About Us

Welcome to Parents Corner, a resource aimed at parents seeking a no-nonsense guide to understanding the use of cellphones by the youth.

Some of the issues we will cover are:

  • Is it a good idea to give my child a cellphone, even if it is just to make emergency calls?
  • Should I be concerned that my child spends every evening on his or her cellphone chatting with friends?
  • I got this huge bill this month, how do I find out where these charges come from?
  • Someone is sending bullying SMS messages to my child, what can I do about this?

We recognise that parenting is not easy and that the cellphone has added to the generation gap, especially if you as a parent are perplexed by mobile technology and just can’t get the gist of why thumb culture is so appealing to today’s youth.  Parents Corner aims to provide you with a toolbox to better equip you to make informed parenting decisions when it comes to cellphones. The only way for parents to close the technological generation gap is to use the mobile technology tools that their children use.

To get started, simply go to the topic that most concerns you or visit our blog for our most recent feature article.

Editorial Team

ParentsCorner is collaborative educational project between an educational psychologist and a team of mobile industry practitioners.

Editor

Samantha van Putten provides editorial direction for Parents Corner. She is the marketing and communications manager at BulkSMS.com and has many years of experience in the mobile industry.

Feature Writers

Megan Lagerwey is an Honours student from the University of Cape Town with a triple major in Film production, Theory and Media.  She spent time as an intern at BulkSMS.com whereafter she was hired as the communications assistant and now writes content for various platforms including the BulkSMS.com website and ParentsCorner. She has also written for the VARSITY newspaper, Tech Cape Town and Tech Jo’burg.

Dr Pieter Streicher is the managing director of BulkSMS.com. Pieter regularly writes articles providing advice to consumers and businesses on mobile billing, responsible messaging and the mobile internet. From 2005 – 2009 he sat on the management committee of the Wireless Application Service Provider Association (WASPA), the body that regulates the South African mobile messaging industry. He has also been active in WASPA’s CodeCom, the committee that puts in place the Code of Conduct and Adverting Rules for the local mobile industry.

Glen Thompson writes extensively on mobile messaging and has worked on many projects researching the impact of ICTs on society and the economy. He works on the compliance desk at BulkSMS.com.

Previous guest bloggers are:

Vanessa Clark is the co-founder of Mobiflock, www.mobiflock.com, a mobile safety and security company offering a suite of services for businesses, individuals and parents. She’s a startup junkie, ran her own public relations agency, is ex-Clickatell and Band-X, and was a London-based telecoms journalist in the olden days before blogs, Facebook and Twitter. She doesn’t like marketing weasel words, but does like people making information flow more easily and safely around the world. She especially likes being in the mobile industry in Africa.

Wilmie van Tonder studied Social Work at Stellenbosch University. She has provided family reunification and foster care services, worked on children’s court cases, and run staff wellness and HIV counseling debriefing programmes. Wilmie has five years of experience in her field and works out of FAMSA’s George office.

Hannelie Kotze is an Educational Psychologist. Hannelie focuses on children and adolescents, mainly in the area of behavioural problems, teenage depression, learning disorders, school readiness, autistic spectrum disorders, trauma counselling, forensic assessments and play therapy. She has presented talks at conferences, facilitates workshops on parenting, discipline, ADHD and play therapy. Hannelie has 10 years of experience in special education and is now in private practice at Milnerton Medi-Clinic.