first phone/watch for kid

[mpc]

My oldest is about to turn 11. A few months ago he started walking home from school by himself every day. I was hoping to hold out longer on a phone, but we're thinking it might be time. And with the possibility of divorce on the horizon, I'm feeling even more like it would make sense.

My top priority is for him to be able to contact us, his parents. Also, us being able to monitor and/or maybe limit what he can do? He wants a phone solely so he can play video games on it with his friends. This is our first time figuring this out, so any suggestions? Or things to think about?

I was thinking a watch might make sense (but I have no idea really what the options are). But it would allow him to call us but not have a bunch of apps? He loves wearing a watch and having timers and alarms, so I think he would appreciate those kind of features. I know given the choice he would strongly prefer a phone, but I'm prepared to just keep letting him borrow my ipad when the situation calls for it. Although, if H and I do split up, is there a benefit to him having an actual phone when he's at the other parent's house?

Appreciate any and all recs. 

[liverandonions]

My daughter is 11 too and doesn’t have a phone yet. When she stays home alone she has a wifi enabled ipad she can communicate with us. All i know for now is when she gets a device i will be getting Bark on it.

[thebreakfastclub]

At home we have a landline. This way, he can always call 911 if needed, I know I can call him, whether he is alone or with a sitter. I once had a sitter show up with 2% on her phone battery so I always want to be able to call my home.

[Jalapeñomel]

WE got my son an Apple Watch instead.

[krystee]

We did the watch through our phone plan so it’s a TMobile Gabb and I love it! He has an older iPad of ours to play games on, and a watch helps him not be distracted on a device when we’re out or he’s with friends. But he’s only just about to turn 9. I really want to hold off on a phone since a watch and an iPad are plenty, but we’ll see if that changes in a couple years.

[Deleted]

If you go the phone route I’d lock it down completely and only have it allow phone calls and texting. I’d get safari or any other web browser off. I wouldn’t put any apps on it and make sure that the parental controls are set up correctly so he can’t get around them. My older two kids got phones at 11. It was fine at first, but it spirals quickly and it’s so much harder to put the genie back in the bottle. My 12 year old does not have a phone and will not have a phone probably until HS if I can manage because of the lessons learned from his older sisters having phones. He might get a dumb phone like the light phone 2 instead of a smart phone even, I’m not totally sure yet. I think I can make an iPhone essentially a dumb phone starting out and I will absolutely do that next time I give a kid a phone if it’s an iPhone. I prefer a phone to watch because of the tactile feedback on the watch. As an adult I find it pretty distracting and I have most things turned off. I don’t think a kid would be able to ignore it, not that they ignore their phones either, but at least they are maybe more likely to set them down and walk away occasionally.

[hbomdiggity]

Not terribly helpful since I don’t have a ton a details, but another family we know got their 9yo an Apple Watch. They tried something else first, but they didn’t like the app and it was too limiting. The Apple Watch allows them to limit content and contacts, but gives them the ability to text and call as needed. Apparently his school is very strict and he can’t wear it during the day, but he has been good at not losing it and putting it on as soon as soon as school ends (the whole point so parents can reach him during after school activities).

[Tacocat]

My DD is 11 and we just got her a phone. We have Verizon which you can add on a parenting app for $5/mo that monitors everything on the kids phone. You can control screen time, when they can be using their phone, approve their contacts, what apps they can download, and you can control the content they see. I get a daily report of her activity and I know her password so I can look anytime. I felt like this was a good place to start. She mainly just uses it to text her friends and play a few games, and of course contact us when she’s home from school alone. So far it is working well. She also knows if she doesn’t follow the rules, phone goes away.

[picksthemusic]

We got DD a phone for her 12th birthday, and she is also in middle school, so we felt strongly that she needed more than her SyncUp watch we got her through T-Mobile. DS also has a SyncUp watch and we do love it for what it can do. DD's phone is an iPhone SE, and it's perfect for her needs and we have that thing locked down like Fort Knox.

[bears]

DD has an iPhone that she got at the end of fifth grade. We went back and forth about it and decided that a phone was really limiting and a smart watch wouldn't be a good fit for our needs.

It's been a good thing. She uses it to chat with family quite a bit, check-in with me as needed, and take pictures. She's really responsible with it and makes good choices. We keep an eye out, but everything has been fine.

For my son, we are going to have to look it down and watch him like a hawk when the time comes. They are just very different kids when it comes to electronics.

[VillainV]

We got our son a Gabb watch at age 8.5, then upgraded him to an Apple Watch a few months before turning 10 (long story short, we upgraded the Gabb and the network coverage wasn’t great, and we were able to get a good deal on a refurbished Apple Watch).

At nearly 10 I think our son is too young for a phone mostly because he would probably lose it, and he has an (ancient) iPad that he uses to talk to friends and such.

We know kids with divorced parents who have iPhones at age 10ish, for exactly the reason you mentioned — to be in touch with both parents no matter where they are.

[cereal K]

DD got my hand-me-down iPhone XS when she turned 11 (two weeks before she started 6th grade). We have limits on it, and I scroll through it occasionally. We agreed to ground rules (that I typed up like a contract) before she could have it. It was earlier than I thought I would get her a phone, but we use it as an opportunity to learn to use her phone in a safe and healthy way now vs getting it later when she thinks she knows everything and doesn't need to listen to me. I don't see phones having a smaller role in our lives in the future, so I'd rather use this as a training wheel type period.

