Friday Snow Day: Disagreeing with Turkle Again

I received my first phone at the end of eighth grade. I kept my phone with me all through high school. Whether I was going out with friends or participating in after school activities, my mom and dad always had the option to contact me if they were worried about me or needed to ask me a question. We kept our calls short, sweet, and infrequent until one night. I went over to my girlfriends house after school. I set my phone down on her desk and we sat in her recliner and started to watch Breaking Bad. About half an hour into the first episode we were both sound asleep. I woke up a couple of hours later and checked my phone. There was a missed call from my mom. I immediately called her back and prepared for a scolding. When she answered the phone she calmly told me that she was looking for her earphones earlier and wanted to know if I knew where they were. I told her I no idea and that I would be home around nine that night. We hung up and I enjoyed the rest of my day.

The moral of that story is that Turkle is over exaggerating yet again. Today's children are not having their maturity stifled by cell phones. The only thing stifling children's maturity is their own lack of maturity. I contacted my parents on the phone as much as any normal teenager, but I still did my own thing. They trusted me to make good decisions and because of that trust I was able to grow and be independent. The phone calls from my mother to ask me when I was coming home from my girlfriends house were few and far between, and I appreciated her concern. Today I consider myself mature and independent, and I am glad that I was able to have a link to them when I was out discovering who I was.