THESE FORUMS NOW CLOSED (read only)
Fun Stuff => CHATTER => Topic started by: est on 14 Jul 2009, 00:04
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Just over a fortnight ago, Matthew Robson had never worked in banking. This was mainly because he was 15 years and 7 months old and attending a comprehensive school in South London.
Today he is the talk of Tokyo, Wall Street and the City. Fund managers, CEOs and analysts are poring over his report, How Teenagers Consume Media, which he wrote last week while on work experience at Morgan Stanley.
In it he laid out the world according to the teenager: a confusing place where the PC is a radio, the games console is a telephone, the mobile telephone is a stereo and text-message machine, the DVDs are pirate copies and no one uses Twitter.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6703399.ece
SO, what do people think about this article?
I think that a lot of it is fairly straightforward, but I also think that some of it seems rather specific to his own circle of friends. I see a lot of teens in Sydney using phones, and not everyone plays consoles enough to use it as a main source of communication with their friends. However, a lot more people are using internet-connected computers these days, and if you substitute talking over consoles with chats, IMs etc and then using your mobile when you are out or to talk to someone you don't normally talk to a lot then it seems pretty accurate.
And quite frankly, I thought that a lot of this shit (especially the summations at the end) was approaching general knowledge by now. So I am fairly surprised that business & marketing people didn't already know most of it.
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Anecdote : data :: goose : horses
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I saw little of interest there that is not plainly visible to anyone who looks. Just an unjustified implication that these teenagers are defining the world of the future. Remember, teenagers metamorphose into adults, which are a different species. The adult world is changing too, but will remain a different place.
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I must be a different kind of teenager.
I actually read the newspaper.
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I listen to the radio. Though to be fair, not for music, which I stream off last.fm or play on my computer.
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i listen to the radio almost constantly.
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While watching the show True Blood (incidentally, if you haven't seen this show, many people will tell you it is awesome but really it is shit) my fiancee figured maybe it was written to appeal to teens, which made me reflect on the fact that I really have no idea what appeals to teens. My kids will totally be embarrassed by me.
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I like True Blood. :-(
Maybe you just don't get the erotic vampire genre, Mr. Hocking.
Edit: Also I'd never really understood the fuss about twitter. Seems pretty bloody pointless to me. I'm also sick of people telling me it is The Future Of Journalism. Because it really, really isn't.
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Anecdote : data :: goose : horses
This isn't true. Anecdotal data can be very important to a number of kinds of research (anthropology, psychology, and history all use first hand accounts quite a bit). However, just as with quantitative data, you need more then one point of information and you need to make sure that you are accounting for variables. Hearing from one 15 year old in one country and acting like the information is applicable to all teenagers in the developed world is rather ridiculous. I think it's fairly common, though, that adults tend to think that asking one teenager about what it's like to be a teenager is enough to get the whole picture. If they really wanted this information they would be careful to interview kids from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, genders, economic situations and interests.
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My kids will totally be embarrassed by me.
This is the function of parents of teenagers: to embarrass their children.
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Oddly enough it's the other way around in my family. I have embarrassed my mother far more often than she has embarrassed me. i.e. the time we went shopping and I spoke to her in a fake hoity-toity English accent the whole time we were in the store. (I am a great kid.)
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Well, there is that, too.
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The one that confuses me the most there is that teenagers don't go to the cinema. That is the main social function of my group of friends, and most people I know. I mean, I go to the movies a little more than most do (About 10 times a month), but that doesn't change the fact that the average teenager goes as well.
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The second you claim to "Understand teenagers," you should be marked as someone without a clue.
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Hey now, high school teachers get by somehow. I imagine after a few years you get the gist of some general trends, though, not necessarily true "understanding".
It is like how some people want to be middle school teachers. They are incomprehensible as well.
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I don't get it. Any teenager could have written that in 10 minutes. They're acting like this kid is some kind of middleman, someone that can help explain the intricacies of teenage life to the dreaded adults. But ask ANY teenager (at least where I live in California, and probably most other places) and they'll tell you exactly the same stuff. This is all totally common knowledge; the only difference is that this kid decided to write it down.
Also I agree with those who are saying the cinema point was wrong; I go there at least 3 times a month.
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I agree with him for the most part. Hardly any kids have music on their phone and instead have an iPod. Most kids go to the cinema. All of them buy DVDs because they couldn't figure out how to pirate a movie. But not many of us buy music anymore, it's too easily available.
