Phones for Yr 7 -talk me through this

[NooNooMummy]

Can someone talk me through exactly how to make a smart phone dumb. Truly dumb. So that the child can’t go into settings and remove all limits and restrictions. And so that apps aren’t merely not on the home screen but are actually gone, never to be downloaded again. I want to it to have just the 3x Ts and 3x Ms - text, talk, taking pictures, mail, messages (a very locked-down WhatsApp) and music.

Thank you

(And feel free to give me your theories about why it’s still so difficult for parents to do this!!!)

Yet here you are on social media!

I hate iPads and tablets too! I think that children should not be allowed to use smartphones and tablets until someone has designed them to be truly safe for children without the need for parents to have to constantly keep on top of what their kids are consuming/parental controls and all the work arounds/even then some other kid with no parental controls can pass around the most awful stuff. It is possible to create such devices, but the tech companies would rather not as our children make them so much money.

I wouldn't want my children to watch a beheading in real life and don't understand why is ok for them to see it online and just expect to have a chat with them about it afterwards. The damage is done by then.

@Diabladingo if you have proper parental controls set up children should never be able to find such stuff.
I never gave my kids access to YouTube. And they needed permission for every website they accessed.

I love this. What a strong school? Is it state? That's so interesting

They shouldn't be able to but there are lots of workarounds - so many parents think they have their kids phones locked down but they don't. It isn't just extreme one off things, but the seeping in of dangerous content (suicide etc) promoted slowly by algorithms.

LBC had a full day about online safety on March 10th and it was eye opening- the number of parents who rang up whose children had gone through /seen something awful even when they thought they had fully protected them with parental controls.

By 'isolated' I meant this is how they arrange their social lives at high school. Things like:
'be at the gym after school, you coming?'
'meet in town at 12 on Saturday'
'cinema next Friday 2pm send me £7 for your ticket if you want to come'
'have you done the maths homework? I don't get question 6!'

How do teens hear about any of this kind of stuff and participate if they don't have a phone or aren't online? I certainly don't want to still be facilaiting DC social life via other parents when they are teens, and that happens online/by phone now. You can put controls and monitor to try to keep them safe but no phones is unrealistic and unfair, it part of the world now.

Banning by the government is an outrageous suggestion, smart phones are useful for so much. Including being able to keep in touch with our children as the gain independence.

Dumb phones are the answer to this, they can just text or call their friends. Just because it's the done thing doesn't mean it can't be changed and I'm sick of this 'oh well it is what it is' attitude when it's the well-being of our children is involved. It absolutely does not need to be like this and could be changed.

There are a few new phones that look like smartphones but are locked down through the internal programming which shows it is possible for phone companies to do, they just don't want to because they're making so much money off our children's data.

How do teens hear about any of this kind of stuff and participate if they don't have a phone or aren't online?

We have this revolutionary device, it's called a house phone.

There can never be any truly locked down smart phone, so you'll never really know what they are watching/being subjected to, not unless you have full monitoring software on there.

I have had the unfortunate priviledge of seeing the dark side of children having unsupervised access to technology through work. There are things that can never be unseen, more predators than anyone would like to believe, access to material that can desensitise and radicalise. It really is the wild west out there.

Not a chance my children will have unsupervised access to it before I believe they have the knowledge, ability and solid sense of self to deal with the worst the Internet has to offer. And that is certainly not at 11 years old.

There are some kids who need a smartphone eg they can monitor glucose levels if you’re diabetic, they store bus passes, you can play music on them if you have a journey to school.
I’m not sure that you can buy mp3 players any more and it’s better that kids stream music than pirate it like my generation did.

We don't have a house phone, I have never in my adult life had a house phone as have no need for one. I can't remember the last time I made a phone call or sent a text message to make plans so I wouldn't expect my ds to either. Like it or not, he would be left out as these things are arranged in group chats which dumb phones can't do. His mates aren't going to ring a landline. I've never rang a friends landline since I was about 10.

Landlines and dumb phones also can't do any of these things which are very useful and part of everyday:

• location sharing
• apple pay / Google pay
• school lunch payment app
• school bus pass
• gym membership
• football season ticket
• live bus/train timetables
• homework apps

We can monitor and manage the risks, but I don't think dumb phone and tech bans are the answer.

@TartanMammy I would rather my child run the risk of being left out than be exposed to some of the things children with smartphones have seen. It sounds like you’ve been lucky enough not to see the after effects of an 11 year old receiving hardcore porn in a class WhatsApp, you might change your mind if you had

This sounds great.

Housephones will very soon go the way of phone boxes and telegrams things people look at in museums and say remember them.

At one point you couldn't get Internet without a landline, now it's the opposite and landlines are becoming surplus to requirements.
My company has done away with deskphones. My 80 yo mum is the main reason we still have a land line

You can buy MP3/ music players with no screen that link to Spotify or Amazon music - I have one called the mighty player. It's possible. If tech companies design a smart phone that is locked down internally then you could still have a diabetes app, maps etc but without (in some cases unlimited) access to violent pornography etc

I think/hope that schools will over time realise they can't require smartphones for homework etc.

Or possibly phone manufacturers will decide there's enough of a market for externally locked down smartphones, so you can have useful apps like bus, homework, diabetes monitoring etc, but not the entire internet.

My son's six and I sincerely hope that by the time he goes to secondary, it won't be socially acceptable to allow Y7s to have unrestricted smartphones.

Family link is brilliant. You can turn everything off.
Unless they guess your password, I can't see how they can get around it

We use a combination of Apple settings and Qustodio. It is a bit fiddly to set up, but has worked for us alongside ongoing conversations about why the limits are there, what might happen without them, and negotiations on adding in apps or allowed websites.

I imagine a determined DC could get around them but I think it would show up in the live logs on Qustodio. And I’m not aiming for 100%, I’m aiming to make it easier to stay safe, and for them to be able to blame us for things like no access after 9.00 so it’s all our fault they missed the urgent message about homework at 11.30 at night.

No, they don't.

Ds teachers issue a QR code for homework and class tasks, how do you access that without a phone? It's not like you can copy down a QR code into your jotter and look it up on the family PC (who even has a family pc nowadays!? We have my work laptop, DC iPads & our own phones).

Monitoring and restricting access to certain things is very important, I'm not denying that. But smart phones are a pretty vital piece of kit for secondary school kids to allow them to access pretty much everything they need to day-to-day. Schools are much more tech orientated now, and I can't see that changing.

settings - family - child’s name - screen time - content&privacy restrictions- allowed apps - SAFARI (toggle it off)

you can also delete the App Store so the child can’t download any new apps except the one you have put on there by following this

settings - family - child’s name - screen time - content&privacy restrictions- itunes&app store purchases - installing apps - DONT ALLOW

then you can also use screen time restrictions to limit times on any games or whatever that you let them download

Not every school does this - your statement implied that every secondary school child in the country needs a phone to do their homework. Incorrect.

It wasn't my statement 🤨.

Oops, sorry, should have checked. Honestly, if my school said we had to start setting homework using QR codes, I think a few of us would strenuously object.

I have continued to pay the extra for our landline, because I want to have the peace of mind knowing that at home, my DD or any of us have access to a phone to call for help / call 999 / be contacted in case of an emergency, without having to worry about where’s the mobile/is it charged/reception problems etc.

Not much difference between using a mobile connected to WiFi and VOIP phones when it comes to reception issues.
And in the event of a power cut your mobile will work even if you need to move around to get a reception but VOIP won't.