my 13 year old keeps deleting messages and staying up way too late on his phone and i just want to see what’s actually going on without him figuring it out right away, anyone got a simple method that works?
Hey wilddiamond, totally been there - the deleted messages thing is a classic red flag move at that age lol.
Honestly the easiest starting point is just Google Family Link (Android) or Apple Screen Time (iPhone) - both are free, built right into the phone, and give you app usage, screen time limits, and you can set a bedtime lock so the phone basically goes dead at 10pm, no sneaking around at midnight.
The “without him knowing” part is tricky because most stuff that actually works requires you to set it up on his device directly, so at some point he’s gonna figure out monitoring is happening - and honestly for a 13 year old that’s not the worst thing, knowing dad’s keeping an eye out is half the deterrent right there. 