To think a 12 year old shouldn't send 170 texts a day?

[emkana]

am I naive? My dd is only ten, this is a friend's dd. Where I am now I think I wouldnt allow it, even on unlimited texts, as that way she won't do anything else all day and it seems very limiting. Just trying to gauge and prepare for the future!

Sounds odd. And time consuming.

Horrifyingly I think that has become normal. Imagine that for a second that all your communication was suddenly turned electronic. Every sentance in a conversation suddenly becomes a text.. It doesn't seem so bad when you imagine it as a long conversation of 170 lines. I think its just sad children don't seem intrested in actually speaking to eachother. My neices used to text eachother from seperate rooms in the same house

Unlimited is usually not strictly true. I have worked for a mobile phone 'giant' and the norm is 3000 (small print) and will be enforced, particularly if you are persistent in going over.
It isn't normal behaviour, but it does happen. The irate parents paying the bill are proof of that!

Friends DD had had bills of over £300 on 2 or 3 occasions now despite her parents having absolute rants about it!

I'm thinking payg and once the money for the month is gone, it's gone?

payg OR depending on age of child / trust. Get a sim only 30 day contract. Explain v clearly, that the one big bill will be the last bill. You can monitor usage online within reason as well with most providers. Payg has some advantages. We are on vodafone, and have the friends and family bundle added so that DS can call us foc at all times. It keeps the costs down. Am sure most networks have similar concepts.

I would share this article with your friend who is the mother of this child, RSI is very painful, I knew someone who had it and couldn't even write in the end because of the pain, she had to dictate all her university exams to someone who wrote it all down for her.

But can I have been alone as a teenager in spending 2 hrs most nights on the phone chatting to my best friend who I had just spent all day at school with? I promise that was a LOT more expensive than 170 texts and probably more disruptive to learning.

yanbu

It sounds a lot, but it would be a much bigger problem if she were sending them to co-ordinate looters.....

I just got DD1(15) a contract blackberry and you get 200mins and unlimited(roughly 3000) texts.
When her first bill arrived I nearly fell off my chair.
She had kept under her contract so no scare there but the bill was 86 pages long of texts.
Now they are free so I'm not worried about cost but we have since had to take her phone off her after 10.30 so she gets some sleep. She was texting from 4am till gone midnight some days.
On the flip side she has never used a minute of her calls

My DD1 (12.11) has managed to send 380 texts in one day I have no idea how, as on the day in question she was helping DP clear out the shed. Her phone bill (thankfully not on paper) ran to 119 pages. Her phone is left downstairs at night, and when she's doing her homework. She has a contract, as I'd hate for her to gave no credit when she really needed it.

170? Fecking amateur!