[jonhohle]

We ended up with a TCL My Flip that has a paired down Android build that allowed me to disable the browser using ADB and very limited minutes, data, and text ($25/yr on Tracphone). Our son is a middle schooler, so we like that he can contact us, but know he couldn’t handle anything that could be remotely entertaining to use. If we eventually go the iPhone route, it will probably be wireguarded back to our house or other service.

Apple does support making your own MDM profiles which provides more options than Screen Time, but the complexity is also much higher. That allows locking down DNS, apps, etc.

For Messages, you can restrict who can be contacted to just known contacts (via Screen Time) and then I think you can restrict the ability to manage contacts (though maybe that doesn’t work for the “self” contact.

After thinking about the above some more, I should point out that all of our kids are very different (both our as in my family and the greater community of parents). I have one who we could trust with anything and never have to worry about rules being broken (except by siblings who figure it out they have less restrictions than they do). We have two who might get into a little mischief or sneak some screen time here and there without controls in place. And then one who will boil oceans to bypass restrictions and break rules. Are we better parents to some than others? I don’t think so. We have a lot of different “nature” via adoption, and different early childhood “nurture”, but otherwise think we’re meeting everyone’s needs as best as we can as individuals. And the result is four very different, wonderful kids who all need slightly different guard rails in different areas of life (some behavioral, some academic, some social, etc.).

At the end of the day I often wonder if we should move to the woods and homeschool everyone but ultimately that won’t prepare them for leaving our house and going out into the world.