Phone for a y6.

[user134276]

I'm looking for some balance advice here please :) I'm increasingly aware of the negative press around smart phones for children. I have done much research as I don't really know where to start. So I'm shamelessly hoping other people who have done the research already can share their thoughts with me in a comprehensive way.

DS is 10 and in Year 6. Lots of his friends have smart phones already. He has one of our old phones at home that he uses to listen to music on. He can text me and his dad from it but has no apps on it except Spotify. It's completely locked down and he's very unphased by it. He's never once asked to install anything or to message anyone on it.

He currently does after school club but it costs an arm and a leg and he complains about it bitterly. So he's going to start walking home on his own. He'll then just chill out till I finish work at 4:30 (I wfh so will be upstairs). We live just under a mile from school and the walk is safe. It'll take about 15 minutes.

Come September he will be getting on a bus to go to senior school.

I would like him to have a phone with him on these days purely so I can track him or so that he can call me if there is a problem.

But I don't want to give him free reign with a smart phone at all - ever really. I know enough to know that it seems to be social media that is the most damaging aspect of teenagers having phones. But what else do I need to know?

Is giving him a very locked down smart phone, just the start of a slippery slope? Should I get him a dumb phone as it sets expectations that we don't want him having a smart phone at all? Can I get a dumb phone that will also allow me to track him? Should I just pop an air tag in his bag? Or am I just being really paranoid and just let him walk to and from school without anything. I mean that's what I did when I was young!!

So many questions!

Share your knowledge with me please people! I want to think ahead as well as the here and now. He is certainly not getting a fancy unlocked smart phone the minute he goes to secondary school, that much I know. But what else do I need to consider?

Just get them a regular phone. That's all they need. You can buy a tablet/ Chromebook for home and lock that down. No discussions required. No temptations or distraction within the school environment. Your child has a lifetime ahead of online distraction. Why does he need tracking? Did your parents need to track you? My daughter knows to come home. If going to a friend's, she just rings to tell us.n

I don't know about the tracking.... It's probably just my paranoia? I thought it might be useful when he's on the bus next year, but it probably isn't?

So just a dumb phone then?

Is there reason

Posted too soon - is a dumb phone really that different to a smart phone that's totally locked down?

He won't get mugged for a dumb phone.

I had life 350 on Dts phones when they started senior school. It didn't help because there's a dead zone around their school so it didn't help!

Satchel One and School Gateway are all app based and it's their homework, room changes etc. needs a smart home. Check what the school uses but I'd get a smartphone and lock it down.

Life 360!

If you go down the smartphone parental control route then make sure you look up all the workarounds for those controls. For example I've heard of kids with less controls (or none!) sharing their screens with friends so they can log in to accounts they wouldn't be allowed usually, changing profiles or time zones to get around controls plus there will be more specific work arounds for specific controls. I would probably just buy a dumb/brick phone or look at smartphone free childhood - they have a list of phones they recommend.

He is very very unlikely to get mugged where we live, we are incredibly lucky. But something to bear in mind for sure.

I will have a look at life 360 and smart phone free childhood. Thanks!😁

I really don't want him getting around the parental controls. Is it really that easy to do? At the moment he literally would need us to put in our main Google passwords to access anything we haven't pre approved. But he's also never tried, so I guess not fully tested. We have android phones if that makes a difference.

I personally would hold off for as long as possible from giving a smart phone especially if he's not asking for one. You seem to think he needs one because other kids have them. You've said your neighbourhood is safe. It sounds like the old phone you've given him would be adequate. From experience, I'd say it's very easy to lock down a phone if you set up parental controls on Google and set him up with a child account. However at 13 Google allows the child to take control of their account and that was where issues began for us. Google send you an email saying the child will get the option of taking control - you need to intervene at that point and make the child say they don't want control (like any child is going to say no to that!). We used to be able to shut down the device at 7pm at night but it went because by the time I'd realised I needed to intervene the child had accepted control!
Getting a smart phone just brought loads of moans about the restrictions we had set up eg no tik tok, no snap chat. It just causes more hassle so avoid for as long as possible. He'll get plenty of screen time when he's older. These things are addictive (as demonstrated by me being stuck in mumsnet on a sat afternoon).

It can be easy to do, even really techy people I know struggle sometimes as kids are curious and also can be sneaky (I think the rule is don't ever think 'oh by kid won't do that!'). I read something the other day about a teenager crawling around their parents bedroom floor trying to find their phones to use overnight secretly when they had taken his away for misuse. Obviously a rare example but smartphones and the apps on them are designed to keep you on them, they are addictive by design and app developers often use similar tactics to gambling companies to keep people on them. I will be doing my best to keep them away from my sons and teaching them why.

