To take away phones on sleepover

[gowednesday]

10 year old dsd, hosting first school friend sleepover next weekend.

is it unreasonable to say no phones or that we’ll look after them and they can ask to use them?

We have parent controls on our kids' phones, but it seems like we're in the minority. Familylink downtime kicks in at 7.30 for ours (they can text and call but nothing else works) but when they go to sleepovers I get begging texts to disable it as everyone else is on their phone all night. I also meet a lot of parents who don't even know how to use and manage the parental controls - the kids know more than the adults (including making sure the adults can't find out what they've been up to...while the parents of course say 'it's okay we've discussed the dangers and my child is different they wouldn't go looking for rude pictures or Google sexual stuff' - even though I've never met a teenager who isn't interested in finding out about sex)

No offence, but this is hugely deluded. Working in a secondary school, we have an abundance of issues from Y7s coming in due to phone usage. Poor sleep, low social skills, addiction, bullying, pornography exposure. It is absolutely shocking.
My eldest is 7 and won't be having a phone until at least 10, and even then, it will not be a smartphone.
I remove my 8 year old nephews phone when he stays down. He's allowed tiktok and other age inappropriate platforms that I don't want my son exposed to. If they want a sleepover, they socialise and play. Not glued to screens in silence.

I would have no problem with this as a parent

Hsve you got parental controls set up so that phone calls and text are allowed after 8pm but everything else is blocked? Because that solves your problem.

She doesn't. But I trust her. Her phone also has parental restrictions on. The fact that it's a smart phone is just the ideal way to make sure it's always available. I remember having a phone when I was a kid. Got one at about 11 I think. Back when it was a fairly new thing. But it never had any credit as I didn't have any money. So it was useless most of the time. I get you can have contracts these days but this way it's relatively free. The phone was an old hand-me-down and the fact that it's smart means at least if she's in the house or at anyone else's house she can WhatsApp or internet call us or her friends without us having to make sure she's got the minutes to do so.
Besides...surely the same rule applies to any smart device and let's face. Almost everything is these days. Are you telling me every time there's a kid around we should hide all the computers/tablets/phones/TVs and consoles?
I also despair, at any parent who refuses to move with the times. These kids that we're raising are going to grow up into a completely smart world where everything is connected and online and rather than teaching them the safe way of doing it and explaining the dangers, they hide them away and shield them from any possibile problems.

It really doesn't. Speaking as someone who was once an 11 year old... The safest place/time to engage in 'risk taking' as you put it would be when there are no adults about...on the way home from school. At the weekend when they are out with said friends...there's absolutely no reason to assume they are more likely to do at a sleepover?!?

She doesn't. But I trust her.

But you are asking other parents to trust both you and her too if you insist on her having access to it at someone else’s house unsupervised. And then you are also trusting other kids and their parents.

I don’t trust another parent I may not know that well to have properly implemented parental controls (if at all) and I don’t trust a 10yo not to want to be silly and show off with their phone and search for ‘silly’ stuff that can rapidly snowball or take photos that they shouldn’t have while I’m asleep.

I also don’t think primary school children should be taking smartphones outside of the house at all personally and certainly not to school and back.

So she can do what she likes with her smartphone at home, but here it goes away or she just doesn’t attend 🤷‍♀️ It’s a fair choice really, if it’s a dealbreaker then the child just doesn’t get to go. No need for anyone to get annoyed about it.

Yes i have a 10yo and none of their friends have a phone. Im shocked at kids having a phone this young

https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org/the-issue/evidence

Some very scary stuff here.

I don't think anyone is saying it is more risky than other times they are with their friends. I think the main point is, if you're hosting a sleepover at your home, responsibility is yours. So what the children get up to is down to you. The son of a friend of mine doesn't have a phone but stayed over his mates who has a smartphone. They both proceeded to bully and message vile things to a classmate because they had access to a phone. This caused a lot of issues with parents and the school being informed.
At my school, we have had children in Y7 accessing live chat websites during sleep overs (something common when I was that age). The indecent exposure on these sites is vile.
Planning phone free activities during a sleep over and ensuring all children feel comfortable enough to tell you if they'd like to speak to their parents shouldn't be an issue.

None of my ten year old’s friends have phones so isn’t an issue - is it genuinely that commonplace for primary school kids to have phones now? Certainly isn’t at our school. In any case, I wouldn’t be allowing phones at a sleepover, I’d let the parents know and ask them not to send phones, if they had an issue with that they don’t come.

To be fair, the post I was responding to said explicitly that the risk of bad behaviour was worse at a sleep over. That's what I was responding too. That's what I was disagreeing with. I can tell you know I was much better behaved in a friend's house than I was outside of it if you know what I mean.
I obviously agree that any kid in my house is under my care and while I'll do my best to keep them safe, I think the onus of behaviour falls on the kid after a certain age. I would certainly expect my DD to act within the rules of said house. Or at least be courteous and polite and go to sleep when told to and all those other things.
As for the incidents you've described, while sad... they aren't new to childhood. Bullying is always going to be thing, as abhorrent as it is. And interest in sex is standard once you've learnt about it. I'm not saying it's ok and we should let kids access it. But smartphones are just the latest device. We didn't have them when I was a kid and we still found it. Whether it be via computer or magazines. Taking away the phones isn't going to solve the problems. Just defer them.

But they need to take 200 selfie and use those filters.

Maybe talk to the other parent and agree time when phones will be left outside the room.

This thread is absolutely bonkers but I'm glad I read it as I didn't realise how irresponsible other parents were around phone use.

We had a group of 10 year olds over recently and they were so over excited that their behaviour was awful - they were all going crazy doing things that I know they don't do when they're over for a 1 on 1 playdate. We know all the children and their parents and their behaviour in a group when they thought we werent listeninf was a lot different to the children that we knews. We had to intervene quite a lot to stop them damaging things or hurting themselves (nothing nasty just very very high spirits).