But I don't see why this made the news. Anyone can tell you this.
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Old people and Persians.
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But strangely, not so much old Persians.
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When I write an essay, I need to footnote every single assertion I make with a legal authority backing it up. Every single one. Which works to about 40 footnotes in a 2,000 word document. Otherwise I get marked down for either plagiarism or just plain making shit up.
I would very much like to count the number of footnotes here.
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Footnotes are the past man
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One, he is frequently wrong, and two, who the hell didn't know this stuff anyway.
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But strangely, not so much old Persians.
The feline variety?
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Speaking of Twitter, some guy hacked into their admin accounts and pulled a bunch of internal company stuff. Turns out Twitter estimates it will have 25 million users at the end of this year, 100 million at the end of 2010 and 350 million at the end of 2011. Does that seem likely to anybody? Also the staff (largely poached from the notorious Google) has been pretty ridic with its demands - "Plans for new offices including a wish list from the employees who would like a nap room, a games room, plants, a chief cuisto, a meditation hall, garages to cycling, Adjustable offices, a gym, a meditation room, a washer / dryer, wifi, lockers, wine cellar, an aquarium and so on"
Remember when Myspace was going to be around forever?
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Why would they need a meditation hall and a meditation room?
I like having Twitter, but I don't think it's going to be A Big Thing for very long.
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Today, I received a phone call from a friend to find out where I was. We met up and went to the cinema, where at a rough estimate 60,000,000 other teenagers were (it was the day Harry Potter VI got released, you see). After the film we went into three different games shops (three girls, one boy). Then I came home and listened to the folk music programme on the radio and read the local newspaper to find out what that darn ice cream selling teenager has been up to lately (getting banned from the local park, apparently). Last week I looked in the local telephone directory to find the number for a taxi firm, so that I could go to work to earn money. Sometimes I spend this money on CDs (not often, true) which I listen to on a CD player, not my phone. My phone, incidentally, is the second phone I've ever owned. My first lasted eleven years.
Here's a thing: just because all the above is true for me, it isn't true for everyone else my age. Here (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5785875.ece) is a far more insightful and well-written article on the same thing.
But he's right, Twitter is for old people. I don't know anyone who uses Twitter.
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I use twitter. :(
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You and I can be old together, Gemm!
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Yay! Let's go drink beer!
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This sad old person doesn't use Twitter; but he did go today to a talk on its security (lack of) implications - along with the same in FaceBook, MySpace and LinkedIn.
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Twitter is entire worth paying attention to if for nothing else but the random musings and internet discoveries of William Gibson.
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I have a Twitter and although I am young in years I am totally an old guy. I'm not entirely sure if there is any conclusion to be drawn from this but they fuck that kid's study anyway.
Oh hey guys @ddovey follow me much love.
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I use twitter sometimes, too, when I remember to.
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Explain it to him in 140 characters or less.
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It's a realtime newsletter and you choose the news sources.
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The only thing I gleamed from this article is that teenagers are idiots and I don't understand how this makes him a whiz kid
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@tommydski http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/how-other-half-writes-in-defense-of.html
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That article is really awful.
Tommy, all you need to know is that it is like livejournal or any other mass blog system, only restricted to 140 characters per entry due to starting out as a service you could blog to using sms.
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One more thing: from a technical perspective there was no reason to restrict it to 140 chars, because most phones can send/receive multi-page smses and have been able to since before Twitter's inception. It was/is a gimmick used to make it seem like it was something special other than just another mass blog service.
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I actually use Twitter quite a bit. But then lots of my friends have one as well so there is a point to using it.
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Someone explain Twitter to me once and for all.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/
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One more thing: from a technical perspective there was no reason to restrict it to 140 chars, because most phones can send/receive multi-page smses and have been able to since before Twitter's inception. It was/is a gimmick used to make it seem like it was something special other than just another mass blog service.
I think 20 characters were lopped off for the purposes of naming users.
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All the above is true, but it's evolved into what calenlass has described it as.
It's a realtime newsletter and you choose the news sources.
It's actually really nice, because of the choosing part.
It can also turn into a massive time sink if you choose to much.
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I think 20 characters were lopped off for the purposes of naming users.
My point was that I regularly send and receive 200+ char smses to people. Sometimes they are about 5 pages long depending on what we have to say. I know that a lot of people try to restrict it to one page, but what I am saying is that it has been technically possible for a very long time.