Just placemarking the later ☺

Smartphone free childhood has a good list of alternatives to smart phones.

smartphonefreechildhood.co.uk/alternatives

Dd is 11 and still doest have a phone. School is far enough that we have to drive so no need yet.

Her friends are often texting each other at midnight, they've said it themselves when they come round and I dont let them take phones upstairs.

The boy who was sweet has now started to act aggressive and over sexualised, God knows what the poor thing is watching at night (dd has been told to distance that friendship immediately).

When dd is 14/15 I have told her she can have a phone, on the understanding that until she can pay for it herself, or is an adult, that I will have software on it that allows monitoring and I will be doing spot checks. She is happy enough with this.

A family member worked in child protection. Parents who allow their child unsupervised access to a camera and the Internet are fucking insane.

I also think it's good try and not give in to your anxiety and track them everywhere. What does tracking really achieve other than reinforce your worries?
Tracking won't stop them being hit by a car.
Tracking won't stop the phone being stolen.
Tracking won't stop them being kidnapped (almost laughably unlikely)
Tracking won't stop them going to places they shouldn't, they'll just learn to leave the phone behind.
I can't think of a single emergency where tracking your child will actually help.
All it does is give a false sense of security that you have more control than you actually do over your child's life and decisions.

Being able to monitor what your child is viewing online, who they are talking to, and who exactly is talking to them, is the very basic safeguarding any parent should eb doing for a child that has unsupervised access to the Internet.

It's amazing how many parents think their child is sensible, and don't realise how easily they can be manipulated in to doing something that will be disastrous for them, or into watching something that will warp them in their formative years.

@BefuddledCrumble I think @ShatnersWoodwind is talking about physical gps style tracking, which is what life 360 does.

@ShatnersWoodwind you make some really valid points, thank you.

@roobyred his current 'phone' is a smart phone. He just doesn't take it anywhere or use it for anything other than listening to music. It's one of our old phones.

I'm not worried about the fact his friends have them. I'm confident enough in my mind to say no to one of we as a family don't think it's right. I guess what I'm really asking is do I need to get him a new dumb phone or is a really locked down smart phone ok?

Some really helpful links above though, thanks everyone so far! I hadn't thought about the camera being an issue, but I absolutely see that now.

Would be interested to hear from people who have given their kids very locked down smart phones, to hear their personal experiences.

My daughter has a dumb phone and works perfectly well for calling me when she's on her way home/changes to plan. Some of her friends have locked down smartphones which they circumvent either by shearing their screens as above, or going onto sites in their browser. They also use iMessage in the same way as WhatsApp which I don't think parents realise is really the same thing with these huge toxic group chats. I don't have time for the level of monitoring that is required with any "locked down" smart phone, just kick it down the kerb and get a dumb phone for now.

Yes because they can't get things like WhatsApp which aren't about being locked down - it's often bullying conducted by "friends" in parent approved groups and there is no way to get away from it if it's on your phone

If you can, let him walk home from school with no phone, no tracking, just as we did when we were young.

From experience it is nerve wracking at first (for you) but you do get used to it. And if he is travelling from school to home you know roughly how long it will take and when to expect him - give or take the 5 or 10 minutes of dawdling that might happen.

It will be great for him, you will become more relaxed about it and it bides you more time. My son did this for the whole of year 6 and he was fine and loved the freedom.

He’s year 7 now and has a smartwatch.

BTW, thanks for starting this thread

Yea because most ten year olds can unlock it in about five minutes.

My 11 year old doesn't have one (has a Nokia) but he told me what YouTube video shows you how to do it.

Can they really though? DS current 'phone' doesn't have anything except Spotify on. It's an android and we use family link. Every single thing that's not pre approved needs us to either approve it on our phones or for DH or I to enter our Google passwords. We can also track everything he does on the phone via family link.

I am sure they can get around these things, but I'm interested to hear how!

Just ask any tens year old who uses YouTube.

Just Google 'how to get around or bypass family link' and look through the answers - you could try them out to see if they work.

No. I would recommend reading the book ‘The Anxious Generation’. Really no one under the age of 16 should have a smart phone. I work in young people’s mental health and it’s so obvious that the mental health crisis in young people is because their lives have moved from adventurous play outside to phone addiction. We are destroying our children. Once they get addicted to phones, they don’t socially interact or process any difficult feeling because they have a phone to distract them from the feelings. Hence why young people now have no emotional resilience. I can’t tell you how many people I have seen who have made serious suicide attempts due to a small argument or not wanting to sit an exam due to stress. We must stop!!! Encourage children to be bored and encourage them to sit with this difficulty