We’ve just returned yet another GPS to Costco, as they aren’t nearly as reliable and accurate as the gps apps on the cell phones and have trouble figuring out where in the country they are. 
It is amazing that anyone under the age of 90 is debating the virtues of a smartphone. Actually our 94 year old grandparent has a smartphone. 
Being able to use what’s app, facetime, snapchat, locator software that allows them to be found at press of a button, gps and just keeping up with society, friends and technology is invaluable. It is a safety tool no doubt. Ours is in Europe for 3 weeks and we are able to talk, text, and get pictures from them everyday (not that they want to communicate everyday with us) or at any time for free because of all the great applications available.
My 90 year old relative uses his iPhone 5s and is learning to text with it. He also uses the calendar and a few other functions. He’s pretty happy with it. He’s annoyed that his 85 year old spouse refuses to touch the iPhone 4 he gave her.
My younger sis and BIL finally decided to get smart phones and participate in the text message threads our family has been circulating recently.
To survive- No. But then neither are pants.
De Facto- Yes. It’s nice to have a quick google machine in your pocket.
My 94 year-old granny doesn’t use a smartphone…she uses her own smarts. Was with her recently and someone in group was asking for someone’s phone #…everyone started searching their smartphones for the number…my granny beat everyone by reciting the phone # from her head. (she can’t really use smartphone because of poor eyesight)
Speaking of modern communications - a friends son got a tweet this morning from the MCAT people that scores were about to be released.
@blueskies2day. Stick around and you’ll be amazed by the things I am willing to debate having or not having. I don’t have a dishwasher, microwave, or clothes-dryer either. Why? I don’t know… just never wanted or needed them. (I do have a lot of shoes, though. I guess that is my weakness.)
Personally, I am working on my computer many hours a day, constantly being deluged with email and IMs from colleagues and others. At home, I also communicate with the world at large on my computer. And I get calls all day long on my work phone, and my silly little flip phone and even my landline home phone. On my way to and from work, I run into friends on the subway, and chat with my neighbors as I walk down the block. I feel super connected already.
In fact, at the moment, I wish I had more quiet time to read a book, which as it is, seems to happen only late at night.
But, this is really about my son. When my son has a smart phone, then, maybe I will have to break down and get a smart phone because I will want to be able to communicate with him.
Three things make my smartphone absolutely essential.
- GPS. In the car my phone gets propped up on the dash. Right over where the dark unusued built in GPS screen I paid $$$ for is.
- No printer required airline boarding passes. This was life changing for me.
- And the big one. Flashlight!!
I handed down an iphone 4 to my daughter for her 13th birthday, with a data plan I am paying for (which represents the birthday present). Since I am the one with the J-O-B that pays for the phone, to me it makes perfect sense that I have the most update model and that she needed to receive the older model of phone.
Since receiving it, she has been less than enthusiastic about the gift, because according to her it is a dinosaur that her friends tease her about. Her lack of gratitude in this area is a sore subject with me and is high on the list on any day I feel like I need to reevaluate my parenting. She has an ipad mini also, and I see her using it at home way more than I see her using the iphone. I can never reach her on the iphone when I want to, another sore subject for me. She may not have a phone much longer.
My 15 year old has the same phone and it has never been a problem. No complaints from him, he uses it constantly (for personal purposes as well as school) and I can generally reach him on it, which I appreciate in weeks like this one when he is 2 hours away at camp. I want him to have it.
I don’t have any away from home at college yet, but I can’t imagine them functioning at this stage of independence and school responsibility without a smartphone. It is just part of life now.
The deal we made with our kids is that we’d pay for the phones as long as they ANSWERED the phone and/or text and/or email when we sent it. It has worked fairly well. I’d be unhappy if either of our kids complained about the phone they got. For HS, they had the cheapest dumb phones we could get (free from TMobile). Then in college, we were able to get nicer free phones from TMobile. Finally, after they were done with college, we all got new iPhone 5, which we all liked.
Kid has free iPhone 5c from verizon and is perfectly happy with it
Off topic, but @nycparent12 , how do you manage without a dryer? I hang most of my clothes to dry, but sheets are too large for my laundry rack and towels? You air-dry your towels? I pinned my laundry outside as a broke newly married undergrad, but we saved up and bought a used dryer when the winter snows started.
He made it through from 6th grade to 11th with the same flip phone so I’m pretty happy with that. It was a “better” one at the time with a text friendly QWERTY key board. They were on a BOGO so I got myself the same phone and still use it. I gave my upgrade to the other kid so I am finally due in August and will finally get a smart phone. I am handing mine down to my mom who still has her even older flip phone without the good key board. She learned a long time ago that the kids answer right back if she texts and she’s been a trooper using that old phone.
‘Kid has free iPhone 5c from verizon and is perfectly happy with it’
Completely free? Or did you have to sign a 2 year contract and have to give Verizon some money for 2 years?
In time and era, it is much more convenient to have a smartphone, simply because it’s easier to interact with other students and it is more portable than a laptop.
For example, I can’t carry my laptop with me to classes (it is a heavier model than usual), so I can access my books and any pdfs that my professors want us to access by phone if I’m at my campus. Saves me the trouble of having to print out stuff at home.
