Yes, text uses less bandwidth than vox, but web access uses even more. Unless you can just text directly to facebook.

I'll be frank- I don't text. I tried to find a phone plan that doesn't even have the capability. I don't use facebook, which I consider the land of kids and pervs and makes youtube look like a classy place. So maybe there is a leap of logic here that I'm missing.

But I still think that the kids should be spanked, and the parents put in the stocks.

I also do not text, but I do use my cell (Blackberry) to retrieve email when away from my laptop. I've only sent a couple emails from the cell, but once typed they were on the street quickly. That said, for an emergency, I would still need for someone to open the email and then do the right thing. Perhaps the email could tell them what to do. . . like call 9-1-1.

My Blackberry has GPS, would pinging it get a location?

My $10 says that they were trying to avoid getting in trouble by getting help from their friends instead of calling 000. This is typical of kids.

You can, according to http://www.facebook.com/mobile/ :

Facebook Mobile Texts

• Update your status or send messages to friends using texts from your mobile.

I don't much either, but I think not having the capability is foolish, for the reason given earlier: text often gets through when voice doesn't. They use a different system, based on store-and-forward, that can exploit brief moments of signal.

I wonder if the little twits tried to contact 000 via text?

But I think Thseng was probably correct. Like they thought some other 10-yr-old would be able to track them down and get them out.

Dogs are SO much simpler! And they don't crayon on the walls.

Yea, but dogs lack the capability of higher reasoning

and they don't have thumbs to hold a cell phone . . .

That's not necessarily the case with SMS (text) messages and I would myself give SMS a try even if voice didn't work. That might not even be true with data on all networks.


There have been various oddball cases of this sort for three decades now, long enough for dispatchers to realize it might be real - someone on IRC having a heart attack or whatever and a call being made to the police department from another continent.

As far as a facebook friend alerting police, that's not surprising at all. That's the real world to kids, and they might be shocked at the thought that an old guy like me might see the note and *not* call 911.


Dealing with kids is often a matter of overcoming many "special learning challenges", sometimes theirs, sometimes yours. I grew up in the pre-Internet and pre-cellphone Darkness and there are a lot cases like this where I am reminded that the "generation gap" is very real.


The parents are likely as surprised as everyone else. The kids may know of the Australian 911 but used Facebook because that's what they always do - you don't call someone and talk when you want to tell them something: you text them or post a Facebook comment!

A lot of kids these days don't ever *talk* on cell-phones. I work with college-age kids and it's not that unusual to call, ringringring voicemail, then text and get an instant reply.

The whole thing is amusing but makes a very real point for anyone attempting to teach kids about this stuff: they really are growing up in a very different world than we did and you have to understand their world if you want to teach them to do things the "right" way, since your predicate life assumptions aren't the same as theirs.

"Yea, but dogs lack the capability of higher reasoning"

From what I see, so do many kids. My dog has put "Find the treat!" together with "Do you want to play ball?", so when I told her to "Find the ball", she started scouring the field for her tennis ball and found it. And I'm sure if someone took her into a sewer drain, she could find her way out.

Dog, 2
Kids, 0

"and they don't have thumbs to hold a cell phone . . ."

YES!!!

I was at a small party the other day, with 2 infant, 2 pregnant ladies, and my non-preggo GF. Lots of cooing going on, and I was about insane.

I agree about dogs. Though someone once said that having a kid is like buying a dog that slowly learns to talk.

I've been chewing that one over for a while.