Smartphones

[Sliverofdarkness]

Smartphones - we've managed to get away without being pressured to buy our son, who is turning 13, a phone, until now. He is about to move to a large secondary school close to our home. Technically he doesn't need one to get to and from school as it is a very short walk away and they are not allowed them in school anyway.
I've heard plenty of awful stories about phones and what they can get up to with them, apart from the addictive nature of them. Should I get him a smartphone and try to lock it down completely, even though I've heard teenagers can get around Google family link. Or do I get a type of locked down smart phone. He is totally against having a brick Nokia type phone. Will he be socially isolated and find it hard to make friends if I don't get him a phone? Interested in others experiences with getting /not getting teenagers phones.

A 13-year-old would struggle socially without a phone, I think. My DCs are 14 and 16, and they communicate mainly in memes! A brick phone would be useless at this age.

You could install Family link, but Google makes it possible for 13+ users to switch it off themselves. You would get a notification if he did this.

The two most useful things you could do, I think, would be a) get him to agree to have family link installed and use it to set a phone bedtime, so it locks at night; and b) talk to him about the dangers of the unregulated internet, porn, the manosphere, violence, toxic chatrooms, gambling, scams etc.
Education is power.

I think a total ban with these things (phones/sweetsetc) makes them all the more attractive to teenagers. Get him one but rather than controlling it by proxy, physically take the phone off him at bedtime and times you don't want him to have it so he can't get addicted. Start as you mean to go on but also be mindful as he gets older you will have to adapt this agreement