I had to extend my existing verizon 2 year contract but no charge for the device - it was when they just came out
I have a friend who seems to have made a point of not owning a personal computer or a cell phone at all. She does use a computer at work. Not sure where her attitude is coming from. It almost borders on a sense of superiority and a need to prove that she is different. She is about 67 years old and leads a very active life in NYC. She has always been a little quirky. I think she revels in her “otherness” and has used her lack of technology as a way of being distinctive. I really do not think she even has a clue as to what this technology can add to her life, which is sad considering she is single and could benefit from the interactions that a computer can provide.
I can’t imagine why someone would choose to have a teenager headed for college outside the range of what is the norm when it comes to technology. Yes, teach your child priorities about saving money and not being extravagant. Teach your child how important it is to be an individual. But I certainly would not want to take away from a child an important tool in modern life.
One thing a college student has to be careful with is taking special care of an expensive smartphone and also try not to misplace it and lose it. If student is walking around campus during rainy season, be careful to not let phone get wet, or if at a football game in bleachers getting soaked in a rainstorm have a plastic bag to protect it. Too, if you carry phone in a gym bag or purse with bottled water…make sure water bottle cap is on tight so it doesn’t ruin phone. I’m guilty of all these crimes except for losing a phone. Don’t sit, step, lay, or drop phone either and break it…done that too and damaged phones… and laptops…sigh.
Lizard, there is cheap college student insurance that covers such things.
im a student
to be honest i dont think you need one at all
it’s convenient to be able to read professor emails quickly, and if they send a file/document, most of the time you can read it from your phone. sometimes you can even read it during class instead of having to print it out if it’s an assigned reading or something, but reading it off of a laptop or tablet or paper would probably be more comfortable. it’s really convenient though.
if you don’t have a graphing calculator, you could use a graphing calculator app and use that for homework or during class if your professor lets you. graphing calculators are expensive and depending on the teacher you may need one for exams, which in that case you’d probably have to buy an actual graphing calculator (no phones during exams, ect.). but it’s very convenient. i don’t have a graphing calculator, just a scientific so far, but i prefer to use the graphing calculator app i downloaded because the input is a lot more clear. if you mess up a digit/symbol/parenthesis/fraction, it’s super easy to just fix it and add it on a touch screen than on a single-line calculator screen.
it’s also nice having a digital calendar on there. very convenient to set up appointments, meetings, ects. there are apps that can replace your planner if you have one. again, this isn’t a ‘smart-phone’ only thing, you can easily use a normal planner/calendar. it’s just convenient to have all of that on you instead of having to carry extra paper around.
also, sometimes ive had to ask questions at a counselling center or admissions or honors and they’d give me a phone number to call or a room number to go to or anything like that. instead of having them give me a piece of paper with that information, it’s easier (for me) to just write it down on my phone instead. doesn’t waste paper, and i won’t lose it.
if you can’t write something down that your teacher wrote on the board fast enough, some professors let you take pictures of the black/whiteboard with your phone for you to look at/copy. of course, you have to ask permission and some professors hate this. but it has been convenient sometimes when im late and can’t jot down the stuff a teacher wrote before they erase it.
if you go to the school library and borrow a textbook on course reserves (instead of purchasing it, or instead of bringing that heavy thing with you to class/school. library will probably have an older version.) you can use it at the library for an hour or two. one time i lost track of time and had to return the textbook in 2 minutes, and i still had a few problem sets to do, so i just took a picture of the specific textbook problems and returned the book and finished my homework. i don’t know if that’s allowed or not…but having a smartphone with a camera in that case was very convenient and helpful.
it’s also always helpful that you can just google anything if you have any questions while doing homework or something. instead of having to go over to a computer or walking across campus to a teacher’s office hours. sometimes there are no office hours available when you need it. so if you’re studying in a library with no nearby computer you could always just use your phone to google whatever small question you have. that helps a lot.
if you’re in a school club or study group, sometimes since all of them use a smartphone, they’ll opt to use a facebook group chat or any other kind of smartphone-app group communication thing. with a flip phone you could probably just text, and even then im not sure if you can really converse well within a group that way. but i suppose that’s convenient, too.
all of these things you could probably do without a smartphone. but it’s very convenient having all of these tools in a single device that you’ll carry around in your pocket anyways. you can sort of rely on yourself a bit more, google your own questions, write down whatever little memo an office person was going to give you a sheet of paper for, make your appointments, whatever.
also, having access to twitter/facebook/news apps, you can easily follow a bunch of news sites and stay up to date on current events and what not. i think all college students would benefit from staying updated on world problems. i know some people choose to stick with a flip phone because “all these kids on their phone just take selfies and get dumber blah blah” but really it has helped me stay up to date on important national/world events. you get connected with the world. sure, you could read a newspaper, but it takes a day for them to print whatever happened, and you’d probably need to buy the newspaper. wastes paper, too. and come on, how many young college students do you see holding a newspaper? there’s TV news, too. but it’s mostly local, and getting wide views is more difficult. online, you could follow a bunch of different news sites, international ones. so it’s easier to get those wide views.
again, you could just use a computer and look that stuff up, but it’s nice having it on your phone and being able to just find a quiet spot and read whenever you want. catching up on news while waiting for your teacher to come to class is also nice. (but of course, socializing with your classmates is important too)
btw i have a really cheap metro pcs smartphone. galaxy avant. before, i had the galaxy s 3. i thought i was downgrading because i had to switch carriers cuz the one i had before was too expensive. but honestly it’s a fine phone. as long as the internet works and isn’t too slow it should be fine. you don’t even need super new one or anything to benefit from a smartphone.