Terms and conditions of this iPhone gift

This doc­u­ment is an “End User Agree­ment” that my kids found stapled to their presents un­der the Christ­mas tree last month. Ser­i­ously.

I think some of you may ap­pre­ci­ate it..

End User Terms and Conditions Agreement for Allocated Gifts

The gift con­tained herein (“Gift”) shall be used with­in the para­met­ers of all stand­ard, ex­cep­tion­al, and po­ten­tially here­to­fore non-ex­ist­ing Evard Fam­ily (“Us”) policies. The gift re­cip­i­ent (“You”) is re­spons­ible for ad­her­ence to these policies. Open­ing of the gift, in­clud­ing peek­ing, rat­tling, and sniff­ing of the pack­age, shall in­dic­ate ac­cept­ance of this Al­loc­ated Gift Terms and Con­di­tions Agree­ment (“T&Cs”), even if you didn’t real­ize it at the time.

The ex­ist­ence of this Agree­ment in no way im­plies that the gift con­tained herein is an elec­tron­ic device. It might be a tie. Or a pet rock with Hello Kitty stick­ers. All terms of this Agree­ment ap­ply to all gifts.

If Gift Hap­pens To Be A Mo­bile Device (“Phone”): The Gift is, tech­nic­ally, not Yours. It is on loan to you. This is mostly be­cause we’re pay­ing the monthly bill, but also be­cause you must un­der­stand we may in­spect the Gift at any time. Gift must have a passcode. The passcode must al­ways be shared with Us. You must not flaunt Gift in pub­lic. Gift is primar­ily for us to reach you dur­ing emer­gen­cies and for co­ordin­a­tion. Thus, al­ways an­swer the Gift if We call.

All voice, text and data us­age must full with­in the monthly use plan. You may not use Gift to cre­ate Wi-Fi hot­spots. Gift is not for use at night or in bed. Gift shall be turned over to Us at bed­time, or put in­to ap­pro­pri­ate char­gers far away from bed.

Gift shall not be used to com­mu­nic­ate with your friends, us­ing any form of me­dia, between 9pm and 7am. All pho­tos You take shall be synced in­to the fam­ily photo al­bum. No nekkid pho­tos of You or any­one else. Or private parts of You or any­one else. Ever.

All syncing shall be done to the main fam­ily com­puter. Mu­sic may not be so loud that oth­ers can hear it from your ear­buds while they are on. All us­age of Gift shall be reas­on­able and re­spons­ible, as defined by Us, at any mo­ment. You shall look up oc­ca­sion­ally.

If Gift Hap­pens to be able used for So­cial Me­dia, Tex­ting, and oth­er In­ter­nety Things: All use of So­cial Me­dia must be pre-ap­proved by Us. You will in­clude us or one of our adult friends in your Friends list and circles. Sorry. Use of So­cial Me­dia and the net shall only be al­lowed when your home­work is com­plete, un­less the Fam­ily Rules of Screen Time Track­ing are in place and you have earned time for wast­ing.

You shall not giggle in­cess­antly when tex­ting, or oth­er­wise be­have in a way that makes oth­ers near You feel left out, in­clined to strangle you, or both. You shall not com­mu­nic­ate with oth­ers in ways that you would not do in per­son, if an adult were in the room with you. You should as­sume that whatever you send will prob­ably be read by someone you don’t in­tend. Like Us. Or His Mom. Or your Fu­ture Em­ploy­er.

You may not vis­it porn sites, or any sites that re­quire you to be 18 years or older. No sex­ting, ever. Snapchat is right out. All so­cial me­dia, web his­tory, and com­mu­nic­a­tion streams on all devices are sub­ject to audit at any time. Mul­ti­task­ing is a lie.

If Gift Hap­pens to Be A Pet Rock: No break­ing win­dows. Keep it well-fed and groomed.

You are re­spons­ible for: char­ging of Gift caring for Gift re­place­ment costs, should you flush Gift or oth­er­wise make it un­us­able be­ing a reas­on­able hu­man be­ing and grow­ing up in­to a re­spons­ible adult

Not fol­low­ing the rules will res­ult in (1st of­fense, 2nd of­fense, etc):

  • a stern warn­ing pub­lic ri­dicu­lous of use of Gift
  • 1 day: loss of use of Gift
  • 1 week: Gift be­ing held by Us and only loaned to You when we need to be able to call you or feed your rock
  • 1 month: re­mov­al of wire­less ser­vice and/or net­work ac­cess and/or power from Gift
  • 1 month: loss of use of Gift
  • trans­ition of You back to pa­per-based com­mu­nic­a­tion and en­ter­tain­ment

P.S. You may be won­der­ing how this went over with the kids.

Roughly:

  • Our 12-year-old in­tro­ver­ted daugh­ter: “Ok. Duh.”
  • Our 12-year-old ex­tro­ver­ted daugh­ter: “YAY!! This is great! Wait. NINE PM? WHAT? But Yay! Wait. MUL­TI­TASK­ING IS NOT A LIE! What? ON MY FRIEND LIST?”
  • Our 15-year-old geeky de­tail-ori­en­ted son: “Dad, you are so weird.”