[penguingrrl]

My 11 year old has a phone, but can only really use it to call/text family. He has H and my numbers, both older siblings, the grandparents and aunts and uncles. So far he has no friend’s numbers, we’ll likely lift that restriction for 6th grade. We found that by the end of 5th beginning of 6th we stopped hearing from parents to plan “play dates” and kids getting together happened within group chats. Not my favorite thing, but my oldest was being accidentally excluded until we let them have friends’ phone numbers because parents were out of it by then and it was usually within group chats that someone suggested meeting up at X location to go biking. Then there would be a ton of “hey guys, if you’re looking for us we’re here now, oh, now we’re on this side of town” texts as the group moved around and friends looked for them. Unfortunately kids who didn’t have that capability were left out, not out of malice but because nobody knew how to reach them.

I will say, we had/have our kids phones very locked down. They can’t download apps without permission going through my phone (and I rarely give permission) and we look through them, read texts, etc. We haven’t had any issues arise because of phones, but I know that we’ve been really lucky. As my oldest has navigated HS we’ve grown far more hands off because they have proven that they can handle the responsibility. We’ll see how the other two do with that.

[redheadbaker]

We got a Gizmo watch first, and while it worked well at first, it stopped charging, no matter how many times we cleaned the contacts, adjusted how it sat on the charger, etc.

So, we bought him a Kyocera flip phone (not a smart phone).

[momof2]

You just need a watch.

That said, here is what we have done. We turned on a very old
iPhone of mine and connected her watch to it. The phone lives in our kitchen. She wears the watch to school and activities. We allow her to use the phone for specific occasions where she wants to take pictures. The phone is locked down. She cannot put apps on it. It has downtime between 8pm and 8am, etc. She isn’t trying to break any rules with the phone. The main user of the phone is me. I can read every single text she gets on it. I keep my eye on it several times a week to make sure nothing is going sideways in texts.

[CrazyLucky]

We planned to get each kid a phone for their 12th birthday, but we don't have a landline and wanted DD to be able to reach us if needed before she turned 12. We bought her a Sync Up watch through T-mobile. Don't do that. It's great for how locked down you can keep it, but otherwise sucks. We replaced the charger twice. Last month, it just died. Wouldn't charge, wouldn't do anything. So she ended up getting a phone at age 11.5. DS is definitely not thrilled!

[fn2187]

I found an iPhone to be the best choice for us. DD used a couple educational apps on it (required school programs), loved to take photos, sets her alarms on it, timers, listens to music, uses the calculator, and more. I also wanted to easily track location. It was just a learning curve for me to learn how to lock it down to certain restrictions, but well worth it. I personally would either hand down an old phone OR if I needed to buy, it’s the SE cheaper option.

[VillainV]

Just FYI, your kid can use an Apple Watch without having their own iPhone. You can set it up using a parent’s iPhone. The child does need their own AppleID, which you can set up using Apple Family. Having their own unique AppleID is highly recommended because without it you can’t use the parental control features.

[dearprudence]

My 12 year old has a Tmobile Sync-up watch which I love. It's perfect for his use, which is mostly to get a hold of me when he's with his friends or to contact his friends. It has some games, but nothing that keeps him interested and he can only communicate with contacts I put in, so he has to give me friends' numbers, he can't add them himself.

[ellipses84]

My 12 year old has an Apple Watch with cell service and its own phone number. It’s technically connected to my phone. We primarily use it for texting, you can talk on speakerphone. DS complains about it because he really wants a real phone but I’m holding out as long as possible. I tell him 16 but we’ll probably get him one for Christmas in 8th grade (14.5) with lots of monitoring. His BFF has an old school flip phone. They are hard to find but they are possible to get. There are a couple other phone and watch brands that are geared towards kids and simplified. iPhones are pretty hard to lock down properly and don’t work as well with 3rd party monitoring apps like Bark, but familiarity helps. If you have an android I’d get them an android. I highly recommend a monitoring app for all devices (can be via wi-fi at home and on mobile phones).

My stepson had an iPhone at a younger age due to 2 homes, but we locked it down as much as we could with parental controls - deleting the safari app and downloading a kid web app, paying for extra parental controls the phone company offered at the time, not allowing apps to be downloaded without a passcode he didn’t have, etc. The first time he started talking to a girl he liked he went from like 20 texts per month to 40,000 and we knew that due to the monitoring (that meant they were texting for hours each day while he was at his moms). We’d often put it away at both houses but he could have it at anytime to call a parent. With today’s smart phones I worry about too much screen time, their exposure to unhealthy social media, predators that can contact them via any app with messaging, online bullying and unrealistic porn. They will have a phone at some point so I think it’s good to talk about these things and allow some independence with expectations, boundaries, monitoring, etc. leading up to age 18. You can Google kids phone contracts and set the boundaries before they get the phone, which is far easier than giving them free rein and have to make rules stricter if there are problems. Things like no phones in bedrooms, phones go on the charger in a public area at 8pm, etc.

If you think STBX will get them a phone without talking to you first or there could be safety concerns/ privacy issues or spiteful controllingness, I might pre-emptively get one so you can be the one to monitor it and make sure your child can always call you.

[livinitup]

We did the Gizmo watch at that age but it didn’t really work well or get used. Maybe they have gotten better or it’s kid dependent. But it mostly lived in a draw or a backpack.

[polarbearfans]

We did a Bark phone. It is set to just allow calls and texts to me and her dad for now. Texts cannot be deleted. If I wanted we could unlock it more to allow apps and more. I can track where she is, her routes, and how long traveling.

From what I have this is the most secure option and best monitoring. Right now the concern is just that she has a way to reach us when she is at an activity/sport/away from us. I also have a landline that we mainly use for outgoing calls.

[jg183]

if you are an iphone family you might want to get yourself a new phone and add a line to your plan. For us that was significantly cheaper than any other option and then I was able to lock the iphone down with parental controls
apple has the best controls and since it was my old phone i got a new one (yay), he got a very old phone (in case he lost it, etc) and it had all the features that we needed (the watch didnt and was expensive to purchase)