4 Cell Phone Parental Control Ideas Your Kids are Guaranteed to Hate.

Staten Island, NY Posted: 11/8/2014 1:00:00 AM

Your kids are going to hate these ideas. That's why you'll love them.

So, your kids want a cell phone. They told you that all their friends have one, and they are the only ones in the whole school without one. You've held out all this time with the usual speech.

"When I was a kid, nobody had a cell phone... We couldn't even call or text our friends when we had to walk 7 miles to get to school... And we liked it!"

To you, it's not just the money, a cell phone can be like opening Pandora's box, because today's phones are not just for making calls. I think a lot of parents would feel better if phone makers considered some of these Parental Control Ideas.

1. Camera Screening. All photos auto-shared to the parent's account.

When the first camera phones were released over 20 years ago, I don't think anyone anticipated that one of the most popular uses for them would be for kids to share risqué photos with other kids, but unfortunately "Sexting" between kids is widespread.

My proposal is that parents have remote access to every photo take on their kids phones. If kids knew that every photo they took was instantly viewable by their parents, they would think twice before taking anything but PG rated photos. If a parent sees an inappropriate photo, they should have the ability to remove it remotely.

2. Disable Texting Durring School Hours.. and late at night.

This seems obvious to me. On any given school day, texting should be blocked until school is over. There is no reason to allow texting while in school. Ever.

There's also no reason for kids to send Texts in the middle of the night.

3. Block Texting while moving.

Texting while driving is the cause of countless deaths. Increasing the fines for Texting while driving won't stop people from doing it. I think this can be solved by blocking texts from being sent OR RECEIVED while moving at certain speeds.

For example, blocking Texting at low speeds would block Texting while walking, because a lot of people have been killed while staring at their cell phone instead of looking at where they are going.

To be done right, a series of speed based rules can be established. If your children have cars, ALL Texts... inbound and outbound are blocked while moving. If they are too young to drive, the rule could be that if the phone only allows it when completely stopped... or while moving fast. This would prevent Texting while walking, while still allowing it while standing still or as a passenger in a car or bus.

In my opinion, some of these controls should be set for adults too.

4. Profanity Filters for Texting.

For those with very young children, parents should have the ability to filter out foul language. While you can't keep your kids from cursing while talking on the phone, there is no reason their texts can't be filtered. So all incoming and outgoing profanity would be replaced by dashes, asterisks or simply removed.