With Christmas coming up, a lot of teens and preteens will likely be hoping for a new cell phone this year from Santa. In fact, according to Virgin Mobile, roughly 78% of teens own a phone, and nearly half of those are smartphones. So if you’re considering getting your kid a smartphone for Christmas this year, then you’re probably not alone. Aside from cost and simplicity, one of the major things that many parents are concerned about are parental controls on phones.
While Kajeet has unparalleled parental controls, they might be a bit excessive for more responsible kids, and children might not appreciate the feeling that mom and dad can watch their every move. For your more independent and respomsible kid, Virgin Mobile Custom plans offer
light parental controls that not only help you monitor your child’s phone access but also help your kids learn to be responsible with phone use.
Parental controls offered by Virgin Mobile Custom include:
- Control amount of minutes/voice/data available
- block numbers
- set curfew for phone use
- limit apps/features during certain times of the day
The features aren’t that different from Kajeet, but if you talk with your kid, it would be easy to use these controls to help kids learn when it’s appropriate to use their phones and when it is not, making the phones an excellent middle step on the transition to a real phone.
There are some downsides, however, to using Virgin Mobile Custom plans, as you have to purchase a special phone from Walmart in order to use these plans–BYOD is not an option currently. The parent app can be downloaded to any phone, however. The increments of minutes, text and data are pretty small as well, which could be good or bad, depending on how much your child uses their phone.
While not for everyone, I personally think that these plans are almost a little better than Kajeet (and obviously designed for slightly older kids), as they offer a bit more freedom. You can check out the Virgin Mobile Custom plans on their
website.]]>
