Thirteen-year-old Greg Hoffman had been begging his parents for an iPhone all year. So on Christmas morning he was thrilled to find the object of his desire under the tree, but there was a catch: It wasn’t a gift… it was a loan!
The phone came with an 18-point set of terms and conditions that he had to agree to before the phone could be his. And the agreement did not come from Apple or the phone provider, it came from his mom.
“Merry Christmas! You are now the proud owner of an iPhone. Hot Damn! You are a good & responsible 13 year old boy and you deserve this gift,” the agreement begins. “But with the acceptance of this present comes rules and regulations.”
Click here to read Janell Hoffman’s full list of rules for her son, originally posted on her blog.
So why so many rules? Hoffman wanted her son to avoid many of the pitfalls that both smart phone using teens and adults fall prey to. Cellphone etiquette has become a major source of concern among parents as more and more teens put smartphones on their wish lists. Some 40 percent of teens own an iPhone, according to a study by Piper Jaffray & Co. released this fall.
“What I wanted to do and show him [is] how you could be a responsible user of technology without abusing it, without becoming addicted,” Janell Hoffman said. We wish her the best of luck!
