We had our teen on lockdown with her phone, but there were special circumstances. We viewed everything, put time controls, and locked her down to only a few contacts. GPS wasn't an issue as we practically had to force her to go places. DS is only six, but when the time comes there will definitely be GPS and anything related to driving. GPS is for safety and convenience, and driving is a big deal to me. The rest he'll likely have freedom on, as long as he proves himself responsible.
Post by ellipses84 on Dec 11, 2018 23:59:10 GMT -5
My stepson is an adult now, but when he was a teenager he lived with his mom most of the time and had a phone on our family plan, in my name. We told him he had zero right to privacy on it and after he went from sending a few texts a month to 14,000 texts in one month (to a girl he liked/liked him back) I paid for parental monitoring. I could set the times he could use it, with designated phone number to call any time, and I could block numbers, all from the AT&T website, so I could do it when he was at his mom’s, without his phone in my hands. I also had parental control apps, like a kid safe web browser, and I kept the iTunes password. The primary reason for his phone was so he could talk to his dad.
He lived on the border of two states and I really worried he’d do something dumb like send/receive naked pics of a girl from school online and get arrested for child pornography across state lines. I probably went overboard in my warnings and he may have thought we could see more online than we really could, but he never got in trouble with his phone.
Eta: I never had anything more than find my iPhone for tracking and never had to use it and I would never use tracking on my college age kid unless it was for emergencies.