Kids and cellphones: Dialing up some advice

You just bought your teen a cellphone. What are some good ground rules?

Parent advice:

Have clear reasons for giving a cellphone to your child; otherwise, it becomes just another accessory. Emergency use? After school pickup arrangements? Easing the home phone line for adult use? Once the reasons are articulated, the rules can follow.

— Carol Montag

Review general safety rules. Phones should be used to communicate only with people you know. If a stranger calls, do not share information. Also, establish a curfew: My sister takes her 12-year-old son's cellphone away at 9:30 p.m. and returns it to him when he's ready for school the next morning.

— Sue Schafer

2. Phones are primarily used when you have an activity or sport and are away from home/parents.

3. If you want to talk to your friends while you are at home, use the land line. It's cheaper.

4. Mom and Dad have the right to review calls and text messages.

5. No sending or receiving pictures.

6. Don't respond to a text if you don't know who it is from.

7. No texting anything that you wouldn't say to everyone out loud.

8. (If) you lose the phone, you replace it.

— Janet Lawrence

Expert advice:

"There's an expression, 'Nature abhors a vacuum,' " says Ellen Rittberg, author of "35 Things Your Teen Won't Tell You, So I Will" (Turner, 2010). "Well, tweens abhor any unused minutes on your cellphone."

Still, cellphones can be a crucial tool for family communication.

To make the most of that fateful purchase, Rittberg suggests the following approach:

Set a limit on how many minutes your teen or teen can use. Otherwise, you run the risk of having a monster cellphone bill.

Inspect your cellphone bills with a highlighter, paying special attention to the time and duration of the calls.

If there are any numbers that are called often and you don't know who those people are, find out. Our constitution may give us a right to privacy, but our tweens have a very limited (or no) right to privacy when it comes to keeping them safe.

Decide whether you will allow your teen or teen to use any 800 or 900 numbers.

If your kids are making calls late at night when they should be sleeping or during their school instructional day (e.g., not during lunch hour), then you must take action (unless they were calling you or someone for whom there was a good reason to call, say, the orthodontist to confirm an appointment).

Think long and hard regarding whether you want said phone to be equipped with certain options (e.g., camera, Internet connectivity or texting capabilities). We've all heard of the dangers of "sexting," and you need to speak to your teen or teen clearly about certain ironclad rules you have about pictures and text messaging. They need to know that whatever they are sending can be spread virally and can pose a hazard to their personal well-being and safety.

Make it crystal clear that if they do text in an improper way, there will be consequences. And check what they're sending or have sent. Also, don't get a plan that allows for a large number of text messages to be sent. That alone invites the potential for abuse.

Compiled by Heidi Stevens