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?

I’m with you there. She does have an Ipad, so it was choice rather than need. Then again she has to use actual pen and paper (screen too small) , get her books to find a method /remember something so not sure if that’s better. It’s not laziness, just…. Weird. She just puts the answers in.

Going back to my original point, a lot of kids only have one device, and they use that for everything , which can bring usage up by quite a lot. Then you’ll have people that say their kids don’t use their phone a lot or don’t even have one, but they have a laptop, tablet, kindle , alexa, games console etc. and they also spend hours on them. Make it make sense.

Enough that it would hardly be considered unusual. My 13 yo has enough to do it. How expensive do you think a 2nd hand phone is?

You can buy a second hand smartphone for under £10 if you are not fussy as to make/model.

You know very well that that kind of thing is not universally feasible for schools to offer. But yes, ideally they should when all their communications, homework ,announcements, revision etc. is device based.

If it's not feasible for a school to provide space and devices for a child to do their homework on if necessary then they shouldn't set homework that needs a device.

Schools are generally quite up on this after covid though.

What else is he doing? There is no way this is the sum total of the shit he is up to. How are his school grades? Do you know where he is going if he hangs out with mates? Is he secretive when he’s at home, spends a lot of time in his room for example? Any new things with no idea how he has purchased them?

Not at all

but threads like this will always be divided to those who think internet is awful and why do kids need it v having it and no limiting at all

meet somewhere in the middle

To me (and I imagine most sensible parents) screen time is a sum total, however many devices and whichever device it’s spent on . 1.5 hours on iPad/playstation/etc, 2.5 hours on phone - I’m counting it as 4 hours.

I might suggest it to DD’s school at the next PTA . She won’t be able to attend because she takes the school bus, but it might help others. Or make the school reconsider their device heavy approach. I get that it saves time and money on printing , resources, admin etc. They also put announcements at 9 pm or early in the morning on the app that something was cancelled, or a room has changed or whatever. The assumption is that not only will kids have their own devices , but that they access them at all times too.

A lot of MNers live on another planet as opposed to the rest of us it seems.

Phone restrictions aside he is a cheeky little shite going behind your back like that and you have more to be concerned about than phone usage if he has gone and actually procured a second phone secretly.

For a start I would remove ALL phone privaleges for the forseeable and stop any access to spending money. He needs a serious talking to about the repercussions of lying to you for a start.

There are two (technically separate) problems that need addressing:
The first is his current phone restrictions. I think the night locks are reasonable and 4 hrs is fine on school days (especially as they are at school for around 5 hrs plus around 2 hrs homework on top). But I think the weekend restrictions (especially if for Spotify) are a bit OTT. “I feel I am being generous” implies to me you ideally don’t want him to have a phone at all (I completely sympathise) because if that’s your idea of generous then I don’t know what your idea of ingenious would be. Obviously I also have no objection to the inappropriate content filters: in fact I think all phones most automatically come with them, that the user can only opt out of once they are 18+.

I do think you are out of touch with teens on phone usage, BUT I don’t think you are out of touch with parents and teachers. And to me that’s where the problem lies.

Despite the popular attitude amongst parents,schools, government, etc., I personally don’t think only allowing screens with highly limited time restrictions is the answer. I watched a documentary/reality type show on C4 a year or so ago where UK and US high schoolers took part in a school exchange. In the US, for good or for ill, phones are generally (state-dependent) allowed for ‘sensible use’ in the high school stage (roughly our KS4-5). The British kids really struggled with having essentially unlimited access to the point that the vice principal of the US school revoked their right to phones because it was causing too much destruction to themselves in class. Interestingly, the US kids didn’t have as much of a problem when in the London comp and their phones were locked away at the gate. Obviously, they weren’t too happy about it, but they still were able to fully concentrate in their classes. For what it’s worth, I am of the opinion that schools (particularly up to the end of Y11) should be completely phone-free, but I do wonder if further restrictions outside are the answer. Mind you, what is the answer? I have no clue.

The second issue (and arguably more important) is how has a 14-year-old managed to get themselves a second phone and where/how was it sought? Do they have a paper round/Saturday job? If not, where did the money come from if brought?
Do you think it is an old phone from a mate? If so, do you know said mate?

I agree with others that there is a possibility that he is being groomed in one way or another, so my first priority would be making sure he’s not being exploited by any sort of gang.

Suggesting children should be able to regulate their use of a device which is highly addictive and specifically designed to suck their attention and keep them using it is just bollocks.

You've made him do that thats way too strict

This is just ludicrous. Children need guidance and parenting. Unrestricted access to devices and content is at best risky and at worse neglect.

Totally agree, I have been in touch with them about this. There should be a way to turn off the video access.

Whilst I agree our children are becoming all too reliant on their phones and social media etc I think the restrictions you placed were too heavy in the first place. So now he has resorted to a burner, which could technically be for perfectly innocent use. However unfortunately now you may have to intervene to make sure its all innocent which he is going to resent. Im not trying to sound mean but youve sort of caused this situation yourself

4 hrs per day is too much, usually a burner phone is a cheap phone that is a basic phone that isn't used for apps, websites etc, if it's a phone he's using for apps it's not a burner phone it's a secondary phone, I've got a burner phone I used to take to work so I could order a taxi home, as didn't want to take my main phone, all I can do on it is call or text, there are legitimate reasons for burner phones, like a phone to take to work as I said or on a bight out so it doesn't matter if it gets lost or for dodgy reasons like crime .... If he's got a new phone and got a contract it's probably an illegal contract if he's under 18 unless it's prepaid with vouchers or bank card

Do you know definition of a burner phone? It's usually a basic phone usually without ability to use apps or websites so it's it has the ability to go onto apps he didn't buy a burner phone

Ugh it’s so frustrating isn’t it? It’s like with Snapchat, it seems to be the main keeping in touch social app among my 14-year-olds friends yet has ‘reels’ on there as well, essentially the exact same as TikTok. Just why?

Im pleased YouTube have finally added an option for turning off ‘reels’ as well. My own attention span gets dreadful if I don’t limit my own time scrolling on those types of quick short videos.

OP has not come back to say whether DS has a second phone, i.e. a smartphone, or an actual burner phone - cheap and often associated with drugs, etc. And if the phone has a contract and a number or if it's just internet based.

If it's a second phone, he could have bought it off a friend and be using it to get out phone restrictions. Not great but not terrible either.
If it's a low cost Nokia style thing, PAYG, then I would be a bit more worried.

We learnt you can have a parent-managed account where you can switch off video but only for under 13s (should be available for teens imo) and it also means they lose various benefits such as sharing playlists etc. It’s so frustrating! WHY do they need to add videos?

And that’s way too lax, not to mention naive.

My daughter loves her music, she has whatsapp and Spotify that's it. Now she is accessing brain rot like salish matter and all sorts.

People need to open their eyes. She is in a class with boys who talk about 69s and ccks and bouncing up and down on top of one another making sex noises, asking if they can touch girls bums and b*bs. She is 12 some of these boys are 11. Thankfully shes mature enough to bring this to me and we have conversations and she thinks they are all gross. I didnt want to be having these comversations at her age but needs must. Some of her friends are watching skins, sex education etc. the sexualisation of children, in particular boys is frightening and its coming from social media. I see it every day myself as a teacher. Most parents are blind or turn a blind eye.

On android devices using family link you can set it to lock at certain times and put like an hour restriction on individual apps etc. So like once you've watched YouTube for an hour it'll just kick you out the app and not let you reopen it x