How much access to their phone do you allow your Year 7?

[Prideandjoy]

How much access to their phone do you allow your year 7s?

My daughter has just started high school and is making lots of new friends, which is a big relief as she struggled with friendships in primary school.

However, when she comes home from school she wants to be on her phone all the time, texting and face timing. I have allowed her more time on it than I am happy with to allow her to establish these friendships, but I need to set some limits and am not sure what's reasonable.

I feel her phone use is affecting our family time, she is not really 'present' when she's home. Any advice please?

I don’t have any time limits as such as long as it is not excessive or interfering with homework and family life. I do make sure there are no screens after 7pm and no phones or devices in the bedroom at night. Some kids are still messaging well past midnight on school nights.

No time limits here (year 8 age 12) but cant interfere with homework, dinner etc. He has a good balance tbough of phone, ps4 and being out with friends.

Massive battles here. My instinct is to limit, but it causes endless arguments bc the phone is access to the peer group. My child too is not present while home. It seems a bit early to just expect that but maybe I am out if date.

DD is 12 and the rule is no screens allowed at the dinner table or in the bedrooms at night. I agree it’s difficult because I don’t want her on her phone all the time but also don’t want to isolate her from friends. But yes some kids are messaging at midnight which is not healthy.

DD is on hers a fair bit. None of use have phones during mealtimes and she’s not allowed it if she’s doing homework. She doesn’t have any social media yet so I’m not sure if it will worse once she’s old enough.

My year 7 dd hasn't got a phone.
Getting one for Christmas!!

DSS is in year 6, and has had a phone for a while.
At the moment, he seems obsessed by it, it is quite annoying. Whenever he is here at his dad's he is either on Fortnite or on his phone, or sometimes both (I don't understand this either).
I suspect it has become an addiction. But I don't feel its my place to say, and his dad seems to have noticed, but isn't doing anything about it. He does limit his time on the computer, but then he immediately picks up the phone.
Its hard to engage with DC in any way at all at the moment. We don't watch films together, even if we go somewhere he is on the phone in the car and walking between places, even in the restaurant we went to recently.
Maybe something is upsetting him and withdrawing from the real world is his solution? I'm not sure.

DD1 is year 7 too. She's pretty good at self limiting at the moment but in general she's allowed an hour to mess around on her phone doing whatever (chatting/texting/playing games etc) then she's allowed to check for messages just before 8pm then it goes on charge in my bedroom for the night.

We flex on the weekend but she's not allowed on it until all homework is done and room is tidy and no more than an hour at a time.

The bit I don't like at the moment is that they seem to always have video chat on...I hate video calls and the idea that someone is looking in on my home and because I've purposefully blocked Wifi doesn't work in her bedroom it happens in the front room so I just insist she's the only person visible unless her sister photobombs her.

My ds1 is terrible at self limiting, he's always had to have strict limits on screens. His sister has the same limits for fairness but I doubt would actually need them.

He got a phone at the start of the summer for starting year 7 to try to get the novelty factor out of the way but would still sit and watch videos through Instagram all day if he could. I allowed instagram as that's what most his primary class used to communicate but most seem to have switched to WhatsApp now so I've permitted that. I use a parental control so I can limit the individual apps and overall phone time. If he sits and watches videos when he gets home from school then his time gets used up and the phone locks, then he spends the evening listening to messages pinging in on WhatsApp that he can't reply to and it infuriates him. At some point I'm rather hoping he learns.

DD has just started Y7, phone goes off at 7, it never goes upstairs (we don't take ours upstairs either, the signal/wifi is rubbish).

Its a pretty rubbish phone with limited memory so she has whatsap and text messages. I've told her to be choosy who she shares her number with (new school all new friends) and she is being ok so far. She doesn't really have much time to spend on it what with after school clubs, homework and evening activities a few times a week.

So far DD only has a handful of friends she text with but she likes youtube far too much. So if we feel it gets to a point where she does nothing else we ask her to put the phone away. Also, no phone at the table and not in her bedroom.

It helps if the parents also make an effort not to be on the screen the whole time so DH and I try to limit our phone usage as well.

My dd is also in year 7 and she is always on the phone. I have to take it away and then there is always an argument or tears. I find I don't like her attitude when she is on it and she is always saying "I'm a minute" when I ask her to do anything. I have felt for a long time that when she is on the phone she becomes very rude.

It's a shame because we want them to keep in contact with friends but the phone and internet are very addictive. I keep trying to put time slots in place for when the phone can be used but we get out of the routine again.