Cell Phone

Well, we finally did it.  We got Kolby a cell phone.  We bought it while he was gone on his high adventure trip for a week, so we'd have plenty of time to get it all set up and learn how to use it ourselves before giving it to him.  We had plans to use OurPact to control the apps on the phone, and we set it up and it worked great on the iPad, but it didn't block the apps like it was supposed to on the Motorola phone we had bought.  That was frustrating, after taking all the time to set it up.  (And I really liked how the OurPact app worked, so it was frustrating to have to use something else).  But I called my friend Rachael and asked what they had used on their son's phone, and she told me about Kaspersky Safe Kids.  We got that, and although their app isn't quite as user-friendly, all of the features work well so far.  We have it set up so Kolby can use several apps (like gmail, google calendar, all the apps he uses for piano practice & ukelele, scriptures, music, the school district app with school assignments, an app to track his running distance and speeds, etc.)  But he doesn't have access to internet browsers, youtube, the app store, etc.  He's also pretty limited on data on the current plan -- we used Republic Wireless for really affordable service, which gives him unlimited talking and texting, and currently he has 1 GB of data a month.  And the calls and texts all use wifi whenever it's available before trying to use the data.  (That sounds like such a small amount of data, but since he's not browsing the internet or youtube, he's not using too much data.  So far, with being at home around wifi more often over the summer and/or deciding to leave his phone home when we go backpacking and stuff, he's been doing just fine with the data.  We'll have to see if we need to adjust it at all once the school year starts or not).  But so far Kolby's been really good about monitoring his data usage and making good decisions about using it.  I set up a Pandora account for him, just so he wouldn't miss using YouTube to play music (like the boys used to do -- but I set up a pandora account on the home ipad too, so we can avoid YouTube a lot more now).  Yesterday he went running because he's preparing this summer for the Fall cross country season, and he had fun using his phone to track his run and listen to music -- he ended up running for over 2 hours yesterday afternoon.  Anyway, so far, so good with the phone.  We were very clear with him on our expectations, and he's been good at staying within those expectations so far.  With Kaspersky I can see which apps he uses, see how long he uses them, set it so different apps have different time limits, set it so no apps are accessible during the night at all, see if he tries to use an app that's blocked, remotely allow a disabled app (so he can access the App Store to download an app if he calls and asks me, even if I’m not home), see who he calls or texts, etc.  and he knows it’s there, and seems fine with it. He just talks to me if he wants to add an app or something, and so far it’s working out fine that way. And I've only had to take away the phone a couple times because he wasn't doing his chores when he was asked, and it's a pretty good motivator for him to get back on track.  But, at the same time, I'm happy to see that he isn't glued to his phone -- sometimes he sets it on the counter and leaves it there when he goes to do other things.  So it seems to be a pretty good balance so far.