Any year 7 without a phone?

[lighttherapy]

DS started at secondary school in September and has settled in happily. His school is a fifteen minute walk away and he has made new friends both at school and on the walk. He's a social butterfly!

He doesn't have a phone as we see no need for it. The walk is a straightforward route in a residential area, well lit, about 10 minutes straight on one main road (just houses on both sides, no shops, no roundabout) and then turning into our quiet side road.

He recently met up with old friends from primary school at a birthday party (communicated via mums whatsapp) and came back saying all of them have phones and they want to speak with him. He also said that before school broke last week his new friends at school and on the school walk have spoken about coming to each other's place during half term for playdates. Now he has no way of communicating with them to arrange any of this. I have no numbers either as they're all new friends.

What should I do? I recently read on the newspapers about some schools / parents commiting to avoid giving them phones until Y9 which I quite agree. I intend to leave him phoneless and use all his social skills in person until then. He's not really begging for it but part of me feels guilty for not letting him be with his friends outside school.

Anyone else with a phoneless Y7-Y9?

Your choice you either leave him isolated or you cave in.

But the days of phone boxes and the phone tied to the hall is over.
Phones get a bad name but really it's social media, that's the issue.

I've even got one who plays Minecraft on Crossplay but because it's crossplay they can't chat so have a seperate chat going on WhatsApp at the same time.

Personally I'd cave, even if you make it a Christmas gift

My year 7 boy has no smartphone, but he has a Nokia brick and uses it to text/call. Would that be an option? I think it’s really important to protect them from the harms of smartphones whilst allowing some way for them to communicate with friends (independently of you).

Mine has a Nokia but her school doesn’t allow smartphones so the other kids have them too.

I think he needs a brick phone at the very least. I agree social media is the problem and actually in Y7 WhatsApp, so I'd avoid those. If he's embarrassed of the Nokia you can also get an iPhone if you have one too, as the options of blocking things are limitless. You can basically make it a Nokia but the added benefit of knowing where he is as you can see it on find my iPhone. He might like taking pics of him and his mates in y7 too, fun to look back on.

Btw a lot of people think saying no to a smartphone is tantamount to child abuse so brace yourself :) I prefer to avoid them until year 8 or 9 personally but I also think a heavily locked down (for example, no browser, no camera, no SM) and time restricted smartphone is not the end of the world.

Does he have a tablet/ipad for home use?

He can use apps on those to communicate with friends while at home which you can supervise and a basic phone for when he is out?

Some kind of technology is necessary these days as lots of schools use it to set homework and so on.

I’m just going to give you two examples as to why I think having a phone is very important. First one being when my son started year 7 he had an issue with another child who bullied him, who one day decided he was going to follow him & threaten him on his way home, this happened more than once to the point we ended up making a code so he didn’t need to call me. He would message me a random letter on what’s app & I’d know there was an issue. He has a tracker, so I was able to drive to where he was to collect him. Issue thankfully has been resolved now but poor boy did go through it with being ganged up on, school bag stolen ect.
Second one being, on his way to school one morning he was hit by a car, he is very road wise, has seen 2 people be hit by cars so if anything is over cautious, he had already crossed the road when a woman cut a corner & drove into him just as he was reaching the pavement, the woman stopped see that he was able to sit up & drove off!! Had he not had a mobile phone I wouldn’t have known until god knows when. Thankfully he was fine just very shaken up & sore leg. He only lives about a 15 minute walk away.

I couldn’t relax if he didn’t have a mobile phone. Anything could happen, my neighbours daughter has just started secondary school & she went missing the other day, she doesn’t have a mobile phone & he was going out his mind with panic as she wasn’t home at her usually time. Turns out she was absolutely fine & chose to walk home over getting the bus but he was so out of his mind with panic he was boarderline tears.

Its all good not wanting to go down that path of smart phones, so get a dumb phone, but I couldn’t not have my child without at phone. Absolutely not. Anything could happen & they could need to get hold of you.

A brick phone is wonderful but if the kids are arranging meet ups via What's App then that means someone is having to go to the extra effort of texting him the details.

And at least with WhatsApp you can see what's being said and he can remove himself from groups he doesn't want to be part off.

I 💯 believe the government needs to have more protection for young teens on social media. They are classed as adults at 13, and can bin the parental controls at 13. The Government needs to catch up with the technology. I keep changing my DS DoB to keep his phone thinking he's 12.

Our first because we lived opposite school and she didn’t go out without us. I think she was 14 and started going into town with friends when she had her first, Nokia, and her smartphone at 16.
Our son, years later, just wasn’t interested until he was around 15.

They were certainly not “isolated”. It’s that kind of silly comment that pressures kids to have one.

