Not allowing a smartphone for year 7

[stuckinarutatwork]

Has anyone been brave enough to not allow their year 7 child to have a smartphone?
I'm considering my options for DD who will start year 7 in September. To date, she's not had any phone, but does have an iPod touch: I haven't allowed her to have social media apps though and I won't allow them until she's 13 or whatever their minimum age is). She's allowed to use iMessage with school friends / family.
I don't really see the necessity for a smartphone at age 11. They're not allowed to use them in school and she could have a basic phone for urgent calls / texts should she need to contact us during the day.
But equally, I'm aware that she may well be the only child without one at the negative social implication of this, so I'm interested to hear others' views and experiences.

Mine started year7 with a second hand Iphone. Now in year 10. It's well looked after. All the kids have a smartphone. The jump from primary to secondary is massive. The girls especially will be using their phones for Snapchat and TikTok! And countless WhatsApp messages....about absolutely nothing in particular. Also as parent if she's late home I can see if she's on her way or stopped at a friends (because they don't exactly tell you) and not worry or disturb her.

I sent my first son to secondary without a phone. After 3 weeks we did a complete turnaround. I felt strongly I was socially disadvantaging him. The thing that swayed it for me was when I said to him that I wanted him to be chatting with others on the school bus and not staring at a phone...he told me ‘but there’s no one to talk to mum. They’re all looking at their phones’. At that point I thought I’m putting my issues with screens onto him. It’s a different world now to when I went to school and I can’t judge it by that. Also his peers were all on WhatsApp groups and discussing chats from the previous evening which he wasn’t privy too. He’s Yr 9 now and I bought his year 7 brother a phone after his SATS (that never were) as I wanted the excitement of having a phone to be out of his system before he went to secondary. I’ll do the same with my next child in 2 years time.

I sent my first son to secondary without a phone. After 3 weeks we did a complete turnaround. I felt strongly I was socially disadvantaging him.

And I guess that's exactly the point I was making to @JMarion1981. It's really easy to have all these theories and principles when your kids are younger, but the reality is a bit different, a) because your child will have real feelings and b) because your child will have insights and arguments that you haven't previously considered.

Any decent parent listens to their kids, keeps an open mind and re-evaluates when they need to. You can't just stick to your guns no matter what. Just as you changed your mind on the actual phone, @LazyDoll, I changed my stance on the timelines for letting dd have certain social media, primarily because I realised that her arguments for letting her have them were actually better than my arguments against.

Sticking rigidly to an arbitrary policy when you can't adequately justify your position will just make you look like a bit of a dinosaur, and you run the risk that your child will lose trust in your judgement...especially when they see that their friends are not struggling with all the terrible things that you might say are associated with smartphones and social media. They will conclude that they know better than you do, and ultimately, that loss of trust could do more damage than any amount of technology or screen time.

So plan all you like while they're small, but my advice is to keep an open mind.

Totally agree. My son made a list of why he should have a phone and it was all very sensible and made a lot of sense. He now barely ever WhatsApps and pretty much just watches footy on it. I think it’s easy to have strong opinions on these topics until your children actually reach the stage where it’s a real decision to be made. Compromise and listening to their point of view and finding a workable solution everyone is happy with works much better in our household than sticking to your guns militantly.

Similar to LazyDoll my colleague was adamant her child would not have a smartphone when he started secondary school. Then she realised just how much phones were used by his peer group and how left out he was without.
Her son had a smartphone before half term.

When I was a child in the 80s my parents had a strict rule of no TV after 6pm. This was meant to be so I could spend time on my homework and other improving activities (TV being thought to rot the brain). This was all very well and good but meant at school I was labelled as the "weird" kid and was totally left out of conversations about such important things as "who shot JR". The only thing that saved me from total social oblivion was the "even more weird kid" whose family didn't have a TV at all. Point being, my parents were very well meaning in their decision, but hadn't really thought through how it would impact on me in practice. I think the smartphone question is similar.

UserTwice....SNAP!! I was allowed to pick a half hour of tv a day and that was it. I was left out of all the Grange Hill and Neighbours convos and I as sure as hell wasn’t putting my child through that ....kids are cruel...there’s no need to give them extra fuel!

