should kids in jr high school have cell phones

I will be arguing that kids in junior high school should not have cell phones. Unfortunately this is only a one-round debate, so my contentions will go unrefuted, whereas I will have time to address and rebut my opponent's arguments. He first claims that "If junior high kids did not have cell phones it would not be very fun for the students. "This is an interesting jump for kids to students, as not all students are kids and not all kids are students -- I think it would be fascinating to find a non-kid as a student in junior high school, but I digress. First, my opponent appears to be suggesting that "it" isn't fun for students without cell phones. What is "it"? School? If it's school, then the obvious response is that (1) school is not intended to be fun; it's intended as a place to hone young minds and equip them with the tools they need to grow and flourish into responsible, intelligent adults (2) why would you want to use a cell phone in school, where students are already prone to distraction? It would merely enable students to hold background conversations while they should be listening to their teachers and allow them to, if they so choose, cheat and (3) does not contribute to their learning in any way -- if it did contribute, Pro has not provided us with how it does, so we must assume that it dos not. There's also the point that "fun" is subjective and some students may find school fun, any way, simply because they love to learn. I happened to be one of these kids, actually. If Pro is simply making a general statement that having cell phones is fun, then the same basic reasoning applies: (1) fun is subjective (2) fun is not an argument unto itself; just because something is fun doesn't mean you should do it. For instance, toilet-papering a house is fun, but that doesn't mean that I should do it (3) it is possible to have fun without a cell phone (4) you can't exactly miss what you have never been exposed to, so saying that "it would not be fun" is simply unfounded (5) the negative ramifications -- cheating, distractions, etc. -- outweigh the benefits. Pro then claims that cell phones would be useful tools, but gives us only one example: communication. First, to communicate with whom? Their friends while they are still in class? I've demonstrated why this is potentially dangerous. How about with their parents? This is ostensibly plausible, but not only is there not a need for it -- in junior high school, many students either take the bus home, carpool with their friends, or have their parents pick them up, anyway -- but the negative ramifications, again, outweigh the benefits. Communication during the school day merely invites problems, especially when we're discussing junior high school students, who are by definition young and immature. Now that I have refuted my opponent's contentions, I will offer my own:1. Junior High Students are Young and ImmatureThis merely goes without saying, and people can look back to their junior high days when they were about 11, 12, or 13 and consider what they did when they were in school. This is a matter of trusting these children with a device that is potentially dangerous and could potentially cost their parents quite a pretty penny.2. Monetary Cost-Benefit AnalysisCell phone bills are VERY expensive. While it could be "fun" to have a cell phone -- again, fun is subjective -- there is no evidence whatsoever that it is NECESSARY. Young children do not need a fun for communication or for any other reason because they are still minors and their parents still provide for them, so this is simply a waste of money for their parents, many of whom are already struggling amid this economy. This also gets to the point about maturity. Some phone plans -- mine, for instance, because I'm a poor PhD student who effectively lives in the Stone Age -- charge per text. Therefore, the kids are left either without texting, which takes the "fun" out of it, or because they're immature and disobedient to authority, they opt to text anyway even if their parents asked them not to, and cost their parents quite a lot of money. 3. Cell Phones are DangerousLet's ignore for a minute the cancer risks from cell phone radiation and so forth. Using a cell phone is effectively using an unbelievable tool whereby you can contact anyone in the world at any point in time. At the same time, people can contact you, can add your number to lists, can attempt to steal your identity, etc. Can we trust young children with that kind of responsibility? Pro has provided us with no reason why we should. ConclusionI have negated the resolution.