Does he have online gaming? If your quite against phone then he could be reached via his ps or Xbox, send text messages or chat whilst playing with friends.

As other poster says won't work for cross play games though, so make sure he has most popular console amongst his friends. At our school it's mostly all ps and the one with xbox is on the outskirts of things during games.

It's up to you OP, but as you have already noticed, your son is being excluded from social meet-ups and catch-ups because he doesn't have access to the means of communication that all the other kids use. It would be fairer to allow him a phone with whatsapp etc, but manage its use. So the phone is available to him for journeys to and from school, he complies with the school phone use policy while in school, and then maybe gets his phone for an hour or so in the evening once homework etc is done, but the phone stays downstairs overnight. You can gradually extend that time as he gets older. You can limit what apps he has and insist on checking his phone if you feel it's necessary, but I do think whatsapp is needed for knowing what's going on. It's hard enough being a tween and a teen - don't force your boy to be a pariah.

Yes my year 7 doesn’t have a phone and is doing brilliantly socially.

She’s not the only one and other parents have thanked me as for some it’s helped them not buy one, and for others it’s helped them dial back their kids’ phone use (eg not taking it in every day as it’s a myth a phone makes them safer walking to and from school)

When she’s ready we’ll get a non smart phone so she can have a number and do messaging.

This is a growth trend - powered by movements like Smartphone Free Childhood.

But this rationale is all about the adults’ needs, not the child’s! Surely the adults need to learn not to panic and overreact. We don’t need to track our children 24/7 for our own peace of mind. In fact it’s actively harming them to do so.

That's great for your children and they maybe weren't isolated but the OP has said that her son is missing out on seeing friends because he doesn't have a phone.

@MrsSkylerWhite what year did your DD start secondary?
Because I think phone use has changed a lot over the last 10 years, and even more in the last 4.

I personally don’t think I am actively harming my son by keeping an eye on him at the age of 14. I was never allowed to leave the house as a teenager without my phone at his age & it never done me any harm, I hope up to god knows what but I still always had my mobile phone & my dad did have to come & collect me a few times out of sticky situations. Perhaps it’s the area we live in, it’s very rare you see a child without a mobile phone round here, other than my neighbour who now has bought his daughter a mobile I don’t know anyone who’s child doesn’t have a mobile who is in secondary school. I think it’s sensible as god forbid something was ever to happen to your child & you’d be last to know.

thank you for all replies

I do wonder if I would last to Christmas or cave in before then
At the same time I also wonder if they actually meet up in person once he's on his phone or just stay in their rooms sending memes and emojis

he has a airtag tracker in his school bag
he has an IPad at home but without a sim card so unable to use whatsapp
he isn't into online gaming yet

Get him a brick phone like this:

Nokia 105 2G Feature Phone with long-lasting battery, 12 hours of talk-time, wireless FM radio, large display, and tactile keyboard, Dual Sim - Charcoal : Amazon.co.uk: Electronics & Photo

And a pay as you go sim from the likes of EE etc.

My DS is Year 7 and has called a few times on the way home to school to say he is going to the park with xyz and will be home a bit later.

Why? What way it is harming?

If their stand out of their peer friends because they don't have friends ...<=this is harming

Yeap, humiliate him in front of all kids with such phone....

Mine who's 13 got into online gaming during covid he was 9 and really needed to be intouch with friends. I'd been trying to hold of on that.

Christmas is only about 8 weeks away.

Do you have an old phone kicking around, or a cheap nokia they are only about £15? I'd maybe get him a phone contract now and a smartphone for Christmas.

The last time I looked for PAYG sims they were hard to get and you needed to pay £10-15 for data every month an contract was cheaper.

But shop around and look out for Black Friday deals

This week Alexander McCartney was convicted of heinous offences against children. And he used their phones to get to them.

Plenty of phone options where you set boundaries on who communicates with your child.
www.theguardian.com/money/2023/aug/19/the-basic-better-and-best-mobile-phone-options-for-kids

Can you ask your son to give away your house number or your mobile number? Then his friends can send WhatsApp messages or phone him while he is at home/with you.

Hang in, you are in to tech to the extent that you put a tracker on his bag, but you won't give him any way of actually contacting you in an emergency? What if he has an accident on his way to and from school? You are relying on him being able to give your contact details to another person? I don't like the fact that kids need some kind of phone at secondary school but unless they are driven yo and from school each day, they do. All the people who say 'I never had one and I travelled miles on my own too and from school' all completely ignore the FACT that there used to be pay phones on nearly every corner so actually if we had had a problem on my travels it wouldn't have been difficult for us to get to a phone. Also because there was only one land line at home, we could all recite our telephone number. Please at least get your son a basic phone.