I can totally see that on a sleepover in a group they will not make sensible decisions. Access to the Internet is one thing but even if you can somehow lock that down, you can't prevent them taking inappropriate pictures of each other, sending nasty messages, sending joke messages from each others phones etc etc. 10 year olds in a group are just not mature enough to make sensible decisions so parents need to make some of those decisions for them.

I am a bit surprised at all the 'what if my child needs to contact me, they couldn't possibly tell their friends parents'. 1. They can, they might just be a bit amxious about it but that doesnt mean they should avoid it, and 2. At 10 they should only really be going to people's houses where they trust and know the parents, not strangers and 3. The risk of feeling uncomfortable for 5 minutes when asking a friends parent to call their parent, is surely much much less than the risk of being shown hard-core porn / being filmed sleeping / having a nasty message sent to all their contacts, because all the kids are insisting on having access to their phones.

Unsupervised phone access for a group of 10 year olds is not safe. If your kid doesn't feel safe without a phone on a sleepover, they shouldn't be on a sleepover and their confidence should be built in other ways rather than a reliance on constant phone access. Kids spend all day at school with adults who aren't family and manage to tell an adult if they don't feel well or need to go home. Do the parents whose children need a phone to cope with being apart from them think they should have unrestricted access at school too?

If your so concerned about them having phones at the sleepover why on earth did you think it was appropriate to buy your own 10 year old a phone. I didn’t get one until I was 13 and my children will be the same!

Don't forget phones are also cameras and can video. Not appropriate for children to be using them unsupervised whilst they may be changing/sleeping etc.

I'm a school safeguarding lead. Issues arising on sleepovers that I have then had to deal with due to it being reported to me or causing issues in school include

A child taking covert pics of another child getting changed and then circulating them on whatsapp

Children lifting images of school staff from the school website and using them to make obscene images/videos which were then circulated on social media

Children sending anonymous, threatening messages to a child who was not on the sleepover as a "joke", causing said child to be so distressed she self-harmed

A child being so distressed after being shown a video of someone killing themselves that she required counselling

These are just a handful of examples. A drop in the ocean.

In an ideal world 10 year olds wouldn't even have smartphones, and children who are old enough to have smartphones would have parents who put limits and robust parental controls in place. But since experience tells me that many parents fail to set any boundaries or restrictions around their kids internet use, this isn't something you can leave to chance if you want to safeguard your DC and the DC you're inviting into your home. So, OP in your shoes I would tell parents upfront and in advance that we have a house rule, phones stay downstairs overnight. Don't spring this on them on the day of the sleepover.
I would make clear that any of the kids are welcome to wake me up at any time, however many times they needed to, if they were worried about anything or wanted to contact home. I would also reiterate this to the kids directly when they arrived and before they went to bed.
Any parent/child who didn't feel able to accept these conditions would be free to decline the invitation, that's their right. But since I'm responsible for managing the risks to any child who comes into my home, I also have a right to set that boundary.

If I had reason to believe that there was a child abusing adult in the house the sleep over was held at, I wouldn't let my child go. If I thought the adult(s) would be cross/upset/rude about my child asking to phone me, I wouldn't let them go.

In my mind another child using their phone to film my child and put it online or on Snapchat or Whatsapp etc, or to use it to show my child scary or inappropriate stuff is a far, far more likely scenario than a parent not contacting me if my child needed me. The idea that there could be a "funny" video of my child being shared or even on the internet, that 10/11/12/13 year olds didn't realise was inappropriate, revealing, or horrific or even that they could have innocently and naively wormed their way into an adult chat room while the parents thought they were sleeping, feels way way more likely than the adult in the house abusing them.

When we've gone over the "No Phone" rule ahead of Cub camp (so 8-10yos) the following reasona for "needing" their phone have been mentioned
"streaks" on games
Virtual pets
Keeping up with group chats
Texting friends
Listening to music.

None have ever said wanting to contact their parents.

Some say they aren't coming because of the phone rule... then get FOMO the other way instead so come.

Mine has just been on a week long trip abroad with school (kids aged 9-13) with a no phone (or any other electronic device) rule. Everyone managed fine, and the kids enjoyed each others company rather than staring at screens. One night at a sleepover really shouldn’t be an issue.

That is shocking to me. I really think that the culture around phones must be very different at different schools. I wouldn’t expect this to be an issue for cubs. I think that’s really sad. I don’t think it even had to be sad for my daughter’s brownie camp.

Its just a few of them. But phone addiction can be a big issue even at this age group. (At the risk of stereotypes... the girls its phones, the boys its gaming)

This is a discussion that you just need to have with the parents of the children, before the sleep over.
If there are children/ parents who feel uncomfortable with the phone being taken and having to ask you to use it, they can decide not to come to the sleepover.

This site has a whole section about sleepovers with suggestions.

https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org/resource/how-to-navigate-sleepovers-and-playdates

By that logic the child can never go to a friends house.
Its important to talk to them about being open if they see anything inappropriate, but you cant completely avoid it if you let your child socialise.

I do find some of the strictest parents are also possibly accidentally the most lax.

They will time screen time and ban this and that. But they won’t actually know what their child is doing with their online access or how to control it. They feel safe because no phones after 7pm or no phones upstairs. They feel safe because it’s just Minecraft not Roblox yet both can chat to randoms unless you lock it down.

Yet you can lock down everything from even adding a phone number to their contacts to the time the phone will shut it self down. Limit websites and require approval for most things. Limit who they can text say between 8pm-7am.

Lots of wonderful ways to lock down phones but a simple no phones upstairs doesn’t lock any of that down. Just means they look at the porn or whatever right under your nose on mute.