If you'd prefer to not give your child a phone, you can get a free Google Voice account, which will provide a phone number for voice & text.

With it, you can send & receive unlimited text messages for free and even have incoming text messages forwarded to an email account of your choosing.

This would enable your child to participate, yet not have the same exposure (financial & otherwise) of a regular cell phone.

Dandy

http://www.google.com/voice/
(No affiliation, just a long-time user.)

Last edited by Dandy; 10/05/12 02:38 AM. Reason: 1st post smelled spammy - sorry!
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