Slashdot Mirror
SMS Text Messaging & Youth Debt One
securitas writes "The New York Times' Lisa W. Foderaro reports on the impact of SMS text messaging and resulting debt on America's youth. The predictable but seldom-considered effect of the recently available technology combined with the social role instant messaging and SMS play are leading to bills that youth and parents alike can't afford. 'Many high school and college students accustomed to sending unlimited instant messages on their computers do not adapt easily to text messaging's pay-per-message format, and end up with unexpectedly high bills' ranging from $300 to $800 per month. One school principal says that 'many students were blindsided by costs associated with text-messaging and other features, like customized ring tones"
In the Philippines we've (kinda) solved this problem by having prepaid SIM cards. They make up the bulk of accounts in my country seeming most of population can only pay on a staggered/installment basis. Maybe America's youth should do the same.
Wah, wah, wah.
You could say the same thing for cell phones in general.
I had to "work-off" my long distance phone bills in the BBS days...
You set the limits as a parent... and if the kid goes over it, he/she pays.
It's called growing up.
Commercial services may cost money!
Shock horror.
Pay as you go phones. Pay for the credit upfront, and when it's used up, you stop until you can buy more from your pocket money.
no taxation without representation!
People make stupid financial decisions! Story at 11!
There's really no excuse for this kind of thing except sheer stupidity. I know that Sprint allows unlimited incoming/outgoing SMS messages for $10 a month. This is really no different than a kid running up their parent's credit card a buck a shot to $400, when you get down to it.
As for me, I can't really even imagine sending and receiving 300 SMS messages a month, let alone the 3000 that these kids seem to handle with ease. Maybe I could do it with a Sidekick, but damn, not with a regular cell phone.
Stupid semi-OT question: does anyone have any experience with buying a T608 on eBay and getting Sprint to set it up to work with the network? Any experiences on how good a phone it is in general?
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Makes me think of this one: "Economic Woes and Dismal Math/Science Scores: Related Deficits?"
To be blunt, it really makes me think that most of America's youth is too stupid to know that X messages @ $0.yy ea = $lots'ocash.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
So , if understand this correctly,in the US you have to pay for sms you send and recieve,even without knowing that you wanted to recieve that message?
Do you guys also have to pay for recieving post (with a stamp)?
. . . with all that whine? Seriously, I can only have so much sympathy for anyone who signs a contract with the costs spelled out clearly and then is unprepared when they are expected to pay those costs.
And I believe today's User Friendly comic is apropos: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050109
Isn't this just more evidence that most people are a bit daft when it comes to money? If they're not actually paying for it there and then with cash, most people find it hard to think of it as real money.
It's just like those idiots who get the cheap introductory offers from companies like 3 and think "ooh, I'm getting a good deal" , but don't look up how much the normal monthly tariff is. It often doubles from £15 to £30 after three months or something, with a one year minimum.
This mobile phone stuff is the same kind of problem as folks who get in too deep with credit cards. It's easy to think "it's their problem and they're idiots for not recognizing that products and services co$t!" Unfortunately, the end result is often higher costs for everyone. When individuals default on loans, rates for the rest go up. The US government seems to ascribe to the culture of living beyond its means too. Usery is alive and well and sometimes awefully hard to discern.
I report to Colonel 2.6.1 and General Chaos is his boss.
Receiving phone calls and sms is free of charge in Denmark. Sending sms and calling people costs money, but one can control that by not calling or sending messages. It is a problem if others can run up your phone bill just by calling/sms'ing you.
What I found the strangest thing in the article,
is that one has to pay for recieving messages.
Here in Belgium, you only have to pay for sending, mostly about 0.13 (about $0.10 or less)
It's not like you have to pay to recieve a phonecall or something, or am I mistaking?
"The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck is the day they make a vacuum cleaner."
Pay to receive?
So cell phone SPAM also incurrs a charge?
Yeesh!
We pay corporations to wear the clothes they make in sweat shops so we can display their logos.
We get increases in ticket prices to go see movies which have become chock full of placed products that advertisers pay the studios to put in.
Now, we pay the cell phone companies every time an advertiser sends us an SMS ad?!?!
WTF?!?!
Next time someone sings the praises of the capitalist free world, I'll be sure to shovel all that back to them and remind them how great it is that big business can freely make us pay through our noses!
I don't think 10 cents a message can be considered "arbitrary and complicated".
At some point, the carrier should have done an automatic "courtesy upgrade".
Do you know of ANY common service that works this way ? If you bring 12 individual cans of Coke to the cashier at the supermarket, do you expect the cashier to say: "Gee each can costs 75 cents, but a twelve pack only costs $4. I'm going to automatically charge you as if you are buying the 12-pack." ?!?
You end up calling Europe 10 times this month because your uncle has fallen ill. The costs are astronomical. Do you expect your phone company to step in and say, "Well if you had only adopted our Int'l rate plan for $5/mo, you would have cut your bill by 90%. In fact, we are going to ASSUME that is what you would have wanted to do, so we are AUTOMATICALLY signing you up for this OPTION and knock your bill down AS IF YOU ALREADY had this option." ?!?
The fact is that even if a company is trying to save a customer money (questionable why it should) IT CANNOT ASSUME that you would have wanted to add a feature option like unlimited SMS for $10/mo as a continuing monthly cost, which often comes with CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATIONS. YOU must agree to taking on new services and contracts. I definitely don't want companies adding new options to my service plan without asking me, EVEN if it might save me money FOR THAT MONTH.
So then, your argument reduces to, "Well companies simply shouldn't charge that much for SMS. They should put a cap of $10-20." Well fine, go ahead and try to convince a company that that is in its best interest.
The whole issue is Darwinian anyways. People too stupid or undisciplined to regulate their spending NEED to be held responsible for their actions. There is nothing even remotely necessities-of-life about SMS anyways, it is a total LUXURY.