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Well sure. I know my phone is capable of such as well, but Verizon will only let you send 160+ character messages to other Verizon users - otherwise it just cuts you off at 160. So it might be something Twitter put in because of industry obstinacy.
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I guess I'm a hypocrite for texting more than actually calling.
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I just use Twitter to follow people: Jeph, other webcomics, etc. I never actually input stuff. I find it useful.
Also, wait what? You can use phones to call people now?
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I think Aditi Nangia over at Foreign Policy's Passport blog puts it best with this (http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/07/13/we_live_in_obvious_times):
Conclusions? Teenagers don't have any money and they like free things. Also, eight out of ten of Robson's friends are downloading music illegally.
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Fyi, my phone can only do 140, and it's one of the keybos phones. Not all phones can do multi-page.
I like twitter because it's like a personal fortune cookie style diary-blog, thing. It's nice because no one expects the thought to be important, but you can still have it down somewhere.
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pertinent information (http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=759#comic)
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I have a twitter. I used it for a whole evening before the novelty wore out.
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Oddly enough it's the other way around in my family. I have embarrassed my mother far more often than she has embarrassed me. i.e. the time we went shopping and I spoke to her in a fake hoity-toity English accent the whole time we were in the store. (I am a great kid.)
You win.
But on the article, it does seem overly-specific. I hopped on xbox live to take a poll, and just about everyone I met on Halo 3 [land of the 15-year old] said they use their mobile phones as stereos, text-message machines, and phones. Twitter is quite popular, but Facebook moreso. Also, the LG Dare is 'the shit'. I better get back to the field for more polls and teabagging.
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Twitter is used by old people (over 22, say) for near-live reporting and commentary during conferences. Also (through the mobile phone access) the university computer service uses it to report on major outages - like the UPS failure last week that took down their main computer room, all the backbone routers (hence no conventional way to report on the problem!), and the edge router.
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I like twitter. I use it pretty frequently, more to read than to actually post. I follow Rachel Maddow, Obama, and NPR, so I got my important news covered, and then I follow Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, Zoe Keating, and a few other musicians/authors, and they either just give me interesting tidbits, or in the case of both AFP and Zoe Keating, they post about artists rights, and how to interact with fans sans record labels, and stuff like that, like independent business models, and whatnot. Its really really interesting.
I thought it was really stupid, and then I joined, and I realized how great it was. Facebook and myspace not so much. They were dumb before I joined, and still dumb once I did.
And I'm 21. So I guess a 15 year old would probably think I was old.
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I had no idea Obama had a twitter, makes sense now that I think about it.
It's a shame it doesn't make any money (twitter) and that there isn't really any potential for money making.
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As a follow-up, Nielsen has independently given a little credence to what was being said about Twitter's population:
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/08/twitter-not-so-popular-with-the-young-people.ars
They say that even though under 25s make up a quarter of internet use they only make up about 16% of Twitter use.
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to me twitter is just a stripped down facebook, which is already for older people (in my opinion, at least) ((I still use facebook but it's more college/university friendly)) (((hooray for lots of parentheses))) ((((I relied on google chrome to spell parentheses right for me. so what?))))
that being said, I do not know anybody, old or young, who uses twitter.
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Your use of parentheses is one of the worst things I've had to decode on these forums.
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It's a shame it doesn't make any money (twitter) and that there isn't really any potential for money making.
you're kidding right?
i've heard a lot about twitter being used as a marketing tool.
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But twitter itself doesn't make money. Where would they get it from?
There's no advertisements, no subscription fee, it's not publicly owned.
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so)))) what
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(http://www.metal-archives.com/images/6/1/2/612_logo.gif)
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There's a good point. Are the financers of Twitter pouring money into it for solely altruistic reasons? I can think of better ways to spend my money than to create a web-based open messaging system 'to find out what my friends are doing'.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_company
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Yeah, essentially it's a gamble. But there are a lot of opportunities really. And with the user base that they have now, I doubt that they will lose many people if they add advertisements. Look at Facebook, I remember when they added advertisements. I'm still using it.
That or they're hoping some large company like Microsoft or Google or Yahoo! will buy them.
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I just updated my twitter for about the third time today.
(I have been drinking wiiiiiiiiiine.)
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there is a company called usocial (http://usocial.net/twitter_marketing) which lets you literally buy followers for your twitter account. the base amount is $87 for 1000 new followers and as you go up there's discounts and stuff. i wouldn't be surprised if other services similar to this one exist as well.
good news for anyone who thought twitter couldn't get any more pathetic!
