When the first iPhone came out last year I saw a TV news segment about a young girl – perhaps 12 or 13 – waiting in line to be among the first to put down $599 for the new gadget.

While the TV crew was able to find these kids, my informal survey of a couple of Silicon Valley middle schools and high school found a few but not many kids whose parents were willing to spend $599 or even the reduced price of $399 for the iPhone.  But now that Apple has reduced the price to $199 (as well as doubling the Internet speed and adding GPS), I’m guessing that we’ll see plenty of them in the hands of teens and even preteens.

Kids are gonna love them

And why not?  Tech savvy kids can make great use of this little device which is far more than a phone – it’s a pocket sized computer. Unlike adult knowledge workers, kids spend a good part of their day away from a personal computer so a device like the iPhone is a perfect way to allow them to reach into their pocket to search the Web, exchange email or text messages, take notes or use the device’s new scientific calculator. And thanks to Apple’s aggressive efforts to recruit third party software developers, it will eventually run thousands of application programs, just like a PC or a Mac. 

It knows where your kids are

The phone will even run the Loopt service that lets people use the GPS feature to transmit their exact location to their friends. Loopt, which is one of the supporters of the ConnectSafely.org site where I work, has built-in safeguards and warnings but it can’t protect users from their own lack of good judgment. Parents should put a lot of thought into whether to allow their kids to use this service and, if so, should be very sure their kids are only using it with good friends they know from the real world.

Safety concerns

But there are troubling aspects of giving kids persistent access to a powerful connected device.  Unlike PCs which are often placed in a central area of the house, cell phones and probably soon iPhones can be with kids wherever they are, even when they’re nowhere near adult supervision. Kids will have them when they’re going home from school, they’ll have them when they're out with their friends and they’ll probably even have them by the bed stand when they’re supposed to be sleeping. That means that the kid can be reached at any time by anyone who knows their email address or their cell phone number. And with the iPhone’s ability to watch video and take and instantly post or transmit pictures, it is fraught with possibilities for abuse.

The phones are fine, if used properly

I’m not suggesting that parents avoid giving these phones to their kids but I do think that parents and kids need to sit down and talk about how, when and where the devices will be used.  Families need to establish rules about the proper use of the phone’s camera, about what websites kids can access and about who they can interact with.  It shouldn’t be a fear-mongering lecture, but an open conversation with parents doing at least as much listening as talking.

New parental controls

Also, parents need to know about the parental controls built into the new operating system that will run on both the new and older iPhones.

When he introduced the new iPhone at in San Francisco on June 9^th, Apple CEO Steve Jobs also that when the new phone debuts on July 11^th, parents will have password protected access to controls to limit such things as what content can be accessed, whether images can be saved or forwarded and even what music kids can listen to through the phone’s iPod music player.  Parents will be able to block access to “mature” videos on YouTube and limit children’s access to the new online Applications Store that can be used to purchase software and other content directly from the phone.

Whatever type of cell phone your kid carries, parents should check out this NetFamilyNews article about the controls offered by their service provider as well as ConnectSafely’s Cell-phone safety tips.