it's incredibly common, like a quick text from the child "hey don't pick me up today I'm going to Greg's house" or a parent saying "do you have football practice today"
I am just waiting for my daughter to come back home to tell her whatever I need to (or leave a note on the kitchen counter) and she does the same. Also once home, she has access to me through XMPP even if I am not there.
How did people ever survive school 20 years without such an ability?
There is an easy solution that could be implemented. Kids can go to the office during lunch or a break and request their phone. They can send their message and then give back their phone.
20 years ago the chance that someone could steal or abuse a child on or from the way to school was way much higher. People have already started forgetting about it. No phone = no way to track back the criminal or the crime.
Kids should be able to get their phone back when they leave the school. This means if they are kidnapped, either a kidnapper went onto campus and kidnapped the kid or the kid left the campus without retrieving their phone. It also assumes the kidnapper would allow a victim to keep their phone, which would be quite the dumb decision.
If you look at nonfamily child abductions, most of them involve kids between 0 and 5. Also in a significant proportion of abduction, the kid is not even targeted as it involve parents leaving the kid in a car and the car is stolen.
Because I guess a family abduction involve a good knowledge of the victim/behavior and I would guess the first thing the abductor would do is making sure he isn't tracked by getting rid of the phone and not using their own in a radius around the scene of the abduction.
Quite a different set of parameters than abductors targetting random kids in a gas station and driving away with the car.
Yeah that's what they used to do, go to the office and request to use the phone. If your parent wanted to tell you something they'd call the school and have them relay the message.
It's not a difficult problem to solve, but I guarantee there would be some parents fighting against it if implemented. Dealing with parents these days can sometimes be more difficult than their kids.
we should let older high schoolers use phones during the school day. phone vocabulary apps were invaluable for my SAT prep. the library is frankly a laughable substitute
that said, they shouldn’t be allowed in actual class
> What kind of parent will call or message their kids during school hours?
Both my teens text me throughout the school day if they need something. It's not every day, but it's several times a week. It's incredibly useful. I'd fight this vigorously if they tried this in my school district.