Samson is now at the age where he is able to use his phone independently – that means he can check is numbers and respond to them pretty well on his own.
But… it also means he is almost constantly texting people or looking up soccer statistics. It’s usually his grandparents or aunt but I’m wondering what rules folks have for their kids and phones? He certainly needs access to it but this seems kind of silly for a 2nd grader.
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Hmm, tough problem. Both of my kids went nuts when we first gave them the phone. Rules didn’t seem to work well, although mine were a bit older and so less amenable to parental rules. Most of the apps out there don’t control, they just seem to spy. What would be awesome would be a way to give him unlimited texts to you and select family members, and a very limited amount of texts to his friends. While it isn’t a problem yet, it will be as all of his friends get their phones.
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I think you’re right to have some concern about it. Not sure what you’ve tried, but below are a few links that might be helpful:
There are several apps for parental controls on both Android and Apple, some are paid, some not. You may want to search further.
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For now, Liam knows his phone is strictly a medical device. When he shows me that he can charge it and take care of it he’ll be able to do other things on it.
Also we use Norton family and it’s great for seeing what the kids are doing and controlling what they are doing both on pc and mobile. We’ve used other apps in the past as well but now i don’t remember them. There are quite a few good apps/programs that control what kids can see and have access too.
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We were fortunate in that our kids were pretty old (12 and 14) when the iphone came out, so we didn’t have to figure out social media or how to handle ipads and such. I don’t know how we would have been able to handle the constant social and peer and device pressure on kids to get addicted to tech.
'Cause of course we all like technology and can’t do without it.
One suggestion fwiw: Try to encourage public use of computers / ipads / etc by keeping them in public places in the house – don’t let kids have computers in their rooms - put the computer in the kitchen or the family room. This will allow you to very naturally check on what your kids are up to, and will get your kids used to thinking about interacting with tech as a public act rather than one done in your room.
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All our kids are learning virtually so they need their own room for quiet. But they all know that Mom and Dad can (and sometimes will) commandeer their PC/Phones and we can (and sometimes will) check apps, histories, etc. You can also blacklist specific sites via windows manipulation of certain files. It’s also possible to be notified when incognito is accessed, and even see incognito browsing, etc. We don’t micromanage our kids electronic use but we do; however, perform occasional “trust checks” just to be sure we aren’t blindsided with “OMG i didn’t know my kids was doing this or that.”
My kids also don’t do social media at all and Mom and have i advised them that they can NEVER friend, or accept a friend request from someone they do not know in real life. I also vet any game servers (such as the many Minecraft and Roblox servers/games) to verify they are family friendly. The kids have to request to play in a server and then i research and give them the yes or no on them.
They also know we don’t allow apps that have the ability to erase chat/history automatically such as Snapchat. They shouldn’t have anything they talk about that needs to be erased…
I also try to stay up on the ways the systems can be circumvented such as how to hide things, etc and when trust checks are performed, i employ those methods.
I think the issue is that all of what he is doing is unobjectionable – the vast majority of it is texting his grandma or me, or looking up the scores for the most recent soccer game, etc. It’s more that doing it too much, in my opinion. And because it’s a medical device and don’t really want him using it for fun at all at this point.
However, he absolutely needs to have always-on text access to his parents, grandparents etc. for emergencies, and we want him to be able to google carb counts if needed – so I’m not totally sure parental controls will do much. We already block YouTube and there is some kind of content control set up for Internet surfing.
My kids were unfortunately given chromebooks by the school district, and we tried to give them back but they want the kids to hold on to them. WE do try to keep those hidden away and only used in communal rooms.
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OHHH, the school district chrome books. This also happened to us during COVID remote “learning” and with 5 kids, exploded the number of devices needing monitoring in our house! after returning to in person school they continued to send them home with the kids each day, “so that they will have them if we have to flip back to virtual learning”. I mean, that’s like sending a kid home with snowshoes every day in case it snows before school resumes!! And even if that happened, its not like the school becomes the Chernobyl exclusion zone…i could go pick the dang things up. 
Anyway, school system idiocy aside we struggled with the same things since my kiddo got a dexcom at 11 and needed a device more effective than the receiver for all of us to monitor it. This made the strategies we used with his brother, like providing a phone with only calls/wifi, no data plan, and leaving the phone in a public location at night, not really workable (night being dexcom primetime!) I agree that its not only about mis use, but also about not forming a habit of constant interaction with our phone/device to the detriment of Actual Life. Hard for all of us, excruciating to young teenagers.
Some things that worked for us at different points:
–removing the browser
-having no cell data plan, while he was young enough that he wasnt doing a lot of activites where i needed remote dexcom data to my own phone. For sleepovers we’d just connect his phone to host’s wifi.
–using an ipod touch rather than phone thru 8th grade. He got a “real phone” in 9th grade like the other kids. Except the upod touch broke end of 8th grade so he got promoted early!
–parental control router to monitor what phone was doing other than dexcom.
–open, forewarned monitoring of text messages and other use by parents as others said
–when at home, phone will often bluetooth to dexcom from pretty far away/often enough to monitor safety even if put on a counter or bookshelf. Also used to let him fall asleep then take it into his bedside table.
–dexcom breaks. Especially when awake. Because ultimately you want to be able to survive diabetes even with a dead cell phone battery!
–juat taking to them about why i care and my concerns about all of us (me included) taking the easy entertainment route of phone play instead of the harder engagement of a book or conversation or hobby. And daring them to see who can notntouch their phone the longest! (Diabetes stuff doesnt count)
That said, my oldest three kids now have sweet, independent relationships with grandparents via text and emails that i dont think theyd have had otherwise and that is a really silver lining of phones. And my almost 18 year old T1 uses his phone a lot more rationally as he matures although still texts while walking/eating/showering!
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