Screen Time advice

[GilChesterton13]

Hi, hoping for some views/advice on screen time. I bought our DD her first mobile phone last summer when she turned 12, and set up limits for screen usage and on/off times. She gets 2hrs of screen time during the week, 3hrs at weekends and the phone locks at 9pm for an hour of 'screenless' time before her bedtime.

However, now that she has turned 13 I think (well, I know) that she is able to get round these limits. We had a chat about it at the time and agreed that, for the moment, she would stay within the limits that we set, even though she can now take charge of her own account, but looking at the tracker I can see days where she is in excess of the limits.

At her age, should I trust her to manage her own usage or continue to be strict about this? Her usage mainly seems to be Youtube and games, rather than social media and messaging. She is quite shy and awkward, and doesn't have any close friends, so I am very concerned that she is lonely and not connecting with people at school, and keeping her nose in a phone might make it worse.

Have you spoken to her about whether she feels "quite shy and awkward" or is this just your perspective of her? Has she ever expressed desire to be more social or concerns over her [lack of] connections? If not and if she's happy, perhaps she's introverted and prefers her own company. Does she have any neurodiverse traits that also might contribute to any difficulty with social interaction? I'd be cautious of not putting too much of your own expectations on how you think she should be depending on how much of an issue she feels her social status is (or isn't).