Help me turn smart phone into a dumb phone for teen

[Livingmagicallyagain]

My 13 year old daughter is starting secondary school in September and so will have my old iPhone. I have given it to her already (as I now work outside of the home so for her to let me know she is home ok) but every attempt to put restrictions on it hasn't worked.

She only needs phone, camera, whatssap, spotify, maps, bus app, duolingo. I can't seem to get rid of the browser. And attempts to put screentime restrictions on ended up with most apps disappearing.

Help! An Idiot's guide would be much appreciated.

Add the phone to your iPhone family setting.
From there you go into settings for the phone and set up screen times. Under the web content restrictions you need to filter out for the age and you also need to block certain sites.
You can’t exclude a browser but you can restrict them.

whatever you do, DO NOT allow her to have Snapchat

Thank you. I have her as family, which is useful so far for seeing where she is on her commute, permissions before she downloads an app etc. But the restriction filter/screen time basically shut off all apps!

She does not have any social media (apart from whatssap to contect me and limited friends). She knows I can look at her phone at all times.

Any tips on how to limit it without disabling the apps she actually needs?

Is there any reason she can't have access to a browser? Seems a bit extreme at 13 to be honest.

Yes, there is.

I will keep trying thanks, trying to keep the apps she needs for safety (specific to our context) and homework open but limit the others.

I think the best way to this is via screen time restrictions but it's not perfect and setting affect more than one app on the phone. You could try going into the Apple Store and asking an expert but otherwise I think you need to buy a dumb phone to be honest and let her have access to a tablet of some sort which is monitored. X

Have you tried one of the apps to help monitor and restrict usage aimed at phone addiction? I use one called Stay Free and I can limit or restrict everything including only allowing certain websites. There are options to password protect the editing of controls so all the apps are available but when you open them you get a block screen.

It's very longwinded, but the Screentime app does enable you to set time limits for each app separately. I'm not convinced it's 100% reliable, we seem to have to reset ours every so often.

Apple have parental controls built in, can you just uninstall the apps she doesn't need and then set it to need your approval for her to download any new apps?

We pay for an app called Qustodio which allows you to set screen limits and individual app limits. During the day we have it configured to allow only boring apps for school/travel. There is a free version but it doesn't allow so much control and we find it works much better than the inbuilt phone/family controls. It needs a password to disable it on the phone so that's the only risk!

Can I ask how much you pay a month for this and how you find the app? It’s one that has been suggested to me but I don’t know anyone who actually uses it.

I have done this - I have to say it's needlessly difficult, Apple could do with significantly improving family settings to make it easier. Some of it was quite glitchy to begin with.

I'll go back and see if I can find some notes I made at the time.

However the outcome is that we have:

-restricted apps to to a small selection
-have individual time limits on specific apps, some of these are set to zero but then can be overridden with parent permission (eg used to play games if we're travelling)
-browser only used to access a couple of specific websites (essential for homework).
-use of camera can be restricted too if needed.
-total block on usage after a certain time of day.

So yes it can be done!

OK so this is how app time limits works for us.

DS has an appleID set up so he's part of my family.
Before putting any restrictions on DS's phone I installed/uninstalled apps I wanted him to have directly on his phone.

Then using settings on MY phone,..

Under Settings/Family/DSname/Screen Time/App Limits I have toggled App Limits to be on.

I then have the option to add time limits to any given app - I can either do this for individual apps, or for groups of apps (eg all games).

You can add time limits that either apply every day, or different time limits for different days of the week.

This restricts the amount of time they can spend on each app/group of apps in a 24 hour period. It does NOT restrict what time of day they can do this - this is controlled for separately under "Downtime"

If you set a zero limit on any given app, they basically can't use it unless you grant temporary permission (which can be done either by them sending a request which you approve, you going into settings and changing it, or you entering a passcode directly on their phone).

That's just for app time limits, there's loads of other settings as well to limit ability to download apps, use safari as browser, who they can call/message and when etc etc.

DS1 had an Android, and I just adopted the low tech approach of telling him he wasn't allowed to install any apps without asking me, and checking his phone regularly. (Although he did sneakily reinstall Snapchat a number of times, at which point the phone was confiscated for a couple of days. Rinse and repeat 🙄)

The only reliable way with no loopholes that i have found is with a ‘brick’, a device you tap to limit certain apps. Anyone who thinks they’ve blocked children from browsers should check - go into maps, put mumsnet headquarters in to the address and see if you can then click to access the website. I’m surprised anyone is saying it’s extreme to block unsupervised access to a browser, do they not know what’s on the internet?!

If you have it all under control except the browser, just set the browser to 0 or 1 minute. I’m much better at androids because that’s what we have for our kids. The latest antic was 3yo realizing he can use the play store to access app preview videos so he could watch peppa and numberblocks songs that way.

I always gated people saying they’ll need the internet for homework because obviously that doesn’t account for the ridiculous amount of time people spend but actually the school does tell them the information won’t be in their books. Also cutting it totally isn’t going to help her when she’s 17 and declares I can do what I want because all locks have been lifted! I’d love to tell you I have a solution but all I’ve found is to take their attention from the internet, chores, chats, outings etc

The difficulty with removing the browser is that it is built into many apps. So you want the child to have google maps, but searching for a cafe in maps gives you the cafes website in a browser window that can then take you elsewhere online.

Oooh I’m going to check this later. I removed Safari from my daughter’s iPhone and thought I’d be fine as she needs my permission to install any apps….maybe not foolproof after all!

I think - but I will need to double check this to confirm!! - that because I've set DS's Iphone up to allow the safari browser but only permit access to selected websites, that if he attempts to click on any links within other apps, then they show as blocked. This may not be foolproof (and DS is new enough to having a phone that he's probably not learned all the tricks!).

I'm going to check this when he gets home!

There's two reasons for restricting internet on phones for me - one is the lack of supervision of what they're looking at, the second is the addictive nature of phones. We decided to give DS a smartphone because there were certain things he needed access to (bus app etc) but I wanted to keep it as a dumb as possible to reduce the amount of temptation. He still has access to the internet at home where it's easier to supervise both the content and time spent.