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Eldest mini Pook is turning 11 in Feb and ahead of big school, we're thinking it's time he had a phone.
He loves listening to music and watching YouTube, but we want to keep him safe. God knows even where to start.
There is good deals on apple iPhone SE 2 handsets just now.
If you are part of the apple system then their parental control system is pretty good when you set up the handset. This of course means you need an apple device yourself.
android probably do something too but I don’t know about them 🙂
Our lad had one from about the age of 11. He has our old iPhones
First one got damaged (gave him the oldest we had) one after he’s really looked after.
iPhone parental lock stuff is good, but he can still get to porn if he wants to
We have a deco mesh at home and it allows us to set the wifi to go off at certain times on his phone or bed time.
All On EE and we send him data when we want to.
Nokia 3310 and an iPod. 😁
It's a tricky one for sure. Parental controls are a thing regardless of which ecosystem you particularly favour, but then what are you going to do about his mate with the asymmetrical haircut who's browsing lookatthesizeofthose.com on an unrestricted device? Any tech solutions really have to be secondary to educational solutions (IMHO, IANAparent, etc etc).
Grand daughter similar age 1st year in senior school.
Has old iphone. Stays downstairs overnight. Doesn't know the apple password (yet) so needs to ask to install new apps so mum or dad can at least have a conversation with her about the risks of a certain messaging/picture app.
Seems to be EE are pushing some phone safe training/education for kids maybe worth a look into. (I not think you need to be on EE to look at it).
As the OP, we let our girls have phones ahead of going to secondary school and, again as mentioned, we have a Deco Mesh system and we have parental controls set up. Their data plans are set to disallow adult content and my wife 'manages' their phones through Apple 'Family' settings (so they can't install apps or buy online without permission). We also use Life 360 as a family which is really good as we get to see where they are at any given time. And again, as others have said, phones stay downstairs at bedtime (they are 14 now and still respect the rule).