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"Pay me ten dollars and I'll make you my top friend on MySpace!"
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Ah well it's still better than WoW (re: farmers)
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Facebook probably will, seeing as Twitter is basically status updates without the rest of Facebook.
(that was what Wired magazine told me on the flight from Detroit to Philly a few days ago)
The thing I like about twitter though is that following someone doesn't have to be mutual. I mean, the majority of people that I get updates from on facebook I don't give a flying fuck about. I guess you can hide them, but whatever.
I choose the people I follow on twitter. They choose who they follow. It's a beautiful circle of information.
Also there are now threads in twitter: a.tinythread.com
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You are using facebook wrong.
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I still don't get how to use facebook. I've had it for over a month now, and I rarely go to it. When I do, I get frustrated and leave.
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if you are anything like me then facebook only has two pretty stupid but ultimately useful functions:
a) it lets you communicate quickly and efficiently with your friends in a way that doesn't involve sitting on AIM chatting for hours and forgetting all that stuff you were going to do with your day like eating and sleeping and going to your job and so on
b) it is the ultimate medium through which to exercise all of your passive aggressive urges
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c) Stalking
although I guess that could count under passive aggressiveness.
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d) breaking couples at the click of a button
Not your couples either, just anycouple, as facebook's password protection is shitty...
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I use twitter. :(
So do I. :-(
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i use twitter, and am 18. (so technically i am a teenager, but i think the term 'teenager' applies more to high school students, which i am not.)
though, to be fair, i also crochet and watch the news and read books.
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reading books is for old people now?
fuck, no wonder I don't have any friends.
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i mean, other than twilight (hork hork hork), a lot of kids these days don't like reading.
it is pretty much a bummer. ):
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“Stephen Fry is not particularly cool."
Stephen Fry is not particularly cool. He's AMAZINGLY cool.
Also, that kid says kids don't use phones because they're expensive, but then he says they text all the time. Now, maybe I'm a bit of a geezer, but don't you need a phone to text? Or can you buy things that just text these days?
When I think about all of these social networking sites, all I can think of is the original .com boom. Maybe it'll be different, though.
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i think it means using the phone as in calling someone. Texting (at least here) is much cheaper than calling someone on your mobile.
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So you don't need to pay for a calling plan to get a texting plan? I know I certainly do.
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here we have pre-paid deals, where you buy a sim card for $2 or whatever (normally if you get a phone as well it is about $100 or something, depending on where you buy it from) and then are able to put money on your sim to use within 6 months to either send texts or make calls. I think a lot of parents here get their teenagers on pre-paid rather than a plan, so they can't rack up giant bills. You put $30 on the card and when the kid uses it up they have to put more on or deal without being able to use their phone.
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i call people most of the time, if i really need to talk to them. if it's not of dire importance, i text. i pay a flat rate for unlimited texting, so it's cheaper than calling.
as far as social networking sites, i have pretty much all of them but i use twitter the most by far.
oh, and i suppose it is true that most teenagers don't buy music. but i don't think a lot of them use torrents. i do, but when i try to explain it to a lot of my peers or god forbid someone younger than me, they kind of just stare.
i don't go to the movies, but god i hate movies. i will only go see something i am really very interested in. but this "teenagers don't go to the movies" thing is bullshit, because i refuse to even go to the movies on friday-sunday, for the overflow of 12-16 year olds clogging the place up. ):<
sony ericsson phones are the most popular? not in america. fuck. i don't even know a single person with one of those anymore.
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@Eris. Huh. I've seen those pre-paid things, and thought "That's very poor value for money" and then moved on. Apparently, with the plans these days, you can allocate certain minutes to your kids. At least I've seen commercials for that sort of thing. Maybe I am just obscenely out-of-touch. I've never used Facebook, twitter, myspace, livejournal or any of those other things (not that I believe myspace and livejournal to be new, but I didn't use them when the were new and cool).
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I'm on a pre-paid deal, I pay 14p per minute for calls (so I don't call, generally) but I get five texts free every day and then I pay for them after that, I think it's 14p each again. It's a fairly expensive deal to be on and I should really get a new sim card because when I go to uni I'll need to phone more often, but I've had this deal since I was seven.
Most people get these things called bundles, though, which I think is what you were talking about: a certain amount of money per month and then say 500 minutes and 300 texts for free before you start paying extra.