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What do you mean? The phones can dial 911. That's just a fact. Curious young kids have been dialing 911 just to see what happens since before cell phones existe
by yamtaddle 4y ago
What do you mean? The phones can dial 911. That's just a fact. Curious young kids have been dialing 911 just to see what happens since before cell phones existed.
- lostmsu 4y agoI mean that lack of people complaining means kids don't to it.
- kortilla 4y agoWho would complain?
- lostmsu 4y agoBasically anyone with kids would tell that as a story, if it happened to them or to their friends.
- public_defender 4y agoThere is actually a whole professional person whose job is to complain about this. When a kid dials 911 and the cops come and arrest people for no good reason, somebody is almost guaranteed to complain about it. It's me. I wake up in the morning, have coffee, put on my pants, then go to court and formally complain about things like this all day.
- fallat 4y agoThe Public Defender strikes!
- qup 4y agoIn that case, what's the risk?
- yamtaddle 4y ago1) It's not great to tie up emergency resources without good reason. 2) It can get you angry, threatening call-backs from the authorities. 3) It can make annoyed and/or on-guard (because there might be an actual emergency of unknown nature) cops show up at your door—and if it happens more than once, there may be legal consequences in play, and possibly even the first time if they're in an especially foul mood. Consider that a young kid might well dial it over and over not even realizing the call's going through (if they don't know what it looks like when the call's been answered, and are used to speaker-phone mode and video calls and aren't used to putting the phone to their ear, which is true for a lot of young kids these days). It's probably fine for most 7+ year olds, but PBS Kids has a ton of content targeted much younger, and even kids 4-5 years old can usually learn to use the app pretty quickly. There's a faq on the 911.gov site advising parents to take the batteries out of phones they give to young kids, for this exact reason. It also advises that, if you accidentally call the number, you stay on the line to explain what happened so it's not mistaken for a real call, rather than hanging up—young kids are highly likely not do to this, and to instead hang up or just leave the line open without saying anything.
- arglebargle123 4y agoI think you're really overselling the risk here. At most any given kid is going to do this once, and the vast majority not at all.
- yamtaddle 4y agoJesus, I never expected these responses. Yeah, sure, do whatever I guess.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- qup 4y agoIs there any case where a kid calling in has caused serious harm or damage? I'll assume there's like...one, maybe. More importantly, is there some kind of pattern of it that warrants...a response of some sort? This sounds like kids getting poisoned from Halloween candy, which happened once from the kid's own parent.
- jkestner 4y agoWe have an epidemic of statistically unlikely things that people get disproportionately worried about, but this one needs more punching up to capture the public’s imagination.