So, I'm gonna get pretty vulnerable here: ever since I got a Gabb phone, I've felt a huge lack of trust towards my parents and I feel isolated and left out in school. Some of my friends have bullied me because of my Gabb phone. Gabb claims that social media is harmful for kids' mental health, but I'm not a kid anymore. Furthermore, the Gabb phone has taken a worse toll on my mental health than I can possibly imagine a normal phone could.

I've burst out crying in front of my friends multiple times because I've seen all the cool things their phones can do, and how much better they work. I feel like if I'm not constantly on edge about what I'm texting my friends, my conversations will be sent to my mom and she'll punish me for things I thought I was telling my friends in confidentiality. I would give up all the money I own, sell my Nintendo switch, get rid of all my squishmallows, delete my YouTube channel and never be allowed to leave the house alone if it means that I'd be allowed to get just a reasonable amount of privacy.

Like many other teenagers, I am subjected to using a Gabb Phone. This device became an issue due to its subpar performance and intrusive features. The phone constantly fails to send and receive messages, proving to be a major inconvenience for me. What is more concerning is its excessive monitoring feature, which allows parental access to "harmful messages", which are simply normal conversations one would have as a teenager. These messages being deemed as "harmful" by the system seriously hinders my freedom of expression and significantly reduces the trust between me and my mother who enforced the use of this phone. To add insult to injury, the phone restricts access to a broad range of apps, leaving me with almost none to use.

The Gabb Phone is marketed as a safe device for children and teenagers, focusing on minimalist technology that encourages real life interaction and aims to protect children from harmful content online. But in reality, it is taking away our basic rights to privacy and normal communication, creating a toxic environment of distrust and resentment among families who use it.

I, along with many other inconvenienced and frustrated teenagers demand an end to the sale of Gabb Phones. We also urge parents to reconsider the implications of imposing such intrusive devices on teenagers. Our privacy should not be compromised under the guise of protection. Let us end the usage of Gabb Phones and transition to devices that respect our privacy and freedom.

Please sign this petition so I can get a functional phone and hopefully repair the broken trust I have with my parents now.

My amazing friend wrote this essay on why she thinks the Gabb phone is harmful to my mental health:

My friend Sophie was opening her presents on her 13th birthday, but she was extremely disappointed when she opened her gift and got a Gabb phone. Her mother said she would do, "Bad things", on a normal phone, even though Sophie is in all advanced classes and is on AB honor roll and has no suspension record. 

The Gabb phone is described as a safe phone by parents, because kids cannot download social media apps or any apps at all, leaving with the basic apps such as messages, phone, calendar, clock, camera and other apps that barely even work. Having little to no apps can lead kids to feeling even more left out seeing their friends be able to play games and even check how their family is doing on social media, even more than the fact that they have a Gabb phone in the first place. The Gabb phone also doesn't allow any sort of search engine so kids can't look up a basic question or research something for hence, a school project. The music app that is featured of the phone does not allow you to search up songs, most of the time you have to wait and hope a good song comes on. Also on the Gabb phone the messages app is extremely restricted. Let's say the child's friend says the word, "idiot", which is not even that bad of a word, it would instantly flag and alert the parent, leading the kid to feel like they are constantly being watched and having no privacy.

There are also many things wrong with the phone itself. On the calculator app there is no backspace button so the only way to make a new equation is to restart the entire phone. The pictures app gives you no ability to crop images or edit them. On the notes app it constantly deletes the notes for no reason. Also when you try to text somebody half the time the messages don't even send and when one message doesn't go through it cause the phone to crash. When it crashes you can't receive or send out phone calls, text messages can't be seen and they won't go through, and the brightness turns up all the way. The only way to fix this is to restart the entire phone multiple times. There have been many occurrences where my friend has had to restart her phone over 10 times a day because it crashed.

Even though letting your kid have access to every single app and website on the internet can seem scary the Gabb phone is not the only way to fix it. Many phones have parental controls that can put a filter on what your child searches and also what apps the kids download. Also many apps have parental controls themselves, such as YouTube and Spotify. Another solution is just checking your kids phone every once in a while to make sure they are not getting in any trouble. Buying a normal phone and putting parental controls on that is way better than limiting the child to being able to do absolutely nothing on a Gabb phone.