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?

They're discussing a social media ban in various countries at the moment as screen time is so evidently bad for kids and yet you still have people on MN saying 4 hours a day on your isn't enough. Batshit. Although it is half term so maybe it's kids also pissed off at their parents parenting them.

OP - lots of people are saying county lines, which is something that kids get burner phones for, but kids also get burner phones for other reasons, it's more common than you might think. I know kids who have burner phones because their parents track them on life 360 and so they go out to an agreed friend's house, leave their tracked phone there, then take their burner phone with them to the real party.

How can they afford a burner phone? As soon as someone gets a new phone, their old phone becomes a burner. Kids also hand these around. Doesn't need a contract, just a pay as you go sim.

Are you also a teenager? 4 hours a day is not restrictive.

My teens time listening to Spotify or podcasts etc doesn't count as time as he's seen as not active on the phone, the screen is locked. Worth checking out.
I don't think OP has been at all restrictive. 4hours is a huge amount of time and my teen gets nowhere near that and he has self learned to manage it really well. Says a huge amount of snapchat is wasted time with randoms sending streaks etc.
We all know how difficult it js to self-regulate. Most will use the maximum whatever they get.

also wanted to ask about the Spotify restriction. 2 of my 3 children (and my husband) love music and would hate to be restricted like this. Tbf, those 2 are 17 and 20 so irrelevant now.

I don't have teenager yet, but my friend does, and not long ago she found her 13 year old dd sending and receiving all sorts of inappropriate pictures and messages. She was sneaking out at night and meeting boys. It's made me determined not to give my dd a phone freely as she gets older, there will certainly be rules and restrictions. Phones/sm can be damaging to young kids so I don't think you're wrong.

I lock DD14s phone 10pm - 7am as well, but she has a LOT more screen time. It’s basically unrestricted (I have to approve downloads) but she isn’t allowed instagram or snap chat.

I don't think OPs' rules are too restrictive but I would put Spotify on another device for him - there's no need to limit access to music!

Oh you have reminded me when we first got a landline that you could walk around the house with 🤣 I would be chatting to my mates non stop (after 6pm when it was free 😉) walking round the house, or watching the soaps at the same time as them so we could talk about what was happening 🤣 Used to drive my dad mad! He grew up without a house telephone so didn’t understand why I was constantly on it 🤣

On the one hand the burner phone raises red flags for me, on the other hand he has repeatedly been saying he'd get one and you'd think that if it was provided by someone scary in a county lines context that he'd be hiding it better. I definitely would be asking questions, though.

I have limits on my own phone because I don't have self-control. My (android) phone doesn't count Spotify as screen time if I am just listening to a playlist, only when I turn on the screen to choose a song. If that is also the case for him then 4 hours seems plenty.

@GCRyan times are fine . The tik tok no .
Especially the Snapchat as that’s how all the young ones communicate . I’d leave them unrestricted.

People think a teenager spending four hours a day on phone apps is restrictive??

TikTok, Snapchat are deliberately addictive, they mess with concentration spans and are full of terrible influencers. I wouldn't want a 14 year old spending any time on them

Red flags county lines, internet use is the least of your worries.

I’m surprised by the Tik Tok - definitely wouldn’t allow that. At all.

How in the name of fuck is 4 hours PER DAY restrictive? Fucking fucking hell.

The only thing that is unnecessarily restrictive is that Spotify is limited.

Why quote me

not crazy at all

nearly every reply above me says it’s restricting in time / same as mine

4hrs is nothing. Esp if playing music - odd game on Roblox etx - bit of internet search for homework and gone

I will never understand why people just accept a tunnel vision life on phones for their kids. Justifying it as 'their version of going and knocking their mate's door'is fucking ludicrous when their mate's door still exists.

No, they think OP's blanket 4 hours restriction is restrictive. Lots of posters have explained how this can easily get eaten up by entirely innocuous things.

For example, do any of the posters on here really have an issue with the DC doing 2 hours of revision on Seneca following by 2 hours of listening to music on Spotify? That's his whole allowance gone, so if he then wants to message a friend to meet up later, then he can't.

If you get home from school sometimes after 4 it's your entire evening. It's virtually all their time.

We had similar restrictions at the same age, but no Tik Tok, and no restrictions on music. I was fairly lax if she was messaging her friends on Snap/what’s app and the time went, she’d request more time which generally we just granted especially if all watching something and discussing it. Now the restrictions are taken off, the deal is phone stays outside her room overnight or restrictions go back on and I keep finding it on the stairs in the morning!

What has happened to society that people think 4 hour use a day is "restrictive"?

Absolute madness...

Saves them from parenting.

It is with music /spotifly

Sorry, but some comments here are utterly mad. 4h a day browsing on phone and watching dumb videos is a lot of time to waste for a 14-year old. Time that could be spent more productively - reading books, doing a hobby, doing some sport, studying and meeting friends. That's 28 hours a week of brain-rot.

If you think a 14 year old is doing two hours of revision on Seneca every evening on their phone then I have a bridge to sell you.