Teens and Their Cell Phones

Today not too many students in RHS go without having a cell phone. These days it’s hard not to have one, or people “out of the loop,” says Mrs. Kastens.


Many think that they couldn’t live without them, that with no cell phone their social lives would go down the tube.

According to a study done by pewresearch.org, the percentage of teens that have cell phones have gone up by 26% since 2004. This study was done in 2008; it states that in 2004 45% of kids 12-17 had a cell phone. Looking at the 2008 statistics, teens are up to 71%. This is almost as much as how many adults had cell phones, adults stood at a whopping 77%.

It seems that in today’s society kids are getting cell phones younger and younger. 22% of kids 6-9 have a cell phone, 60 percent of kids who are 10-14 years old have a cell phone. Since pewresearch.org did their study in 2008 the percent of teens that have cell phones has increased to 84%.

In order for the cell phone companies to get parents to buy phones for their younger children they have made phones that can help parents monitor whom their kids call and whom they receive calls from. Some say that giving younger kids cell phones is a great way to keep an eye on them; however, others say that it is a good way…for predators to keep an eye on them. These phones also have a tracking device on them so that the parents always know where their kids are.

Cell phones give people a great way to communicate with each other. If a parent has children that do after school activities and their kids get out of practice early then they have a way to get a hold of there mom or dad to tell them and their not waiting. It also comes in handy if a parent is running late to pick their kids up from something like daycare.

“Well in our household all except the baby got cell phones their ninth grade year because of their extra curricular activities,” states Mrs. Kastens.

In today’s society everyone has some sort of technology, they are becoming addicting. When one opens another’s phone and looks at how many contacts are in their phone some may have up to two or three hundred. Out of all of the contacts in ones phone a person might know two or three phone numbers without looking. Phones are starting to affect our society as well. Children are the future but everyone has become dependent on phones that it is actually affecting kid’s memory. Children don’t seem to remember as much as they used to.

It comes down to when is the right time to give children a phone, and why are teens so obsessed with their phones that they don’t know what to do without them? Phones seem to be affecting more then just the future leaders, but the society in general.

-Jessica Wise