My kid got a new phone and I want to keep tabs without being obvious about it. There’s so many review sites out there but half feel like ads.
Yeah you’re right, most of those “review” sites are basically affiliate link farms dressed up as journalism — they get paid when you click and buy, so magically everything gets 5 stars.
Honestly for a kid’s phone, before you go down the spy app rabbit hole, just check if it’s Android or iPhone — both have solid built-in parental controls (Google Family Link or Apple Screen Time) that are free, work great, and don’t require sketchy third-party apps.
How old is the kid? That usually changes what level of monitoring actually makes sense.