www.chitraltimes.com

Misuse of mobile & text messaging: We need to be careful

How many times have you find your children or you younger siblings sitting next to you and busy in text messaging. In these of online relationship that your child might be pursuing are often focused on imaginary aspects. However, they knowingly abandon the actual realm for an imaginary one where they accept event as they were real. This entails a suspension of disbelief.

If we look into the issue from the context of Chitral, we would never have seen a teenager around with their own cell phone. Time has definitely changed. As I always have said our society is passing through an epidemic phase, old traditions are dying. While age old values are becoming dying, new values and constructive traditions are yet to formulize. This has led to fast growth of social abnormalities. The notion behind parents providing their kids with a cell phone at an alarming rate is not bad, they want to know where their kids are. At present teenagers account for the majority of the world’s phone users and this has created some new problems, and thanks to the various text messaging packages that various cellular phone companies have come up with.

There is a need for the parents to be a bit cautious and need to establish rules and guidelines when it comes to cell phones use with their children especially teenager lot. Nowadays the parents needs to hold continuous talks with their children and tell them about the danger of texting while driving, needs to make sure what is acceptable and what is unacceptable behavior, time frames needs to be set as to when the cell phone should be turned off and establish a certain penalty when the child does not obey the guidelines. Parents also need to keep themselves updated of the new technology and also need to text their children to know their whereabouts or share any information with them or rejoice in their successes or comfort them in their hard times. If you embrace the technology that they use, you will find it much easier communicating with them. Monitoring the activity of the children is also handy we need to know that who our son is talking to at 2am in the morning and who is sending text messages and pictures to our daughters (it is something not easy as they would just delete their calls or texts but anyways worth trying). Chatting with friends via text messaging is an addictive activity. Parents need to make sure that the productivity of their children does not suffer as through the text messaging one is trying to be in two places at once and ends up being not at either. In this manner the text message being a useful and efficient tool for daily living (like it has reduced too much of over communication or that should be done in person) has almost faded away.

In the west parents often install spy software on their children phone. Programmes like Mobile Spy is also used by them to monitor their text messages, call information, and even GPS location in real time. But that is the case there as their life is too much of a busy one where they cannot find time to sit, discuss or spent enough time with their children. But in our case as we have a strong value system still to a great extent in place. The ethical and moral aspects of life that needs to get instilled into our child’s character is our own responsibility, once this part is done and we are successful in gaining our child’s trust and we are in a position to trust him/her then the packages that these cellular companies offer will not make much of difference then. Our children needs to have the abilities to take on leadership roles in the future that reflects the strength of their character along with a commitment from their side to make a difference. So the focus at this point of the time (during the teenage period) should be on their studies.


Falak Naz Taj
Chitral