Mobile / Cell Phone Thoughts & Reviews

I had a nice conversation with my sister in law this morning about her families mobile phone plan.  They have two phones now, Mom and Dad each have a phone and their son let’s call Jr. (all names and dates have been changed to protect the innocent) is going to be getting back from camp soon and starting 7th grade.  He is a responsible boy and going to be doing a bunch of after school activities this year so Mom is considering getting Jr. a phone.  Now the big question is what plan to put him on.  The answer is a family plan from AT&T with his parents and adding the Smart Limits package for Jr.  Now we come to the big dilemma of SMS.  Mom and Dad don’t text much so they don’t need a plan but what to do about Jr.  Kids will be kids and these days that means TEXTING A LOT.  Should they cap his texts or pay to give him unlimited.  My knee jerk reaction was cap him and he should learn to only use so many minutes.  Then I started thinking about it.  This is the most common way for kids to communicate with each other these days, it’s not making a phone call or sending an email, not even instant messaging.  So what’s the point of getting Jr. the phone if he can’t use it for his main means of communication with his friends I ask you?  I don’t know really, times have changed so much from when I was a kid and we had to use those disgusting devices with a rotating dial pad and a spiraling tangle of a cord.  Back then you only made cross country calls when someone died or sometimes for the high holidays.  This morning my sister in law and I talked for almost an hour trans continental.

Back to the question at hand, should parents get their kids unlimited SMS plans or cap it at 200 for example?  What do you think?