My son is starting year 7 in September. We gave him (an old second hand) iPhone s at the beginning of year 6 when he started walking home alone. We have pretty strict limits about when he can use it and even more about his access to certain apps. He was obsessed to begin with but now the novelty has worn off and he just uses it to arrange meeting up with friends etc. It cost £40 second hand and he pays £6 a month out his pocket money for a contract.
They all have phones now and I think it will make her feel embarrassed of she doesn't have one.
Just don't buy the latest model for loads of money. Some of the kids at his school have way better phones than me which just seems crazy

@JMarion1981

I don’t get this. There are age limits for WhatsApp, Snapchat etc. An 11 year old is not meant to be on any of them.

The minimum age for WhatsApp is 16 but no one sticks to that.

My best friend was never allowed to watch Grange Hill. It pissed her off no end, especially as she could see that the rest of us weren't exactly turning into delinquents as a result of our exposure!

We all want to do the best for our kids, but sometimes, we can end up doing more harm than good because our decisions often have unintended consequences.

@JMarion1981

I don’t get this. There are age limits for WhatsApp, Snapchat etc. An 11 year old is not meant to be on any of them.

Do you currently have an 11 or 12 year old? I do and let me tell you that pretty much 95+% of y7 have whats app and communicate on it daily / weekly. I haven’t heard of a single child that by now doesn’t have a smart phone and what’s app The age May say 13 but in my view this is too late to be introducing it. By 13 many kids are shutting their parents out and lines of communication are reduced. I let my DD have what’s app in Y6 and many many important conversations were had around online safety and how to behave online. Also how to treat others and what to click on. Invaluable and at 10/11 they are very receptive to most advice. Not so much at 13+

[quote JMarion1981]@AlexaShutUp I don’t, though I should disclose that I have an axe to grind because we saw a massive deterioration in my DNs quality of life which led to my DSiS removing the phone. She misses out on some social stuff (not all) but equally does not have all the problems associated with phone use. I am not going to allow my DC to have one until at least 14 and hopefully older.[/quote]
You sound like one of those parents who before they had kids said ‘well my child won’t be watching any tv or screens until they are at least 5’
Or ‘when I have my baby, they will have milk and then be put in their cot and there they will stay until they’ve had at least 3 hours sleep.’
Hilarious. Come back to us when your child is in their first term at secondary school at 11 please and tell us how you are getting on.

And the even more ironic thing is- when your DC are ready for secondary school (however many years ahead that might be) phones will be even more needed and more heavily relied upon. In fact it may be wearable tech then that all the 11 year olds have rather than phones. Good luck!

@Quit4me Well ironically, I did say that about tv and I did stick to it :) As I said, I do have experience of this with my DN, who is actually fine despite some objections at the beginning. But it helps that my Dsis is not the only parent in the year who has removed phones. I appreciate that parenting teens is a two-way street, more so than small children, but I also note a lot of defensiveness on here. I think it's really important to keep questioning things and it's an important lesson to teach kids: just because everyone else is doing it, that doesn't make it ok. Particularly given that the social media companies issue age limits to protect children, because they can't remove all harmful content.

I say this too as someone who has gone through phases of being much too reliant on a smartphone. A few years ago I noticed that I hadn't read a book in months and it was really affecting my attention span. I think this is even worse for a child. I guess there will be some kids who aren't bothered about phones but there will be plenty who are totally glued to them. I really think there is nothing wrong with waiting a few extra years.

But regardless, I will keep an open mind. Perhaps in a couple of years the content will be better moderated and more controls possible.

@JMarion1981, no defensiveness here, I just think you're massively oversimplifying things. Parenting teenagers is not the same as parenting toddlers, and to put it bluntly, your dd is not your niece. She will have her own experiences, personality, strengths and weaknesses, and you will need to respond to those as she grows.

I'm totally with you that it isn't necessary to just follow what everyone else does. However, I don't think it's helpful to be too rigid about these things either. I have seen the impact of parents adopting that approach, and although their intentions are usually good, the outcomes usually aren't.

For dd, her phone and social media provide an easy and efficient way of keeping in contact and making arrangements with her friends, but she certainly isn't glued to it and neither are they. Yes, they have probably used their phones more than usual during lockdown, and I actually feel very sorry for any teens who have been isolated without a phone during this period - I wonder how your niece actually feels about this. In normal times, though, they're just too busy to be stuck to their phones all the time because they're out and about doing other stuff. The phone is just a tool to facilitate that stuff.

