Brooklyn:
I used talking to girls as an illustrative example, so I don’t want this to turn into a re-hash of that discussion which has been had several times over on YWN. It suffices to say that we have two different approaches and worldviews to the issue. It’s only collaterally related anyway.
As far as social security numbers, I would hope that it is extremely difficult for a child to find out their parent’s social security number. Nobody should ever have access to that number but yourself. There is no good reason for a child to have that information, and if you keep your social security card locked up (as you should), they won’t really have any way to find out.
Texting and internet access are services for which you are billed. I would find it hard to believe that any carrier would allow activation of those services without speaking to customer service/billing, or logging into the account online – something to verify authorization. The fact that kids do have phones, and the risk of theft or loss of the phone should lead to no other conclusion. I know that you can’t activate either service on my carrier without express authorization.
Finally, you say that to give a teenager the tools to mess up is asking too much. First, the teenagers already have the tools – they have their autonomy and brains. Besides, isolating your child from every instrument which may cause error is to ensure that your child does not grow, mature, and learn how to be a functional adult. Who is going to shield them when they are adults? If they have been shielded their entire lives, when it comes to the point where they are thrown into the real world, they won’t know how to control themselves, let alone their own children. Learning how to control ones’ self does not come automatically with age – it comes from experience. By eliminating experience, you severely harm the child’s chances of being balanced as an adult. Education and moderation is a better way – sure, a kid will probably mess up. But in the end, it’s worth it to have a child mess up once or twice in the learning process, then end up in a downward spiral of mistakes because they never got the chance to learn.
That being said, there is obviously an appropriate age at which one should be learning. I wouldn’t give my fifth-grader a phone, or even consider it. teenagers, however, are a stone’s throw away from being on their own in the real world, by which point they will have had to learn or else they will be in danger of maladjustment and constant mistake.