Phone advice pls!!! Anyone bought the Other Phone for a 10 year old?

[Hihellogoodbye]

Has anyone bought the “Other Phone” for their kids by any chance? I’m thinking of buying it at Christmas for my 10 years old who seems to be peer pressured into having a phone ( a bit hypocritical if you ask me when parents are complaining about the damages of social media etc to kids mental health) .
I did some research but would like an honest opinion from parents who have bought it for their kids.

if you don’t have this phone can you pls give me some ideas on how you keep an eye on your child’s internet content.

thank you

We bought them a really cheap iPhone, think the cheapest in CEX, and then set up their account as a child’s account. You can then control which apps they have and how much screentime.

I’ve not used one I’m afraid but just in case you’ve not seen this and would find it useful :
https://www.smartphonefreechildhood.org/alternatives

And given you’re understandably worried about smartphones, might be worth checking out the website more broadly to see which other parents at wchool are concerned, so you can check in with each other to find out if ‘everyone’really is getting a phone!

Why give in to peer pressure? If you don’t want them to have a phone just say no.

My DD is 10, she knows she’s not having a phone and when we do it won’t have any SM on at all. But we certainly won’t be getting her one just because ‘everyone else has one’

DS got a phone maybe halfway through the last primary school year - this seemed like good timing from a safety point of view, and also because he’d need an electronic bus pass for secondary school.

I’m glad we waited for as long as possible - DS watches YouTube and listens to podcasts, but he isn’t on social media or anything like that.

My kid is 11 and still in primary school. We'd like to be able to let him go to the park with his mates etc but it would be helpful to be able to get hold of him... so currently looking at a feature phone ie just calls and texts. You can get PAYG sims cheaply too.

Hoping this will get him used to looking after a phone, as he's likely to lose an expensive one! Then maybe get one with basic features like a calendar for him to set reminders etc but am very conscious of getting one without social media.

We got DS a "the phone" from a French company. It literally just calls and texts. Does nothing else. But the advantage over a typical Nokia type dumbphone is the nice big touchscreen which makes it much easier to text.
We only got him this just before Y7.

Thank you all! I appreciate your responses

Do you have a link please?

Sure

https://thephone.fr/en

The one thing I would say, the phone is, VERY basic, almost too basic - but it's pretty much only touchscreen phone I could find that did nothing other than calls / sms.