Basic phone for my teenager

[kennyleye]

So my 16year old son has been rather irresponsible lately and I’m pulling phone privileges among other things. He purchased his iPhone w his own money so I don’t want to take that away but I’m planning to change his service to a basic flip phone. I need to be able to call or text him and we don’t have a landline for emergencies if he’s home alone. Does anyone have any experience with this and any advice or pitfalls that I’m not thinking of?

My thought is that if he wants service to his iPhone he can get a job and pay for the upgrade himself. Pretty sick of him being able to watch anime on his phone when he’s grounded.

 

[katrina2017]

@kennyleye Put an app lock on his phone so he can only access basic talk & text apps. I locked my teen daughter's phone down. She can't even download anything without me being notified & giving the ok via password

 

[paulhyams1]

@katrina2017 Do you have to physically have the phone to be able to set this up?

 

[katrina2017]

@paulhyams1 Yes. But the app lock only takes a few minutes to install & set up. There are several out there that are free, and some that charge a monthly fee.

 

[paulhyams1]

@katrina2017 Do you use just the feature that comes with the phone?

 

[katrina2017]

@paulhyams1 I used Norton App lock on my teen's. Just make sure you disable the biometric unlock option & do pin only. I also made her Google account a teen account so that I get notified when she tries to download anything or tries to visit a site that is more mature than the rating I set.

 

[paulhyams1]

@katrina2017 Thank you so much for this info

 

[katrina2017]

@paulhyams1 Hope it helps

 

[onyx208]

@kennyleye Is he on your phone account? If so, and you use Att you can go into your account and turn off the Data. He can text and make calls but that’s it.

 

[kennyleye]

@onyx208 Thanks, I’ll look into this. I have Verizon.

 

[vet3rduscav]

@kennyleye Following. Also have Verizon. Would love it if this was a feature

 

[kennyleye]

@vet3rduscav So Verizon doesn’t have a feature like att for disabling data. You can sign up for the Smart Family but we had that before and he was able to disable that feature so that’s not an option either. Looks like I have to purchase a basic phone and then just kick him off of the WiFi and change the password.

 

[katrina2017]

@kennyleye .

 

[damarisbelieves]

@kennyleye If he bought it you can’t legally take it. You could have only prevented it by not allowing to buy.

But I think what you’re saying is you want to not pay for data. So don’t. But he can still do everything with the iPhone when in wifi.

 

[emeryz]

@kennyleye If the phone uses a SIM card, he may be able to just switch it out.

 

[beth12445]

@emeryz Also, wifi is going to give him access to everything else.