Earlier this year, a report published on BBC Technology highlighted that the majority of parents allow their children to use SmartPhones unsupervised. What else did the report reveal? 

• Parents are unaware of the dangers faced by children on their SmartPhones. 

• Approximately one in five children have seen something on their devices that they found to be upsetting. 

• 20% of parents do not monitor what their children are doing online. 

• 90% of parents have spoken to their children about staying safe online.

• Teenagers aged 13-16 are more vulnerable to cyber bullying than those aged 8-12. 

Aside from child safety, one of the biggest problems with the increasingly ‘tech savvy’ young generation, is the number of app store purchases without parental consent. Earlier this year, Apple was told to refund $32.5m (£19.8m) to parents whose children had made purchases without their parents’ consent. 

An even bigger problem is the amount of cyber bullying taking place on a daily basis. A recent report from Ditch The Label revealed that 7 in 10 young people are victims of cyber bullying, with 54% claiming to have experienced bullying on Facebook. It’s important that parents recognise how vulnerable their children are online. 

If you are concerned, what can be done to control and monitor your children’s SmartPhone activity? Firstly, you can set restrictions and control your family’s actions via a personal passcode. You can even block certain websites completely and restrict their viewing to age appropriate content. 

We recommend WebWatcher and SpectorSoft – both allowing you to monitor and log SmartPhone activity. You can also set up keyword alerts so that you are notified instantly if any inappropriate behaviour commences. Furthermore, there are useful services like Sprint Family Locator, which enables you to track the location of your child’s mobile phone. This is helpful if they are prone to wandering off and not telling you where they are going! 

It might also be a good idea to establish ‘no phone’ time zones in your house. How about setting aside a few hours every evening where nobody in the family can use a mobile or gadget? 

Dr. Jenny Radesky, a US pediatrician, who specialises in child development, reported earlier this year that parents need to watch how absorbed they are in technology when around their younger, more impressionable children. She commented: “(…) is a big mistake. Face-to-face interactions are the primary way children learn. They learn language; they learn about their emotions, they learn how to regulate them. They learn by watching us how to have a conversation, how to read other people’s facial expressions. And if that’s not happening, children are missing out on important development milestones.” 

With the influx of smartphones rising in recent years you wouldn’t be considered silly for assuming that phones of the past are long gone. Not too long ago the highlight of a mobile phone was having the latest version of addicting game Snake or finally having a colour screen, and then came the flip phone.

Before smartphones entered the digital world and became the must-have tech accessory, phones were built for convenience. Flip phones were designed to be compact, secure and not easily broken - some may say, everything today’s smartphones are not. However, there are rumblings of a flip phone comeback - well, in Japan at least.

Watch Out, Flip Phones About

If recent figures are to be believed, people in Japan are buying familiar flip phones of the past rather than splurging on brand new smartphones. According to Reuters, shipments of flip phones were higher in 2014 than they have been in seven years and smartphone shipments fell in line with this. 

Why Is There A Flip Phone Comeback?

There are many suggested reasons as to why there has been a flip phone comeback in Japan. With smartphones being notoriously expensive in the country, many consumers are opting for cheaper mobile phones. Additionally, flip phones are familiar and easy to use and therefore offer a more convenient and stress-free mobile phone experience. 

Japan has suffered with financial inflation in previous years and many mobile phone users are simply happy to stick to the model they already have; especially if expensive smartphones have always been out of reach.

The next question raised is, will flip phones make a comeback in the UK? Though it is hard to imagine today’s tech heads swapping their top of the range iPhones for an out of date flip phone, it is not impossible. Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour has been known to favour a low cost flip phone, something that came as a surprise to many as Wintour is known for not only being fashionable, but also extremely wealthy; and if some of the media’s top icons begin to set a trend, who know where it could lead.

The flip phone comeback has taken off in Japan but with fewer features it is not surprising that many individuals would never dream of trading in their smartphone for a flip phone; even if they are cheaper and no doubt have their benefits. 

Whatever phone you own make sure you get it protected by taking out our insurance today, visit our website for an instant quote.