Rules About Phone Usage for a 14-Year-old

I gave my daughter many opportunities to make mistakes when she was much younger than this. She played hardcore softball and the coaches communicated with text messages. She did her homework without me bugging her, she helped around the house so I saw absolutely no reason to collect the phone, give it back and take it again. That's work for me. I was teaching her to be a responsible adult...mission accomplished!

while your rules don't sound horribly draconian to me, do bear in mind that although your teen is a young teen, she's an adult in training and right on the edge of a world where she's going to have to make her own judgment calls. this is a great situation for including her in the process of defining the rules instead of just imposing them on her from above.
when i let my kids participate in this sort of discussion i was often surprised that they would suggest more stringent outlines than those i had in mind.
let her know your concerns and have a voice in how to both keep her safe and happy, and let her start to use her own judgment.
khairete
S.

I would set up the phone rules for what works in your home. Be open to suggestions from your daughter though, especially as she gets older. I do want to say about the drama. I have 3 in HS. One is on the track/cross country teams. Lordy, the drama that comes out of this, especially for girls. Teach your daughter how to handle it and how to handle what others say. It is very hard to get that across. My daughter gets that it does not matter what others do/say but how you feel and think. But sometimes that drama pushes it away. And leaving someone out of something jut makes it worse.

Also, my son does not have a phone but his teachers expect him to receive texts of assignments.

My only issue with this is that everything that you mentioned above is (unfortunately) the future. And she needs to learn to navigate it - like it or not. I like your rules. I think they are great. Keep them up. But rather than limiting her more, let her continue and keep the discussion open. She needs to learn appropriate behaviors and also needs to learn what to expect from friends and people who we think are our friends.

Boy is it tough to be a 14 year old girl. Was hard 30 years ago - can't imagine it today!

I think your weeknight rules are spot on at this age, but there may come a time very soon, especially if she in sports or activities, where people really do expect kids to have access to their media immediately after school. My oldest son is 17 and during his hockey season, the coach or captains will send out group text messages with last-minute changes in practice times, locations, etc. and if he didn't have his phone, he would miss those. Not to say you need to change your rules now for something that isn't an issue, but know that you may need to be more flexible as she gets older.

I don't think you should have any restrictions on the weekend, other than at bedtime (in my house at that age it was 11 PM on a weekend). What's the point of cutting her off from communicating with her friends? Think about it - what if, when you were at teenager, your parents said you could only receive phone calls on your home phone from noon - 3 PM on Saturdays - what if someone called at 11 AM or 4 PM to make plans? You're SOL? That doesn't seem fair or necessary to me.

If social media is the problem, then address that as the problem, not her phone usage per se. I know that they're related, but you can work towards a goal of responsible social media use without necessarily restricting her usage of her device.

My advice is to re-think your approach to social media. She needs to learn to navigate this. She needs to learn not to engage when people are being catty online (and simply taking the phone away is NOT the same as learning to step away after reading something unpleasant).

I would also think carefully about the apps you are allowing her to have. I don't have a problem with Instagram. The posts are on there, you can look at them with her and help teach her her how to react to them. SnapChat is a whole different thing, because the posts disappear. This means she can't come to you with a disturbing post and ask you how to respond, because it's gone. The college kids I work with all have SnapChat accounts, but many of the high school kids do not, because, as I said, it's less forgiving as a teaching environment because of the way it is designed.

And, it is hard to take the phone away entirely, because high school kids rely on texts to set up all their social stuff. So if you limit that, she may miss out on spontaneous fun social stuff.

Your phone 'schedule' for your daughter seems very sensible. It's hard to be the parent with the stronger rules, however, I think you are smart in wanting to limit her time; the only thing I would suggest is that she probably needs to hand in the phone sooner in the evening so she has time to wind down and go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

That said, yes, social media can become hugely problematic. A person can't always control what others say about them, however, they can decide 'that's none of my business what they think of me', and that's a good lesson to learn early on. For example, a couple of days ago a friend told me that there had been a group discussion on Facebook (in a group I don't belong to) of a program that I run at the school and that some comments about the program were negative. My friend asked if I wanted to see the discussion thread: no, I didn't, and unless there was something which actually needed addressing/correcting, I didn't want to concern myself further. It was annoying, however, I have a lot going on right now and need to ignore it, to not put my energy there. That said, I'm an adult and know how to protect myself in this way. Kids don't. and they aren't immune to online social bullying. So, yes, your daughter needs other things to do.

My kids are 13 and 16. I have a parental control app that monitors content. This is what we do. Both kids are allowed to take their phones to school. When they get home, homework and chores MUST be done before they do "anything" fun, electronics, tv or outside with friends. They get off everything when we eat dinner together. Then they can get back on until 730pm. At that time they can watch tv or play on the xbox until 9pm. At that time, they are off everything. They can go to their rooms and read, listen to music, draw or whatever. They are NEVER allowed to have phones or tables or laptops upstairs. Weekends they can do what they want but if I feel like they have been on them to long I make them take a break, it just depends on what our plans are. Hope that helps. Good luck.

