Smartphones will soon be in the hand of every teen in Plano. Today, over 35% of teens now own them and growth is occurring at a 15% annual clip; making it a reality that nearly every Texas teenager will own a smartphone by 2016.

Smartphones are signs of progress but they also bring serious dangers. Particularly, smartphones are now the worst spreaders of cyber-bullying, which affects hundreds of thousands of Texas, as well as texting while driving, sexting, and dangerous applications. The statistics don’t fuel much optimism:

90% of teen-aged kids report seeing or experiencing cyber-bullying; with much of it taking place over mobile devices.

3,000 teens died in distracted driving accidents last year, which made texting while driving the leading cause of teen deaths nationwide.

At least 25% of teens sext or distribute sexual pictures via mobile devices. One such picture sharing service, Snapchat, added 3.5 million users just in December 2012.

Parents need answers. This blog post seeks to provide them: discussing the best free solution to keep your child safe: MMGuardian.

For parents whose children use Android smartphones, MMGuardian Parental Control is the best option. MMGuardian is free as a basic product and parents can set text alerts for words or phrases of concern, choose whether to turn the Safe Driving feature on to prevent their child from texting while behind the wheel, choose whether to block certain applications and contacts on the phone, and schedule location and lock times for the device. MMGuardian also lets parents control their child’s phone remotely; setting up instant locks and locating their teens from anywhere just by sending simple text commands from their own administration phone.