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AIBU?

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Original poster

Aibu to ask if you bought your child a dumbphone

59 replies

Jjiillkkf · 17/09/2024 08:44

Aibu to ask if you bought your child a dumb phone instead of a smartphone and how that went. Also, shamlessly - I'm looking for recommendations, are there any quality ones out there or are they all quite flimsy?

OP posts:
CaptainCarrotsBigSword · 17/09/2024 09:34

Thatmissingsock · 17/09/2024 09:28

Just buy a smartphone but effectively turn it into a dumbphone by using one of the apps like family link to disable a lot of the stuff. That way, you can ensure they still have access to any homework or study apps a secondary school might expect them to use, but you can block social media apps, youtube, the browser etc. You can set it up so that they can only really use it to call and send messages, and then have access to a few carefully chosen apps like school related ones. You can also really heavily restrict the screen time they can have on it.
Im sure people will claim their child managed to hack their way out of the app restrictions, but all the 11yr olds i know have this stuff set on their phone by parents now and none have yet tried to get round it, because its the norm as they all are restricted.
Even if in a year or 2 they start trying to get round the restrictions at least then they are just that bit older. I honestly think the longer that you can manage to stop them getting completely screen and social media/short content obsessed, the better.

Show quote history

This is my plan. I already have family link to control their tablets and they have shown no interest in trying to circumvent any of the controls. I'll also look into getting one of these SIM cards https://parentshield.co.uk/ which gives you a load more options to restrict / monitor use.

Original plan was to go dumb phone but I think a smartphone will be more useful for secondary (planning to get a phone at end of year 6) and will hopefully be less obvious to casual observers that she's got something different and therefore be a bit less chance of bullying.

ParentShield Child Safe SIM and Mobile Network for Children

Protect and educate mobile phone users with a ParentShield kids sim card. ParentShield has Special recording and monitoring features

https://parentshield.co.uk

Thatmissingsock · 17/09/2024 09:28

Jjiillkkf · 17/09/2024 08:44

Aibu to ask if you bought your child a dumb phone instead of a smartphone and how that went. Also, shamlessly - I'm looking for recommendations, are there any quality ones out there or are they all quite flimsy?

Just buy a smartphone but effectively turn it into a dumbphone by using one of the apps like family link to disable a lot of the stuff. That way, you can ensure they still have access to any homework or study apps a secondary school might expect them to use, but you can block social media apps, youtube, the browser etc. You can set it up so that they can only really use it to call and send messages, and then have access to a few carefully chosen apps like school related ones. You can also really heavily restrict the screen time they can have on it.
Im sure people will claim their child managed to hack their way out of the app restrictions, but all the 11yr olds i know have this stuff set on their phone by parents now and none have yet tried to get round it, because its the norm as they all are restricted.
Even if in a year or 2 they start trying to get round the restrictions at least then they are just that bit older. I honestly think the longer that you can manage to stop them getting completely screen and social media/short content obsessed, the better.

qualifiedazure · 17/09/2024 09:13

Yes, dumbphone (basic bombproof Nokia) aged 10 when they started going out alone.
No smartphone til 14.

Rhayader · 17/09/2024 09:02

Our school only allows two models so we had to pick one of those. We went for the Nokia.

CasperGutman · 17/09/2024 09:01

I bought my child a smartphone, but it's locked down. There are no social media apps on it. He uses it in exactly the same way he would a tablet computer and a dumb phone, except they're the same device.

quack276525 · 17/09/2024 08:54

Watching for recommendations!

No way is my DC getting unfettered access to the internet when I'm not around.

Octavia64 · 17/09/2024 08:47

Yes.

Nokia brick.

They got a smartphone eventually but the dumb phone was useful for phone calls (they cycled to school together from year 5).

Ozanj · 17/09/2024 08:46

You can disable safari / app downloads on iphones if you want them to have access to Uber / Google Maps

AngelicInnocent · 17/09/2024 08:45

How old is the child? I went straight for a smartphone but my DC didn't get them until secondary so a dumb phone didn't make sense.