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?

Backup phone / spare phone is my usual classification of it

for me i carry 2 phones due to needed them when i used to do work in villages because some networks had low signal and or battery ,

That's why I said spot checks. They won't alway remember to delete everything and you might find out more than blocking everything which leads them to have second phones.

None of it is fool proof obviously. All you can do is advise and guide from when they first get a phones. Some parents I knew didn't even know their kids pins for phones because 'privacy' .

And now videos. We were very disappointed to learn this after previously allowing unrestricted Spotify on the understanding it was just music. Now if you’re allowing unrestricted Spotify you may as well allow unrestricted YouTube/reels etc as they can access the same brain rot videos on Spotify.

DD can sometimes spend 4 hours on her phone just doing homework (Seneca, Dr Frost , watch this video to draw a peacock/gargoyle/jammy dodger etc).

Spotify?

Isn't that just music?

Mine too

My son is the same age and we have similar limits on apps. Although Spotify doesn’t have restrictions as it’s no different to the radio or listening to music.

Surprised so many are saying it’s restrictive, if he had no limits he would literally spend about 8 hours a day on TikTok.

What you should be doing is putting the burner back, not letting on and finding out what he is doing with it without telling him.

Anyone who has access to the router can check traffic. Of course if he is IT savvy he may take steps to stop that.

Doesn’t sound as though OP is up for listening to him advocating for more time, otherwise he wouldn’t have gone behind her back. Way to restrictive for a 14 year old.

Oh right. Thanks for the heads up.

There are some panicky responses here, which maybe the case, but highly likley not. I had this with my foster daughter. her phone broke and i got her a new one, and she managed to get it fixed by someone at school so had 2 phones! Only found out as she had it in her pocket and it fell out while she had her other phone in her hand! She was not doing anything really dodgy, just using it after hours and during the day when she wasn't supposed to. We came to a compromise where her screen time shut off at 10 on weekdays and 11 at weekends (she was 14) and she was OK with that (with lots of eye rolling and sighing). We also agreed that her homework came first and she had to have that completed and if she used it in lessons etc then her phone would be confiscated for 5 days. i think 4 hours a day is likely a bit light as unless they go to a school where phones are taken away, then they do use them on breaks etc. I would agree a switch off time with boundaries on homework, familytime, meals etc.

Have you checked the phone works? Lots of kids have dummy phones that they hand in to school if caught with one. Well, more if they have to hand a phone in for a week or so depending on the consequence. Reporting to HOY for example.

Maybe provide a different device for that then. Pretty hard to do homework from a tiny phone screen, especially dr frost etc.

“Although Spotify doesn’t have restrictions as it’s no different to the radio or listening to music.”

see my post above - that’s what we thought but recently learned they’re accessing videos through Spotify so you may want to look at that.

Spotify has a messaging option.

A lot of kids only have one device . However , the issue was quantity of usage (and how it’s too high) , in which case it can quickly add up . I seriously doubt saying my kid has 6 hours screen time , but 4 hours are on an ipad would make a difference. If they can’t imagine being legitimately on it for 4 hours , they won’t be able to process 6.Or we could have a discussion about the quality of usage , in which case the device used is irrelevant.

Yes but there’s a distinction to be made between screen time used for leisure and screen time used for homework. Easily helped by a different device (ideally laptop or desktop). Also I genuinely feel sorry for kids having to try to do dr frost on a tiny phone screen!

School should have an after school homework club where kids who need screens to do homework can complete this at school on a much more suitable device.

Its quite shocking the number of posters who think its appropriate for their kids to do homework and pore over a small screen for a couple of hours for that purpose. They should have a laptop or big tablet. Their eye sight and posture will be compromised on a phone

Do most 14 year olds have enough money to do that then?

They get given old phones after their friends upgrade or they upgrade and keep their old phone.

People seem oblivious to how common this is.

I was replying specifically to “walked into a shop and bought it”.

Also, more fool the parents who don’t take away the old phone to trade in or sell and just let the child do with it whatever they want.

^^ lots of kids being targeted from ‘nice’ areas so I’d be worried too.

A couple of my daughters friends had different sims from about Yr 7 up. I don't think they did anything particularly nefarious with them. I think they just wanted privacy and didn't like being controlled/questioned.