Year 7 - mobile phones!

Do you know yet where your DS is likely to go to Secondary and where you will be living? Appreciate your concerns but it is (around here) very much an essential for travel - DD is in Year 7 and goes in by bus and on after school clubs day by train. They get delays and on the occasion the bus gets stuck in a narrow road in a hamlet if people have parked idiotically. We have a Life360 (free) app on her phone so can track where she is. V useful as well when she is out with friends at the weekend.

As other PPs have mentioned, homework set in apps are common over here. They’ll also share pictures and photo’s of classwork.

DD got her first phone in Year 6 to get used to it. Obviously you need to put internet protection on it and website restrictions. Phone providers can help with that.

While it’s been great in many ways, the WhatsApp groups aren’t always and drama gets brought home, kids can be arseholes! They all have had internet and social networking classes at school but I’ve also got her a book on managing your digital interactions. They all seem to manage their social lives and get together by their phones though so DS could miss out if he doesn’t have one. We did insist that she give us her password and her messages get surreptiously checked by me weekly just to make sure all is ok!

At our school the teacher often puts the homework up on the board and says take a pic as that's your homework.

The kids are expected to have school related apps on their phone.

My Ds listens to music to and from school on the bits where he's on his own. I see other kids doing the same.

Give him a phone for Year 7. He'll be 'different' enough, moving countries, and you want him to fit in.

We gave our son a phone for Christmas in Year 7. I trust him with it but we really ration his time with it. We take it away at night and he only has it for short periods at weekends.

He uses it to do homework, text his friends and ask what the homework is, etc. Our son is quite shy and I was very keen that he wasn't the odd one out, so I got him a decent phone and it's worked brilliantly.

Part of growing up is learning how to cope with technology in a mature way.

I'm not a big fan of kids having phones too young, but I agree with others that Y7 is pretty essential. At DS's school they not only use them throughout the day for accessing teacher emails and school info, they use them in lessons sometimes as well. His day to day life really would be quite tricky without a phone. Plus he wouldn't be able to join in things like the class WA group (a lot of the chat is pretty inane, but it's still a way of keeping in touch and can be quite useful). Plus it's very practical for me - I have to collect him from school, so being able to message him about pick up times and locations, and see where he is on the school site, is really helpful. He does spend a bit too much time playing games on it, but generally it hasn't been too bad. I have a very strict no phone in the bedroom rule, and I reserve the right to check it randomly.

I'm more concerned by the fact that my other son is now the only boy in his Y5 class without a phone, and has been for some time (this is a fact, not just him telling me!). And several have got their own YouTube channels and TikTok accounts.

As other posters have said so much is done via phones from homework to social life so kids would be excluded without one. Unfortunately phones are a reality and kids have to learn to use them responsibly so I'm not sure restricting access is the answer - our dc have both have them (14 and 11) but we try to get them to use them sensibly and with clear boundaries.

If you’re that concerned why not give him a “brick” phone? Our school doesn’t let the children travel to school with internet- enabled phones anyway.

But he will almost certainly be the “odd one out” if all his friends have one, and they probably will.

OP, you are fooling yourself if you think by not giving your son access to a mobile phone until he is 13 will prevent him from accessing stuff online - he will simply use a friends phone or a friend will show him stuff anyway.

educate your son and don't hamper his changes to socialise, he will possibly stand out and be teased for not having one.

Fine with restrictions

Ds’s homework is via an app mostly on his phone. You can put restrictions on the internet and apps that can be downloaded/videos watched.

In my DS's year 8 they tend to use gaming to communicate rather than phone. Far more of an issue in our house.

Although DC's school does not mandate that students have a mobile phone, it is much harder for DC without one to access the school curriculum. Teachers send emails during the day, their homework and reference material is online, they use the phone to take photos and to use various apps.

Also, all my DC's social activities are now organised on WhatsApp etc. They would most definitely be missing out socially without their own phones.

DD is in y7, she got a phone at the end of Y6 and was one of the last ones out of her friends. They spend a lot on it in the first couple of weeks but they soon get bored imo. That's been the case with us anyway. She spends longer on the iPad watching YouTube videos or Netflix so we struggle with that more than the phone.

my y7 dd has a mobile phone, we loaded it with the Our Pact app, so I can monitor her phone usage and restrict certain bits if needed. could you do that?