Our children are not teens yet (5, 7, 8, and 11) but we appreciated reading through these responses. We live in a neighborhood that has a number of children around the ages of ours, and lately we are running into the problem of some of them (9-12 year olds) now carrying smart phones around! We came up with the idea of having them just drop the phones on a space by our front door if they come over to our house and have talked at length with our children about not looking at them, just coming home if all the others are doing is messing around on their phones, etc. I wish I could say the parents only allow the phones for safety and had good controls on them, but I highly doubt it.
Any other suggestions from those of you further ahead than us?
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The flip phone I got quit working after less than a year for no apparent reason. So it’s back to the drawing board for us. Almost all candy-bar and flip phones that work with today’s cell phone towers (VoLTE) have wifi and a browser built in and no parental controls. So aside from the phone we purchased, I am unaware of any actual options.
So it looks like if we want him to have a phone with some sort of parental controls, or at least without a browser, it has to be a smart phone. The question is which parental controls do we want, the ones from Gabb, Troomi, Pinwheel, Bark, or Apple?
I think talking about all of these as smartphones is true, and a helpful change in the terms of the conversation.
Thoughts?
I discovered Kosher Phones about a year ago. Things like this: https://sunbeamwireless.com/
There are lots and lots of options if you start googling kosher phones.
I personally use the Minimalist app on android. If you combined it with Appblock app, you could shut down anything on the phone including settings.
I got a used Punkt phone on eBay. New prices are absurd but I wanted the (lack of) features. No browser. Monochromatic. Very cumbersome to use for much beside phone calls.
I put minutes on it through Tello for $5/mo.
We don’t have a home landline so this serves to reach kids when they’re home without us. I’ll eventually have to get another for son to carry when he’s out and about.
I don’t have experience with any of the others, but I’ve been reasonably happy with the parental controls on Apple devices. I got burned by parental controls on a Samsung tablet years ago and I’m still sore about it.
Plus it’s been a blessing to have our kids inside the Apple ecosystem for us as parents and so they can communicate with grandparents.
Just make sure the kid doesn’t have his Apple ID password as that is the key to the kingdom.
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Smartphones can be used as a telephone without giving your children the unlock code. For Android, my emergency contacts can be called without the password, and any incoming call can be received without unlocking the phone. There’s seems to be no limit on how many contacts can be in a phone’s list of emergency contacts. So all known contacts can be called.
Text messages can be received and sometimes responded to. More research could be done. And there is some other customizability for apps usable from the lock screen.
Consider this if a smartphone is in the mix.
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