3 mins read

Autism and Phone Data

What is phone data?

For those few out there who don’t know, phone data is the amount of gigabytes you use when you’re on a device that is connected to the Internet.

One thing I learned long ago about my own phone data usage verses my son’s phone data usage (of course, this is ever since my son got his own phone in 2015) is that my son has the potential to use a lot more data than I use.

Why is that?

Many times in the past, my son will play a video game or watch something from You Tube on his phone. Not that he does this all of the time. He will, also, frequently read stuff on the phone as well.

I almost always do one of three things, look at my email, play a card game called Euchre (which is off line and uses no data), or look at Facebook.

None of the above things take up that much data, especially simply reading something that is text only.

What’s the difference?

When you’re on your phone and using the Internet, anything that is text-based (something you’re just reading and not watching like a TV show or playing a video game), takes up a lot less data.

My son’s video game playing habit was costing me data since he and I share a data plan on my Verizon Wireless contract.

There were several times, in the past, when I had to have a “chat” with my son about the amount of data he was using (per month) vs. the amount of data I had available on my data plan. If I went over my allotted amount of data, I would be charged a penalty.

My son and I would have “battles” about this, usually toward the end of a month. The worst months were ones when we were on vacation and doing a lot of driving.

As a side note, I remember a friend telling us that his daughter was playing Pokemon Go like crazy (this was last summer, of course). This friend didn’t know just how much data that game chewed up on their data plan until he got his bill! He was not pleased.

Did I solve the problem?

Yes. My husband and I merged our Verizon contracts into one contract.

And, we added an unlimited data plan.

Do we plan on telling our fourteen-year-old that we have an unlimited data plan?

Not in the near future.

Why not?

Well, we figure what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

For now, anyway.

We fear that if he knows that our plan he UNLIMITED data, then that’ll mean he can go to town on video games and videos and all of that.

We just want to keep those opportunities as suppressed as possible for as long as possible.

Is this fair?

Well, we are the parents and we do pay the bills.

We think it’s fair.

More importantly, we are trying to teach balance to our son. There are times for video game playing. But, there are times for school, social gatherings minus devices, sleep, baseball game watching, and lots of other stuff.

Balance. And, limited data! Some of these things do make sense. Autism and the Issue of Phone Data.

 

More on Kimberly Kaplan:

To purchase “Two Years Autism Blogs Featured on ModernMom.com”

or “A Parentsʼ Guide to Early Autism Intervention” visit Amazon (print or digital) or Smashwords

Twitter: tipsautismmom

LinkedIn: Kimberly Kaplan