AIBU to take my Year 7 daughter's smartphone away completely?

Honestly, I don’t think any 12 year olds should have smart phones so I’d remove it anyway, but not as a punishment. Look on the Smartphone free childhood website for some advice and support about removing phones.

Full disclosure, I don’t believe in rewards and punishment at all as they lead to secretive bad behaviour and performative good behaviour, not real change. I think you might need a serious relational intervention, maybe even some family therapy to help work out how you can talk about your concerns and have her really understand where you’re coming from, and for you to understand her and what she’s dealing and why she’s behaving like this. She needs help and support, and needs to feel loved, liked and accepted for who she is so she doesn’t have to search for that in the wrong places.

She's 12 and clearly not mature enough to handle having unsupervised access to social media/the Internet.

Also more worryingly she's creating indecent photos of children, albeit herself, you have no idea whether she's being exploited and where those photos are being shared.

She’s proven many times that she’s not mature enough to have a smart phone and that won’t change after a month of banning an app. You’re definitely right to remove the smartphone completely, and I wouldn’t give it back until 16 given her maturity levels and how easily she’s been influenced. Maybe she can get a very simple phone for texting but ensure it can’t download any apps or take photos. There are so many creeps online looking to meet underage girls like this, as awful as that is you need to be proactive.

I’d speak to the school for advice. You might also want to read this or even show it to your DD. Some schools have the police in to give a talk:

https://childlawadvice.org.uk/information-pages/sexting/#:~:text=In%20the%20UK%20the%20age,Protection%20of%20Children%20Act%201978.

“In the UK the age of consent for sexual intercourse is 16. However, it is an offence to make, distribute, possess or show any indecent images of anyone aged under 18, even if the content was created with the consent of that young person. The law is contained in Section 1 Protection of Children Act 1978. ‘Indecent’ is not defined in legislation. When cases are prosecuted, the question of whether any photograph of a child is indecent is for a jury, magistrate or district judge to decide.
Indecent imagery does not always mean nudity; however, images are likely to be defined as such if they meet one or more of the following criteria:

• nude or semi-nude sexual posing (e.g. displaying genitals and/or breasts or overtly sexual images of young people in their underwear)”

Following....I could have writted this post myself. Almost word for bloody word!

With an Apple phone set up using the family link you can delete her camera to stop any photos

we did this with ds as I didn’t want to give him a basic phone with no tracking or apple pay etc as they were really useful features for paying for his school bus

if you need help with Apple parental settings feel free to pm me

This ⬆️.
Please take notice, OP.

Smartphone Free Childhood has some useful resources. One of the stories they shared was about a family who removed their daughter's smartphone.

https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org/resource/community-stories-annie

It's so worrying.
As pp have said, the OP needs to contact the SL at school because of the images she's sharing.
The parents seem to give in to "mithering", but this is serious.

I know. Is this another "we pick our battles" parent?

You can make an iphone properly dumb, our son can only access his stars app (alternative to texting so we can view all and any convos on our phones), a few games and his hearing aid app. It doesn’t have safari, camera etc.

The pictures is really worrying, if any have been shared thats a criminal offense. Beyond that, its a worry she thinks its a good/possibly gave in to pressure.

Fuck me, 12 years old and sexting her ‘boyfriend’.

Come on op, who's in charge here??

Get rid of her phone, restrict her internet access (laptop in the living room for homework and online stuff where you can see screens, fully explain that you can see and access all her files, history etc). If the general bad behaviour stuff continues, put further consequences in place!

Take her phone (and her!) to the police station and explain about the bra pictures (may end up classified as child pornography, which is illegal). See if you can get police to speak to her about this, it being illegal, grooming patterns etc. then leave the phone with them for any investigation that needs to occur (if she's shared these photos and there's potential older kids or adults receiving or coercing her into take them hopefully police will do something).
Let school know all this is going on, that they've got full permissions to confiscate any phones seen in her use, and that if confiscated they should only return them to you when you get round to going to school to collect them.

