 19th.....so, now he looking for another outlet to communicate with friends...

So, please tell me which one???...twitter, facebook, my space, IMing (which one?), etc.....He basically wants to write back and forth with friends (translation=a girl)

I should mention that I am not a blogger, not on myspace, not on facebook, not on anything except this and my own email....I guess that's a whole other story....

I kind of think twitter is good because it's in real time and it doesn't have to involve many photos. I was just trying to find him something that isn't complicated and doesn't entice him to put photos. Thankfully he and I are both on the same page about that.

Well, honestly I don't know how ANY of these things work and I don't really want to know except I'm trying to give him a good suggestion...

[DianeS]

Honestly, my best advice is that you get him an unlimited texting plan. Remember you (or him, depending on how you set this up) have to pay for the texts even if somebody else sends them to him. So you could end up paying for somebody else's mistake, or their ignorance, or even their anger, since teens send messages for many reasons. So even if he found another outlet, unlimited texting is usually a smart idea, so you might as well jump right to it.

Hang in there!

[annaguat]

My kids are big on face book. Just besure the settings are on private. Anna

[Mommy K]

Good Luck-My younger son went thru 900 texts in 3 days. We upgraded the family with unlimited, to avoid another 200 dollars in overuse charges!

I am so interested to learn more too.

[Anne1377]

Hi....

I feel your pain. We are now on unlimited text/talk plans because of my two oldest kiddies who are both teenagers.

They are both also on Facebook. My oldest doesn't spend too much time there as he is into more important things now- ie- his girlfriend, his job, his money, his friends and his car but my younger one does spend some time on Facebook. His settings are set to private and I am one of his friends so I am able to moniter what he is posting. I must say that I have been shocked to see what some of his friends are saying on there and the pictures that they are posting but I use all of this as a learning experience for my son.

Good luck....

Diane

[JillnChris]

Personally I would choose facebook for him. He doesn't have to add a bunch of pictures to his page if he doesn't want to and there is an instant message feature on there.

[Tamiswaiting]

With a teen, I would either get text messages completely disabled on the phone or get an unlimited plan. It's only a matter of time until you get hit with a bill. Trust me, I know. I know that isn't what you asked, but Diane is correct...even if he isn't the one texting and it's someone texting to him, you're probably still going to go over. It gets expensive once that happens.

[momraine]

We pay a little extra for parental controls for our sons' phones. We have At&T and they don't tell you it's available you have to find it. Other plans have it to. We have unlimited texting, but the boys don't get unlimited. They have limits and can earn more. They also are not able to text after a certain time at night and they are not able to text during school hours. We can ground them completely from texting. We can also block certain numbers. They can call me or dh or the house anytime, even during times they cannot call anyone else (school hours and late at night) We love it.

[Mommy K]

Another way to reduce cell phone bill is if your teenager has a DSi, they can use mobile web for free, compared to a data web plan on a phone (on verizon it's 15.00 a month extra.)

These days-I would not recognize my two older children without a wire hanging from thier ears and the other night I told them that soon they would be glowing in the dark from all the emf's, and years from now all the teens will have overdevelope huge thumbs from typing on these things--sigh...

[guatemama94]

Hmmm...Thank you for all the food for thought. Perhaps the safest thing to do is go with unlimited texting and parental controls.

I am very much appreciating all the feedback about this. There is so much I don't know!

[becky]

I blocked all internet on my kids' phones, but gave them unlimited texting. This was after a few $500 bills!!

I think IM is probably what your son needs, if he wants to talk to a girl.

Or how about this...pick up the telephone

[praying4rlittl1]

I agree with all the posters. Unlimited texting has saved us here.

I think it's very important when you have teens that are internet savvy, to familiarize yourself with internet outlets. It takes time, but not so much. We have Facebook here, but all my girls have me added as a friend. I can (and do) check their pages a lot. I wouldn't let any kid go on any networking site without me being there.

Just a thought.

[Slatond10]

I am not a teen nor do I have a teen but I do use AOLIM and Facebook. Personally if you are trying to replace "phone texting" and don't go to "unlimited" -- Which would be my first choice.

Then I would recommend AOLIM... this is more of a private conversation between 2 people. Maybe that can be done on facebook as I am a bit green w/ that still. But facebook conversations are visible to all or you can limit to all "friends only"

However I would think IM would be more what a teen would want for privacy of a discussion w/ 1 person!
And along the lines of texting.

Just my 2 cents

[peregrinerose]

Mine is 15 and we had a 'no texting' rule. He did great for 3 months, then had 600 texts in a week. The phone became mine until the $130 bill was paid, and now he has an extra $5/month to pay because I have to pay that to block all texts.

This particular kid, although very social, tends to have very superficial relationships. He prefers long distance 'friends' to 'in person' friends. He really needs to learn how to communicate in person, to handle conflict with others, and to maintain relationships of all kind. 15 years bouncing foster homes makes solid relationships tough to forge, and since texting only re-enforces all the superficiality in relationships, we banned it.

I'm not saying this is the case with every teen, or that all teens shouldn't text.... this is just how we are handling things with this particular child.

He does have a facebook and myspace, which we do limit the use of.

[Mil]

Unlimited texting is probably the way to go. I pay $30 per month for unlimited texting on the family plan. That's 5 of us on the plan and that covers all of us. Then you don't need to worry about getting hit with huge fees for going over the limit. It has solved a lot of problems for us.