Ours didn't get a smart phone just a low grade phone until they could prove they were responsible enough for a upgrade.

I agree with UserTwice on this one: children may be cruel and that one 'strange' child who is different from the others because of not having a smartphone may be laughed at or just left out of all the fun conversations. Getting a smartphone that isn't that sophisticated and setting screen time limits is better than letting your child to be left out in my opinion.

This is such a difficult one. I want my DS to have a without SM, but I also want him to have strong and secure friendships. Basically, I want him to have my 1980s/1990s childhood!

My DS does have one, in part because there were 2 boys at my high school whose parents heavily restricted/prohibited their access to TV and I saw how being excluded from this shared social experience left them unable to properly fit in.

I was glad I had when, about 4 weeks after DS started High School, a few girls from his old class met up at the park, sent out a message on their WhatsApp group and it sort of organically evolved via old class WhatsApp groups to an impromptu whole class reunion. One parent took some photos when she collected her DS later and put them on the old class FB page. At this point it became apparent that one boy had accidentally been excluded. I had a very tearful conversation with his Mum about why no one phoned her so she could let her DS know and how he was ‘always being excluded from this sort of thing’. The truth was that, by year 7, the children were organising their own social lives and in typical 11 year olds thoughtlessness, most plans were made on the hoof and it rarely occurred to them to enlist an adult to extend invitations beyond WhatsApp. WhatsApp groups have replaced the phoning around and knocking on doors of our youth.

WhatsApp groups have replaced the phoning around and knocking on doors of our youth.

Part of the issue with knocking on doors is friends often aren't just down the road when it comes to high school these days. I don't know any teen who uses a landline, some Facetime, but most just use WhatsApp groups or messages. iMessage is a pain though, as a couple of kids when DD was in yr7 had phones with no credit, as their parents relied on iMessage, then friends with Android phones couldn't receive their messages, not sure if iMessage is different now.

Your daughter will be at a social disadvantage whether she has a smart phone or not if she's not allowed any kind of SM.

My parents were very strict growing up so of course that made me want things I wasn't allowed to have even more. So I have taken a very different approach with my children. I am very much its not a big deal so it isn't. I gave them iphones for the 11th birthdays when they were in year 6. Which may sound early to some but at 11 they were used to me being involved and I told them as part of it I would know their password and would check their phones sometimes. Which I still do even though they are almost 15. I think as well because they were very young they would come to me with any thing they were concerned about like bullying and I taught them how to deal with it. I think if you don't let your child learn about social media at the same time as her peers you put her at a disadvantage and she will be more vulnerable.
I also use find your phone so I can look at my phone to tell me where they are.

I think my DD needs one but she doesn't want one ! She's going to yr7 in September. They all get ipads through school. I'll get her what she wants then upgrade when she realizes she needs one .

I'm quite surprised how independent so many of your yr 6's are ! None of my dd's friends play out or meet up independently... although we are fairly isolated and rural and there isn't anyway for them to get together without us..

@AlexaNeverListens

Your daughter will be at a social disadvantage whether she has a smart phone or not if she's not allowed any kind of SM.

Possibly, but if no parent let their 11 year olds on SM it wouldn't be an issue. Are 11 year olds actually allowed on any SM? I think the age limit is usually 13. Parents aren't being particularly good role models if they let their children access things that they aren't old enough for (although I do understand why it happens anyway).

I wouldn't.

Agree @Frogartist. SM is associated with mental health problems and often has harmful content. That’s why the age restrictions exist. If none of the Y7s were on it wouldn’t be a problem.

Covid has actually thrown an interesting spanner into this discussion. There's another thread currently running about whether it's ok to let your 9 year old go to the park on their own. I see that discussion as quite linked to this one, and polarised by Covid.

Many parents have let their DC have more access to phones/technology/SM this year than they might otherwise have done so - because of remote learning and staying in touch with friends. Conversely, their DC have had fewer opportunities to go out and actually mix with other people. I do wonder if this will herald a shift to more socialising via online methods, and even less "in person" socialising, partly driven by young people having developed less maturity/street smart/independent socialising skills than they would normally have done.