MY HEART leapt into my mouth the other day.
I was sitting on my bed with my little family. It was one of those rare moments of peace. I was paging through the weekend papers, my last chance before the next week’s news deluge. One child was playing with her new doll, forcefully stuffing a dummy into its mouth. The other two were having a moment on each of their parents’ cell phones: my son playing games on his dad’s device, and my daughter, I thought, looking at photos on mine. Both are iPhones.
Mine I use only as a phone. For financial reasons, I haven’t changed my Vodacom contract to include the ability to download data.
Or so I thought.
But, then, I heard a baby’s cries from my phone and looked up to see my daughter watching a YouTube video. Funny that. It must be a download that has always been on my phone. Not thinking much more about it, I drifted off into another news story. Suddenly, the words “cunnilingus fellatio” emanated from my daughter’s hands.
Holy guacamole! I hurled myself across the bed and snatched the phone away from her before she had the chance to ask “Mummy what do those words mean?”
How on earth did that happen? I am not sure yet, but it appears Vodacom has changed my contract without my permission. A new handset shouldn’t imply new contract conditions.
It’s clear my daughter was able to download videos onto my phone — inappropriate ones too. I’m impressed how intuitive the thing is and how easily my daughter found her away around my phone. But I’m deeply disturbed by what she was able to access.
Once I’ve had the chance to recover from the fact that my six-year-old has watched her first porn movie, I will find the energy to fight with my service provider and put a parental restriction on my phone.
In the meantime, they are banned from using our phones.

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