14 year old has a Burner phone

[GCRyan]

I now know that my 14 year old son has a burner phone.

On his “official” phone that we bought I have it locked from 10pm -7am on school days and midnight to 7 at weekends. It has blocks for gambling, porn and similar key works. He has an allocation of 4 hrs per day, with 1.5 hrs of Snapchat and 1 of TikTok. The rest mostly used on Spotify. He has loudly complained how restrictive I am vs other parents. I feel I am being generous. He has threatened getting a burner for several months and I have ignored this until I found it yesterday.

Am I really out of touch with the volume of phone usage for 14/15 year olds?

I need guidance. I expect if I just take the burner he will get another and then will be much more vigilant in its secretive usage.

Does anyone have any words of experience/wisdom to share?

OP is not actually allowing 4 hours a day though - she's restricting to 1 hour on TikTok and 1.5 on Snapchat (so basically messaging friends).

I image it's the SnapChat restriction that is the big deal; it will be like him chatting to a group of friends and continually pulling him out when they are mid conversation.

Don't tell him that you found the burner phone. Let him sweat.

Regarding phone limits: both apple and android devices allow parental settings for example the phone is locked overnight, certain apps are blocked, other apps have daily limits (max xx minutes/hours per day on YouTube) etc.

I've a teen of the same age and we've relaxed his settings recently. For those wondering why 4 hours per day might not be "enough", my 14yo would have been listening to Spotify while walking to and from school yesterday, and again when cycling to and from his after school sport. So that could be 2 hours of "screen time" used already without looking at his phone. Add on some WhatsApp or Snapchat messaging and checking his school Teams messages, when's that homework due, has the after school support been cancelled due to weather? etc, it quickies adds up even without doing any doomscrolling.

Wow four hours of phone use every day is restrictive?!
Don’t let my children read this.
Between school and doing homework work, family time etc, when would they spend those hours?
Shock horror no phone upstairs here too, unless they get a phone call.
The only allowed social media is whatsapp

I don’t restrict music or podcasts other than the overnight total block, all your other restrictions sound perfectly reasonable to me! If anything I’d say your social media allowance is generous

👏👏👏

4 hours is restrictive?!
1 -2 max here then the phone goes away till the next day.
Kids do not need this level of screen usage.

That’s very true - my teen uses his phone to check Class Charts for announcements and homework. Listens to music on it at the gym. Having discussions with friends about homework/who fancies who etc. Uses it to check news websites, to look stuff up for homework. All this time adds up.

The 4 hours phone use is everything though - including listening to music, anything educational related, using the bus app, internet banking, checking school email. Even messaging his mum to say he will be late home. If he spent 4 hours a day doing these things and not using his phone for anything else, would you consider that to be awful?

It would be much better to say that some things are not restricted at all and think about the things that should be.

Bang on 👌 👍🏻

You can spot the posters on here who actually parent their child.

Where did the burner come from? Huge red flag for county lines. Take the burner phone and read all the content. Speak to his school.

When I was a teen I spent hours listening to music, chatting to friends on the landline or doing homework - my ds does similar but all via his mobile phone. It’s not all spent on looking at the screen. He does a lot of quizzes too -Wordle, Worldle etc plus duo lingo

Does the new phone have a SIM/airtime? Or is he basically using it like a handheld computer connected to Wi-Fi? If the latter, then use MAC filtering to kick the new device off your Wi-Fi.

Unfortunately "kids" could easily spend an hour doing research for school or reading homework materials online. So, if this is the case for your children, they are not allowed their phone for any "leisure" pursuit at all? We need to get out of the mindset that "screen time=bad" and think about what we actually think is bad.

Presumably they have other devices like a laptop/ipad for homework?

As others have said - this isn’t 4 hours on social, it’s all the other things a child needs it for (listening to music or the radio, accessing homework tasks, the bus pass and other public transport, Apple Pay etc).

I think the best approach is to block all the doomscroll and social apps beyond a certain limit.

But I don’t have teens yet, so who knows…

It’s the restriction on Snapchat - mine accept no probs being limited on sm and acknowledge it’s a massive waste of time. Lock out when they are meant to be sleeping also fine but the way the phones record screen time he’s not def doomscrolling for 4 hours. It’s a constant struggle. For what it’s worth I think it’s better to stop or limit heavily social media (tik tok etc) but let them have free access to messaging including snap chat, WhatsApp. Other than when they should be asleep. Also I’m more
likely to be hollering get off your phone and find something useful to do rather than relying on the screen time functions. I think it’s important they learn to manage their use rather than constantly trying to get around screen time restrictions

How on earth is a 14 yr old affording a phone?

Or being able to pay for a contract?

You are being unreasonable with the micro management of certain apps. I.e Either they have a phone for 4 hours a day to use as they wish safely or they don’t.

Some people of a certain age have a view of devices that is behind the times, that’s not a criticism it is reality.

Your child has actively decided to find a work around to your rules, that’s the most important thing here. This work around means they could potentially be up all night chatting with friends or it could be something more sinister.

It will be a friend's old phone, or a second hand one from ebay (or similar) that is PAYG (but they will use mainly with WiFi). Free or very cheap.

That would be both phones removed and a full screen time / mobile ban for me. I don’t think 14 year olds should have phones, unless clam style with no social media.

All 14 year olds chat on snap chat all the time (or all the ones I know anyway and I know a lot!), it's their version of going round and knocking for your mates, or chatting for hours on the landline. Restricting Snapchat is restricting access to their mates. My son spends hours on line on snap chat with his mates while he's doing other stuff - lifting weights, doing homework, playing X box, cooking tea... His mates will be going about their business and they just chat at intervals. It's weird to us but normal to them. Ref the burner phone, my daughter dug out an old one to use when I took hers off her for a few days when she was 14 (so amounts to the same thing), because she didn't want to not be in contact with her mates. They'll always find a way to flout rules if they feel they're too restrictive

at last some common sense … thank you 🙏

I don’t think it’s even that weird? I spent a fair proportion of my evening messaging various group chats too, and I’m 43!