First phone for dd, what do I need to restrict!

[RedMoon111]

Dd is in year 6 and I have agreed reluctantly to get her a phone. I've held out and apparently 'everyone ' has one.
I know she will want Snapchat which i know nothing about. Can I monitor this?
Are there apps that I can link our phones so I have to agree or restrict certain things?
Clueless here so any advice is appreciated!

From chat GPT:

👀 2. Can You Monitor Their Snapchat?

Yes — but with limits. Snapchat itself doesn’t let parents read kids’ messages or see chats directly (unlike some other platforms). However:

What you
can
do inside Snapchat:

• Friend only people you both approve (no strangers).
• Turn on Ghost Mode so her location isn’t shared on Snap Map.
• Disable Quick Add so she won’t be suggested to people she doesn’t know.
• Use Family Center — Snapchat has a parent-friendly supervision hub where you can see who your kid is friends with and report concerns. You don’t see message contents, but you do see friendships and can set alerts for questionable content. (This is a big step forward from older versions.)
• If you want, I can walk you through setting this up.

🔒 3. Parental Control Tools (Linking Your Phone)

Yes — there are tools that let you manage or supervise from your phone:

📱 On iPhone (if both phones are Apple)

Family Sharing + Screen Time

• Ask to Buy/Download Approval — you must approve every app before she can install it.
• App Limits — e.g., 30 min/day for social networking.
• Downtime — shuts off phone outside allowed hours (e.g., after 8 pm).
• Content & Privacy Restrictions — block explicit content, web browsing limits, restrict adding contacts, etc.

👉 You control all of this from your iPhone under Settings → Family Sharing → Screen Time.

🤖 On Android

Google Family Link

• Approve or block app installs from the Play Store.
• Set screen time limits & bedtimes.
• View basic activity reports (which apps she uses and for how long).
• Lock the device remotely.

This works on Android devices and some Chromebook controls.

(Many parents mix and match — Screen Time at home, Family Link for accounts, etc.)

Does everyone else in her year really have a phone? Can’t you ask on the class WhatsApp chat if that’s really the case? If all parents said no to them or flip phones only, life would be so much easier! The government is (hopefully) about to ban social media for under 16s so no point in getting them used to it.

i have a feeling Snapchat is 13+ in terms of age recommendation.

have you asked specifically why she wants Snapchat. I think it’s harder to monitor than others but perhaps I’m wrong. Hopefully someone knowledgeable will pop along soon.

i also don’t think ‘everyone’ will have a phone.

Buy her a regular dumb phone. no need to blight her life with more screen time/access to nonesense. All her life for that.

Both our DCs had phones for their 11th birthdays, before moving up to secondary school. So, at the same stage as your DD.

Our rules was/are
No social media or apps below the minimum age on t&cs. This is mostly 13 for Snapchat, WhatsApp etc. We did not bend on this.
No TikTok, Insta etc until they'd proved themselves sensible on other apps.
All app installs to be supervised using family link, or similar.
No phones in bedrooms overnight.
Find my phone or similar to be turned on and shared with parents.

There was some horrible bullying on WhatsApp and Snapchat in both DCs upper primary and lower secondary cohorts. Neither app is a good place for children. Wider social media is worse, as the algorithms push content regardless of how sensible your child is.

DD17 now has Snapchat (from about age 14). We asked them to make sure location sharing / Snapmap was turned off and they only accept contacts who they actually know. They choose not to have Instagram or TikTok.

DS14 has WhatsApp so that he can chat with friends and be part of his extra curricular clubs online chat. He has no other social apps.

Do they really all have phones? All the Y6 children here tend to have dumb phones and an iPad (secondary school requirement) so they aren’t devoid of technology.

Reluctantly agreed 😬.

You dont have to give in to an 11 year olds demands.

Its ok to be the bad guy. I tell mine the reasons why theyre not getting a phone and that i'm prepared to listen to the whining but I wont be changing my mind.

Theyre not my friends, I dont need to ein their acceptance or appease them. I'm their mom and its my job to do the best I can for them even if its hard.

They dont have to have a phone.

OP buy the phone when you're happy for her childhood to end.

No social media, no YouTube and no Internet browsers. Start hard and then you can step back as they get older. Stick some games in there and maybe WhatsApp but only if you agree that her WhatsApp will be checked randomly

Use family link (android) or family controls on iPhone. Don't add any payment methods to app store. Do set approval for app downloads. Use screen time controls - either by app or more generally.

Hold fast to the line that they can only have apps they are old enough for and do not give in!

All my children survived under these rules - old fashioned text / calls and actually talking to each other worked fine 🙂

Also - do check their phones often. Not because you expect to find something, but because the fact you do so will act as a deterrent!

