Questions parents ask about kids and phones

Every question this site answers, in one place. Most of them are the ones people actually type into a search box at eleven at night, and most of them do not have a yes-or-no answer — so the answers here give a date and the reason behind it instead.

Two things are true of every answer below, and they are the reason this list exists rather than another guide.

Every answer says when it was last checked and what it is based on. Every answer ends in a date you can write into a document and sign.

The first matters because this subject rots fast. In the twelve months before this page was written, WhatsApp added parent-managed accounts, Roblox split under-16s into two different products with chat off by default for the youngest, and Discord began sorting every account into an age group. Advice written before those changes describes platforms that no longer work that way, and a lot of the advice currently ranking in Google was written before them.

The second matters because a parent who has read everything and decided nothing is where most families actually get stuck.