I once promised my daughter that I would give her a cell phone once she was in high school. Now I changed my mind. No cell phone until she drives on her own. I don’t care what others are doing or saying, I am firm on my decision.

She knows that money is not the issue as the monthly phone fee is only a fraction of the cost for her weekly lessons in art, piano, and figure-skating. She also understands many people spend tons of time on chatting, texting and other means of social networking, and she should not be like this.

Therefore, even if nearly all of her friends have cell phones, I am glad that she accepts without complaints the fact the she still does not have one. Modern technologies make communications so much like a heaven. I am not against social networking. Sometimes, they makes good connections and help out those who need to connect to others, like emotional support. Yet I repeatedly remind both of my children to never waste precious time on senseless emailing, texting, IM, Facebook, or anything that might crop up replacing Facebook. Never network simply for the sake of networking. We got to have something more important in life than this unless your life depends on this.