Lots of time at home doing offline stuff, ideally with your family, but could also try to rope in family friends or other friends you know aren't encouraging that behaviour. Perhaps put her in some clubs to help her make friends too. Stuff like board games, painting, cards games, crafts, baking, sports in the garden etc. stuff she probably enjoyed a year or two ago! Make a big effort to also be engaging in these with her, and not using your phone in your downtime (maybe a locked box to put them in?) don't be afraid of her getting board, but make sure she does have actual options of things to do in the house without the internet (Eg physical recipe books, art kits with instructions, teach her how to play cards from written rules etc)

I'd also suggest you maybe want a project to work on together as proper bonding time, maybe something you can dangle as a carrot for good behaviour, something like a bedroom makeover? That could also do double duty as a couple of weeks in you could have a big clearout of all her old stuff, donate some stuff, reorganise etc. (which can effectively function a bit like a search, if you are concerned about her hiding stuff).

Do you know these friends.. Sounds like a proper feral school 😬

Her choice. She has that or nothing.

I’m a HT and safeguarding lead in a secondary school. We are banning smartphones on the school site from September for all students in Y 7-11.
Read Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation if you’ve got any doubts that this is the right course of action.

Schools are no longer allowed to do this. What they access must be able to be done on school computers or at home. Children should not be accessing their own devices at school. This is part of the new guidelines. No child requires a phone for school.

I would be really, really concerned about the repeated overly sexual behaviour. Look at it this way, at the school my family member works at, if school were made aware of all of this they would be making a safeguarding referral urgently as her behaviour does raise massive red flags of abuse. I would recommend you approaching your safeguarding lead for advice on this, to be honest. She is so young still for all of this. It could just be other factors, for sure. But please dont rule out the idea that she may have been exposed to stuff you dont know about.

My 14 yo has started going into town at the weekends. She loves it! She’s not always great at answering the phone so the tracker gives us much-needed reassurance. When I was 14 I had a job on Saturday afternoons, kids these days don’t get that opportunity unfortunately.

Wow, this is tough. I do think this needs to be taken away from her and her time needs to be filled with family and extra curricular activities. How we’re supposed to do this when working full time and the kids don’t want to do them is anyone’s guess though.

Who are these friends, do you know them? I’d want to get to know them and their parents.

I’m actually wondering if a change of school would help here? She’s young to be in with the wrong crowd and if it’s like this at 12 it’ll be a nightmare at 14/15.

@ExasperatedIs don’t reward your daughters behaviour by buying her an Apple Watch. All you are doing is reinforcing her reliance on tech and showing her that you are able to be manipulated and unable to hold boundaries. She doesn’t need a smart phone, just a means of keeping in touch with you and her friends.
Try speaking with her and finding out why she feels the need to post semi naked photos of herself and work to build her self esteem. Often a lot of bad behaviour is the result of lack of self confidence so they act up to try and boost their self esteem and appear confident and popular amongst their peers.

Brick phone.
Maybe allow fully supervised access to a smart phone for half an hour in the evening, if her behaviour is good enough.
Let school know your concerns and what you are doing. They need to be keeping an eye out too, and they might put in some assemblies/similar about what can happen to pictures online.
Were there signs of her friends also behaving in this way?

Oh definitely come down hard on her. She’s lying and being sneaky. Take the phone away.

Parents often jump straight to “take the phone away” or “monitor everything,” but the deeper issue is usually skill building, emotional regulation, impulse control, understanding online risks and respecting boundaries.

Removing the phone buys time. Monitoring adds safety. But the long‑term solution is teaching the child how to handle digital independence safely.

Based on what you’ve described, I would be removing the phone. She has shown clear safeguarding concerns and has also demonstrated that she isn’t currently mature enough to manage a phone safely or responsibly.

I would also put appropriate consequences in place for the disrespectful behaviour and attitude you’ve mentioned. Boundaries need to be consistent and meaningful.

When the time comes to consider giving her a phone again, I would strongly recommend using a ParentShield SIM.

It looks like a standard SIM in the child’s phone, but in the background the parent has full oversight. It records calls, texts, and activity on apps you choose to allow, giving you complete control over her phone usage and keeping you informed of any risks.

I work with families and vulnerable children, and ParentShield has prevented a wide range of unsafe and even criminal behaviours. For children who are not yet able to self-regulate online, it can be an essential safeguarding tool.