I’ve only got experience of Apple, but for my daughters phone I’ve set up downtime, app approval and app time limits from when she first had one in Yr6. She’s now yr8 and independently asked for further time limits on certain apps (Roblox/whatsapp)
A lot of her friends are 13 already (long wait for her until summer) and over Christmas I installed Snapchat onto my phone and invited her - I can’t see her messages but i can see who she has been messaging, and I set out rules for only people she knows, no locations etc. No further SM yet, although she still asks occasionally but doesn’t persist if I say no, not yet (she wants TikTok but I’m holding firm on that).

I check her phone regularly and randomly, I laid out that if I find deleted messages that’s a red flag for me, and further instructions of no selfies to anyone as images can be manipulated.

It’s exhausting but I feel I have some control, and she’s pretty good with self limiting. She spends lots of time out playing locally, so we still have a nice balance I think.

How about a Nokia or similar. My kids, agef 10 and 8, have these. They can call me or their friends to arrange things / keep in touch and they can play Snake but they can't go on the internet or take/send photos or videos.

What does your daughter need a phone for? Are there apps that she needs for public transport or something, or would a Nokia do the job?

Giving her Snapchat is one of the worst things that you can do.

Snapchat is popular with teens because messages disappear after opening. So say someone sent her a dick pic, by the time she alerted an adult the evidence would have disappeared and it becomes her word against the sender. The disappearing messages makes Snapchat a very popular way to sext, bully and discuss illegal things.

It might be worth looking ahead to your DC's secondary school policy. The one in our catchment is preparing to implement a 'no smart phones on campus even switched off in pockets' policy for next year so incoming yr7s will need brick phones for texting and calls only.

Both my DDs were given phones in yr6 as birthday presents (near the end of the year) as were others in their year in anticipation of 'big school'. By the end of yr6, I think they did all have phones.

I used the Apple options to limit all kinds of things like screen time and downloading apps and such. The age restrictions were lower then so my DDs had insta and whatsapp from early on. Apple itself is tougher now and tracks children's ages so even if I wanted to bypass the age limit, it wouldn't accept it.

The place I didn't set limits was iPads and laptops but I probably should have.

If you have contact with other class parents I'd also recommend asking whether 'everyone' actually does have a phone because this is the oldest line in the book and is rarely true.

My daughter tried to tell me that 'everyone' had a dog or a cat apart from her. Not that I'd accept that reasoning and get a pet just because everyone else had one, but it was bollocks as I knew very well. What about Anna, I asked, what about Joe? Only about half of the kids had a pet!

It's been a few years now but we put the Life360 app on their phones and laptops which allows you to control what they can do.

I dont want her to have a phone but we live very rurally. Im not friendly with her friends mums to arrange for them to meet so really this is the only way she can stay in contact during the summer.
Can anyone add you on Snapchat I thought you had to agree for them to be your friends?

You can call and text friends to arrange meet ups on a brick phone. My kids do this no problem.

I work with sexual offending, please don't put your 11 year old on Snapchat. Get her a phone she can text and call on if you must.

Snap chat is rated 13. So she should not have it at 10/11 and will have to lie about her age...which means when she is 15 snap chat will consider her an adult. And reduce safeguards.

She needs her friends phone numbers so she can text them, or even call them! She doesnt need a smart phone for that.
I didnt let my DC have any app under age. It opens then up to dangers they are not old enough to handle. There are so many campaigns slating social media companies for not doing enough to protect kids on line. But so many parents allow their DC on apps when under age. Parents have a repsonsibility too.

I agree with using Family Link. I've found it very good. You can do a daily time limit and a time limit for different apps
I also agree with going in strict because it's much harder to loosen controls than tighten them.
For Y6-7 we have no internet unless I've approved the website, no YouTube (can watch on TV if they want it), Snapchat, or WhatsApp.
Child can still text and call friends and take photos and send emails. Generally, if it's recommended for 13+ we said our kids can't have it until 13 but we've made exceptions for Spotify and Gmail.

I’m pretty lax about these things but I wouldn’t be allowing Snapchat.

Ok so Snapchat doesn't sound good. What age did you allow it?
Want to let her know the conditions with getting a phone. No Snapchat will definitely be one

My son is only 9 so we aren’t there yet, but his school put on a cyber awareness talk recently, and Snapchat is terrifying.

That’s a reason to get her a flip phone. She can call and text so can easily stay in touch with friends, but none of the bad stuff. My son is in year 8 and that’s all he has - and he’s walking to a train station in London, getting a train to a town outside London, and the. getting a bus to get to school every day.

Also, if it breaks or gets lost it won’t be a big deal as it was cheap, and he isn’t wandering round London looking at a smartphone that it would be worth mugging him for.