Get her involved in some extra curricular activities. Many afternoons my teens aren't home until early evening. Then it's homework, hopefully a family dinner or a little down time and bed. It's doesn't leave much time to stare at the screen and they learn time management.

Outside interests will build friendships away from the drama circle and help her to learn how to manage her own phone time. Your rules seem reasonable but at 14 they have a very short shelf life.

As long as you are paying the phone bill, you get to decide what the rules for it are.
My kid got her first phone for her fifteenth birthday - a flip phone that had voice, text, and a camera, but no internet access.
She was not allowed to take it to school. Our family plan was shared minutes, and she had her allotment. I tracked usage online. If she went over her allotment, she lost the phone until the next billing cycle.
She didn't get a smart phone until she could pay the bill herself.

Similar rules, my daughters are allowed to use phones only when homeworks and chores are done. After dinner their phones are turned off, so it's on for an hour and a half or two hours on school days. I've all the password, I check once in a while their phones and I set on the android parental control that let install only apps for specific ages.
There are several app to know and control everything about children phones use, you can select which app let/block and you can set a time schedule for the phone on/off. This last one would be very useful.
I'm looking for these app but each one have fee (more or less 5 to 12$ a month) and at the moment we don't need it extremely, I think it's only a matter of time for having them free. We don't have iphone, only android, maybe there is already something free for it.
Look for "parental control" or "time schedule" iphone app.

Now's the time to run her ragged.
Sports, gymnastics, martial arts, swimming - keep her busy.
The girls that have the TIME for all this online social media drama just have WAY too much time on their hands.
It's way better for your daughter to be out there doing real things with real people - and she'll only need the phone to let you know when to pick her up.

I have a 14 year old freshman daughter with a phone. I will start by saying that all her family is in one home (dad and I are married) so she doesn't have the element of changing homes and different rules.

And, all kids are different. Their friends are different, their habits and personalities are different, their temperaments are different, and so on. So, one size fits all doesn't work. I also have a 17 year old son. He got his phone only one year before his sister did, even though they are 3 years apart in age. They are different kids with different needs.

Fortunately, our daughter has a good group of friends and so far she has managed to avoid most (if not all?) of the drama I hear so much about in middle and high school. There's been pretty much ZERO. Of course, that may not be true for all of her friends, but my daughter hasn't been sucked into any of it if it does exist among her group of friends. Choosing friends isn't an easy thing. And changing friend is near impossible at this age. Your daughter can't just wake up one day and *decide* "I'm going to be friends with THAT kid over there... because she seems like a good student with high morals and values the things I want to value." THAT kid over there may not like your daughter. Or share any common interests. Or classes. Or aptitudes. So it just isn't that easy.

She needs help learning how to navigate through the issues with the friends she has. If her friends are into dangerous things, then you may have to take more definitive steps... but if they are just into drama (as lots of kids apparently are at this age/stage) then she needs to work through navigating it. She *can* tell her friends, "I don't like this level of drama, so if you don't have something nice to say about (whomever is the object of discussion) then I don't want to hear about it. Can we talk about something else?" Or however you think is best to change direction. It could be good for ALL of them to have someone actually say it out loud. Food for thought for them all. It's easy to get sucked in and not even realize what is going on.

Same thing with apps/phone/online. Ignore damaging, hurtful posts, or ask not to be including on the list of recipients if they are going to be mean to someone. Perhaps it will help her friends (and herself) pause to actually THINK about what they are sending before they hit the send button.

But taking her phone when she gets home? Meh.. I don't take my daughter's. She takes a break from school when she first gets home. She ALWAYS gets her work done, but does best when she has decompression time first, then comes back to the work later on. She determines those time periods. She knows how much (or little) work she has on a given day. I don't even take her phone at night any more, because she is disciplined enough to go to sleep when she needs to go to sleep, and she uses it for her alarm clock in the morning (she gets up on her own and gets showered and ready for school completely on her own).
Maybe that isn't the case with your daughter. I had son turn his phone in at night for awhile last year b/c it was a problem. But he learned and now it isn't a problem anymore. So, think about what you are trying to accomplish. Are you trying to punish her or are you trying to teach her? Then see what works best to accomplish your goal.

Good luck.

Well, I can't imagine spending so much time managing anything like this. If you take her phone each evening at bedtime...I get that. They can get on and stay on all night and don't go to bed. BUT as for taking it away and limiting their usage of it...that's so weird to me.

You got them a phone, they're nearly old enough to date, in a couple of years they'll be out on their own in college. I truly can't imagine my time being spent doing this.

Either they get a phone to have a phone or they don't. I understand your concerns about the other kids, I do. Those are things you can check on in the evening when you have her phone.

Here's a link from one of my favorite blogs - phone contract :)

http://adiaryofamom.com/2012/07/31/phone-home/