Kids' GPS watches with parental controls

Children are the group most at risk from abduction, bad company, grooming and sexual offences. International figures suggest that around 250,000 children go missing or are abused in Europe every year.

Social workers and child psychiatrists alike advise against buying your children a mobile phone.

There are many reasons, all of them to do with the problems that come with mobile phone use:

1. Parents are not in a position to see or know how their child is communicating, and so cannot advise them accordingly.

2. Parents do not talk with their children about the contacts and activities they have through the phone, and so lose the chance to share feelings and interests with them.

3. The child communicates too much through the phone, at the expense of face-to-face time with friends.

4Cheating in school tests using mobile phones has become a major issue for teachers everywhere. What matters is that both the family and the school respond to it properly.

5Mobile phones are often not cheap. A child's choice of handset therefore means costs to buy and costs to run — costs earlier generations of parents never had to imagine.

6. Distraction during lessons, because of phone use, is another common problem.

7. The cameras in modern smartphones have almost nothing to envy in a dedicated camera. Unfortunately, in the hands of teenagers in particular, they can become tools for sexual harassment, indecent material and even bullying.

8. Simply having a personal communications device makes a child reachable by strangers. Where once every contact had to come through the family phone in the living room, that is no longer the case. A line of protection has been lost, and it is not easily replaced. Keeping children safe and knowing where they are rests with parents, and with no one else.

Take a moment to read what the specialists say:

1. Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (EETT)
2. CNN Greece
3. HealthView.gr
4. SigmaLive.gr
5. PaidaGwgos.Blogspot.gr