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?

Your restrictions are perfectly reasonable, I have less generous ones for my teens. I would be concerned about how he got the other phone, and my first thought would be county lines.

Fully aware of your campaign to stop all screen time- cool crack on. However tunnel vision can create more issues - when is a burner phone not a burner phone? It bypasses restrictions but also means this boy could be moving drugs around for gangs. You understand the risks of the Internet apparently all too well, however don't let it side line you to thinking that's the only safeguarding risk for young people.

“Burner phone”. 🤣 Someone’s been watching too much American crime tv.
He has a 2nd, secret phone you mean.

Walked into a shop and bought it?

A burner phone is just a cheap spare phone bought for a specific purpose.

Your being very strict, give it back freely, no restrictions and the agreement that you can check it every now and then. And go from there.

Totally agree with this. I would just say beware of Spotify, this is one app we had unrestricted as we thought it was just music (and podcasts). Turns out they can now watch crappy TikTok style videos through Spotify so we’ve had to restrict that as well 😩.

Do you mean 'burner phone' OP? If it is truly a burner phone then he would not be able to access any of the apps you've mentioned, and anyone would walk into a shop and buy one for about £15. Sounds like he has a second smartphone- that is not a burner phone.

The thing is, we will never agree because you’ve taken the hard line on this(fair enough), whereas I’m more middle of the road (allow it with reasonable limits ,restrictions and supervision). Quality of usage over quantity matters in my opinion.

Blanket bans wouldn’t help much in this case anyway would they? If children can get a second phone, they can just as well get a first phone that parents would have no idea about.

Unaware of the new MN rule that you can only quote someone if you mention everyone else who agreed with them.

It’s totally crazy. One day we’ll look back at our parenting with shame.

What do you mean by burner … are we talking another smartphone, or an old Nokia?

Brick/dumb/burner phones are more common nowadays as schools are restricting or confiscating smartphones (I work in an inner London secondary and they’ve become more common recently partly for this reason). To jump to ‘county lines’ as other posters have with absolutely no other concerning behaviour is a bit wild. He’s likely just using it to be able to talk to his friends past a certain time. It’s defiance but I wouldn’t be ‘worried’, just annoyed. Unless there’s a huge dripfeed coming.

If it’s another smartphone i’d be concerned. How he’s paid for it and how is he running it?

You haven’t been too restrictive btw!

I think you need to have a good relationship with your children first and foremost and that includes trust, before you introduce any phone and any kind of social media. They need to feel you are the person they will turn to if there is anything wrong. If your teen is kicking back then you need an open conversation with both sides listening to each other. Your teen is learning to become an adult - support and guide them in that rather than being combative.

That means having ongoing conversations with them about phone use and social media. I can see some phone use is useful - after all I’m on here, using my phone! I use my kindle app a lot, listen to music, check the weather, read the news, use WhatsApp to speak to family, use the Nursing home app to check in about my dad. I use it to book tickets to see a show, check my banking, find out what’s happening locally with the greenfield (now designated greybelt) proposed development, and also play Wordle with my family as we share our results on SM. So for me not all phone use = bad.

Phone use is so much more than just brain rot. I don’t doom scroll as I’ve learnt it’s not good for me. How do teens learn this for themselves? As adults we can talk to them about it, about why you want to restrict TikTok etc but I wouldn’t treat all apps on the phone as needing restriction.

But it always comes back to keeping lines of communication open, and thinking about how your own child uses their phone. If as a younger child they struggled with guidance/safety rules and showed an addictive nature then that’s something you need to de aware of.

Absolutely

The usual MN panic about 'county lines'. Most of these people dont know and dont work with any understanding about drug use, dealing and CCE/county lines.

Everything is 'county lines' screamed at the top of their voices.

OP might be back to say there are a lot of other signifiers of drug use and petty dealing, she might not and its just a bog standard second phone to keep mum out.

Exactly. No doubt a pal's old phone who has then upgraded on a contract. I don't think we need to presume he's drug dealing involved in 'county lines'. Obviously topping up payg on any pocket money.

Op. Sadly as he has demonstrated that he is a liar you need to confiscate both phones and only return one once boundaries have been established. I do think allocating 4hrs a day is too strict they use them at school and they are their primary means of socialising. At 14 he should be self regulating his use he isn't 10.

I think it depends where you live. I'm on the south coast in an affluent area and it's very much a big problem here - not just mumsnet noise and would be something I'd genuinely be concerned of. In my job I see a lot of it actually.

You need to lock down the internet on your router so he can’t use wifi at certain times.

Does he have a burner (a phone that doesn’t connect to the internet like drug dealers use) or a second smartphone? The first is concerning because of the County Lines possibility (dumb phones have no location tracking so police can’t use that info to nail you) but I’m assuming that it’s the latter.

Does he play on a games console as well?

I personally wouldn’t ever restrict Spotify and pay for a family account so they aren’t using internet to stream.

It COULD be county lines.
it could also be just a kid that wants more screen time.

It could be a kid that wants access to porn , chat with strangers , being groomed.

It could be a kid that is accessing violent/illegal content. Like child sexual abuse(real scenario).

We don’t know and OP doesn’t know. Even if it’s nothing, unrestricted access to the internet can very easily become something.

Not having any screen time and just having a brick is restrictive. 4hrs on top of a school day is quite enough if you think about it. A mature conversation is needed about developing brains and having limits for a reason.

This thread is being derailed by opinions on what counts as restrictive.

There is a 14 year old with a burner phone and the most important thing is to establish the provenance and purpose of it. I won't repeat my entire previous post, but really - that's the priority here.

Spotify doesn't just have music on it though. It gives access to plenty of nonsense like podcasts made by nutjobs like Andrew Tate and the like.

Actual county lines is something I work with.

Kids being sneaky is something I also work with

Kids doing petty drug use and dealing is also something I work with

MN does not understand the difference at all.

I work in one of the home counties so completely aware of what is happening and the contexual risk at any one time.

Absolutely this.

Spot checks far more useful as a deterrent than locks and blocks.

I mean, I get this in theory, but when your kid learns how to delete their browsing/search histories and any suspect messages/conversations, then what?

I’m sorry who are these parents saying that four hours a day is restrictive? FOUR HOURS a day?!?!?! That’s absolutely loads.
i really think in the future people are going to look back at us and shudder…

This isn't technically a burner phone.

Not in my opinion anyway. I don't know what the actual name for it is.