South Korea Protects The Children From The Evil High Cellphone Bill Menace
from the legislate-away-stupidity dept
There's a large number of parents who struggle with their kids' mobile phone bills; particularly if they're on a budget and their kids love to send text messages or pics. South Korea is looking to curb such runaway phone bills by passing regulation that aims to limit teenager cellphone bills. The legislation looks to be a reaction to an instance where a 17-year-old boy killed himself last February after ringing up 3.7 million won ($4,021) in fees for a mobile phone game. Starting next year, South Korean teenagers will have to fill out a separate contract, which "recommends" kids join an existing system that puts a ceiling on how much their monthly cell bill can be. It's not clear why exactly good parenting can't solve this problem -- if your kid consistently rings up ridiculous phone bills, take the service away from him/her. It's not entirely clear why the government would need to get involved here, when a hefty dose of common sense will do. Apparently it's not just American politicians that rush in, laws in hand, in knee-jerk attempts to protect the children from the latest and greatest menace.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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What's the problem?
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These kind of issues shouldnt be this messed up for the government to have to step in.
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Irresponsible teens are really making it hard and unconvincing that it's a good idea to give them any freedom. So either their parents, or the government has to step in a restrict them unfortunately.
Personally, I'd rather have parents do some more parenting than punishing all teens for the miscues of some chronic cases (4k$, ha WOW son).
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Sounds like someone who doesn't have kids. It would be better to ease them into responsibility with a cap that doesn't kill the family budget if they screw up. Instead, their minutes cap out halfway through, and they learn. Much better than a surprise $4K bill
That said, this isn't the government's place. I'd think that a wireless company that focused on being family friendly with things like caps on the kids' phones would be rather successful.
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Sorry, that cop out is worn out. You had kids, now be a parent.
Kid: "Why Daddy, why? It's not fair."
Dad: "Because you screwed up, and I'm the daddy."
And the younger this is learned the easier it will be for the kids and the parents.
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yeah I'm basically Korean, but looking past that..
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yeah I'm basically Korean, but looking past that..
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I must agree with Kim
I guess I would not accept my kid being offered a platinum credit card when he gets in the toys4us.
or given alcohol on credit (mine).
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Jin Young is wrong
I've seen very little that resembles parenting or the ability to punish children. So what if your child is ostracized for not having a phone. After that experience they will learn how to take responsibility for their actions and understand that there are consequences for running up an insanely high phone bill.
I have kids in Korea and wouldn't hesitate to take away their phone if they did something like this. But I don't have to worry because I've already taught my kids how to be responisible.
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Even in the states...
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Dunno what's so bad about this...
I mean, come on, these tv ads for cellphone games, ringtones, logo etc. with their ridiculous rates, are all targeted at the teenage audience, anyone with half a brain can see that. And if cellphones have become such a cultural influence in Korea, as some of the posts above have indicated, then I think its good that the government has taken a pro active stance against something potentially damaging to its public.
And like I said, they're not banning cellphones altogether (unlike some new bans introduced by some governments which are just plain overreaction), they're forcing cellphone companies to impose compulsory limits on teenage cellphone accounts, which, although it may cut into the profits of the company, might save a teen (and his/her parents) from a debt inducing cellphone bill.
Honestly, who among us haven't done something brash or irresponsible as a teenager. We didn't have the experience we have now then, and that fact hasn't changed for the current generation of teens.
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wtf?
"just trying to get the cellphone companies to stop taking advantage of the teenage market."
By charging them for the services they used? Are you retarded? The kids are racking up these bills. They aren't phantom charges.
I'm unclear on why government intervention is necessary in the first place. Any cell phone provider I've ever used has options for plans with hard limits, which is what this law wants to enact. Even without such options the parents and school systems aren't doing their job to curb the kids irresponsibility. Obviously the parents for not being parents, and the schools for shit like this:
"four out of 10 teenagers use their mobile phones during classes at school."
Last I checked, doing that shit in the US would get your phone taken away by the schools, your parents called and the phone given to them. From that point on it would be up to your parents to do whatever on top of any detention that you got from the school. If my kid was irresponsible enough to rack up $4k in cell phone bills he is going to learn the value of that by helping pay it back, and only then will he possibly get the phone back, along side heavy restrictions to its use.
But whatever, lets support furthering bad parenting with some more fire and forget legislation so they don't have to deal with the real problem. Good call there.
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Again
Tragic, tragic, tragic, ask not for whom the ringtone tolls, it tolls for thee, we should all be sad some kid offed himself over his high phone bill.
F*** THAT!
If the kid is so weak as to not be able to control his cell phone behavior, if he's so weak as to not be able to work at paying off the bill over time, if he's so weak that he'd rather kill himself than get help from someone or god forbid if his parents found out, gosh he'd be in trouble then.
If he's killed himself, he's obviously prone to suicide -- people don't just kill themselves over one thing -- no matter how big of a one thing it is. Suicide is a sign of other stresses, other issues, other problems.
So if he's that worthless to society, he's probably annoying as all get out to everyone else who knew him, and his parents already had their shot and fixing all that ailed him, and they missed it. So if he has it that bad and wants to kill himself...
LET HIM. And let anyone else who wants to follow in his shoes. The world is better off without those kind of people.
I ask why this is tech news. If you want to get technical, this is a self-correcting problem, and the kid who killed himself gets a gold star for the day for finally taking responsibility and fixing the situation.
As a dead kid, it's very unlikely that he'll ever use up so many minutes ever again.
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Cell phone bill
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