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Thread: Cell phone for kid in 2021

  1. #11
    Site Supporter
    Join Date
    Aug 2012
    Location
    Central Front Range, CO
    I’m fully on board with pretty much everything @vcdgrips wrote.

    I didn’t do the “rock” thing with my boys, but all the other stuff is very familiar.
    You can limit access to apps with “Parental Controls” on an iPhone. Needs a password or PIN to override or make changes to the limits. You can even set hours-per-day and time-of-day limits on things.

    From my experience, it will also pay off to specifically emphasize that, if you’re paying for the phone, you expect texts and calls to be returned, and voicemail to be set up and checked. One son had configured his phone so that it wouldn’t make noise or distract him in school (good plan so far...), but often forgot to change the settings after school and on weekends - making him difficult to contact, but only as a side-effect of good intent.

    You’ll know when it’s time to get her a phone (when it’s necessary and helpful to both of you). And it will become evident when it’s smart to allow more access and freedom as she gets older.

  2. #12
    I believe our girls are similar in age

    We came to the same question last winter when they were about to be much more independent with activities in summer 2020.

    COVID changed that reality 🙂

    Anyway, after a bit of analysis I decided that standard phones, on the same carrier, running the same op system that my wife and I use would be best for us.

    Since I already use a Verizon iPhone I went with 8s. But the same applies to other brands IMO. We didn’t need the latest Gen like I use but I wanted to make sure they would stay relevant for several years to come and accept the updates. I also wanted to simplify by using the same ports and plug systems as ours.

    The ease of creating a family ecosystem outweighed the little bit of money I could have saved going other routes. I also don’t enjoy tinkering around with software or hardware so being the family geek squad for a Frankenstein system isn’t all that appealing.

    Simplified billing and cheaper for service as a family group than a mix of plans. I can let them use my accounts for music or whatever. Their profiles are essentially a sub-profile of mine. All purchases or downloads require real time approval from my phone etc.

    There is also a whole ecosystem of child control measures between the phone itself and apps. I haven’t messed around with that part very much yet. They have strict guidelines with how they can use them. They get a good bit of use but none of that includes social media or surfing. They might ask permission to text a school friend or look up some sewing thing on YouTube. We aren’t even at the point where they think to pick it up when they leave the house.

    I’m glad we did it. Even a simple thing like leaving them home alone for longer is less worry with heads up comms between the family.

  3. #13
    Site Supporter
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Location
    ABQ
    Also, pay as you go makes a lot of sense for teens. My 13 year old lost his phone about 6 months ago. Lost. Not broken. My 16 year old cannot go 3 months with a new phone before damaging the screen...a flat $90 bucks or so in our case makes sense when a phone has to be replaced.

    pat

  4. #14
    Site Supporter rob_s's Avatar
    Join Date
    Nov 2011
    Location
    SE FL
    Wish I had already moved on this but...

    What I gathering is that if I get an iPhone, or give them mine and I get a new one, I can remove pretty much all the apps that I don’t want them using, and add additional parental controls, and make them get approval for any additional apps (which is how their iPads are set up already).

    Looking at my own phone it looks like you can even get rid of the native Apps like mail and safari, and even the App Store itself!

    I’ll probably try to stay as recent as I can. I’ve had issues at work where the older iPads won’t load the latest iOS which has caused problems, and at least one of the kids iPads won’t load the latest iOS which limits the controls I can have.

    ETA:
    Looks like this is a pretty helpful list of what iOS 14 will work on

    https://www.cnet.com/how-to/ios-14-c...rating-system/

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  5. #15
    Site Supporter
    Join Date
    Oct 2012
    Location
    CT
    My understanding from a friend whose kids have iPhones is that she can also simply monitor, lock or control her kids' phones remotely. I have no idea how and this may not be unique to iPhones but passing it on as it may be useful in your situation and could influence a decision on what model to choose.

  6. #16
    Former school bus driver, current "Where is your emergency?" guy.

    *Holy shit talk to her about sexting. These little shitbags do not let up. Not to mention, the number of times I have to take a report about online blackmail involving nude pictures and minors is fucking disgusting. That said, do you want her learning this stuff when the opposition is a bunch of teenage boys, or when she's 18-21 and the real monsters are out there? Tonight: teenager being manipulated by repeat sex offender meth dealer twice her age. Last week: 23-year-old woman anonymously blackmailed by her boyfriend (a "I hacked your phone, send money or I post your nudes" scam). Protip to the rest of you: I take these same calls from guys being blackmailed by their own stupid dick pics, so parents of boys are not in the clear.

    *Don't get some cheap POS. Reasonably-recent phones, in my experience, GPS plot better than older phones, both in terms of getting a Phase 2 plot, and how quickly the Phase 2 plot resolves into something more usable. Briefly, a Phase 1 plot is a return of what cell tower the call originates from. This is functionally useless--I normally don't even dispatch for 911 hang-ups/disconnects to Phase 1 plots. Phase 2 is GPS data from the phone, but not all Phase 2 data is equal. Usually, the initial pings are a little off and have mediocre confidence--they might plot to 25-100 meters. Great if it's an empty field, not so great if it's a built-up area. Newer, better phones--I can guesstimate a little based on what OS my tools are reporting the phone is using--get a tight Phase 2 faster. I'd say it's rare not to get a really good plot in under 30 seconds, but that's a lifetime. This is important because, while I can have the cell phone company ping the phone, I have to call them up. This takes forever, and more often than not, they tell my something completely useless like "here's the latitude and longitude, within 800 meters". And a disturbing percentage of the time, the jackass operator denies the request. They require a specific reason why the subscriber might be in danger.

    *It seems like AT&T regularly does something screwy that messes up their Phase 2. Just lately, we've noticed a sudden wave of AT&T phones just flat-out not plotting at all on the RapidSOS platform, which is irritating as hell to me, because doing the cell phone location bids through the CAD phone system takes so much longer. I have to manually trigger every ping, each one takes forever, and the results just suck. RapidSOS has a nice map with range circles, and bids automatically every few seconds.

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