Your teen is ready for their next phone. Is the phone ready for them?

At a glance

• Set up their phone with a separate Apple or Google account linked to yours. Use Family Sharing on iPhone or Google Family Link on Android, then update the software and add a strong device passcode.
• Choose parental controls that fit your family. Choose settings so you can approve apps and purchases, and set content restrictions and screen time limits both in conversation and on the device before the handoff. Review the settings as your child’s needs change.
• Protect their accounts and talk about scams. Teach your child to check unexpected messages with you and to never share verification codes. Consider adding an extra layer of protection for your family with Verizon Identity Secure, which offers you tools such as password management, breach monitoring and identity restoration support.

My daughter got her first phone at 8, and I really didn’t plan it. One Saturday night, I was heading out, my nephew was babysitting—and grounded from his own phone—so I handed her a phone I’d brought home from a tech event and showed her how to text me. Back then, many of today’s parental controls didn’t exist.

Eight years later, my son had to earn his first phone. He started with a Verizon Gizmo Watch, and when he was ready, he got an Android phone set up with Google Family Link linked to my Google Account as well as a parental control app.

I learned a lot in the time between those two handoffs—enough that I knew the importance of setting up his account, controls and security before handing over the phone. Today, I think of the various settings like a house. Parental controls decide which rooms your kid can go into and when the lights go out. Security makes sure the doors lock. You want both.

The before-you-hand-it-over checklist

1. Set it up as your teen’s phone with an account linked to yours, not as your phone. If the phone is a hand-me-down, reset it first. A phone still signed in as you to your email, shopping and social media accounts isn’t really your kid’s phone yet.

• On an iPhone, create or connect your child’s own Apple Account to yours through Family Sharing.
• On Android, use Google Family Link to link their own supervised Google Account to yours.
• Remember to use their real birthday in the account. This will help age-based settings work properly. Apple specifically ties Child Accounts to age-based protections, and Google requires a child’s birthday when setting up a supervised account.

2. Lock it down. Add a passcode and a strong password for their Apple or Google account. Turn on two-factor authentication where it’s available. Then teach one rule right away: Never give someone a verification code just because they ask for it—even if the request seems to come from a friend. Scammers can send it from a friend’s hacked account.

3. Set up location sharing and parental controls on the phone itself. Start with the basics: set up the phone’s location sharing, downtime hours (after bedtime), select which apps need approvals, and set content filters and screen-time limits. You do not have to turn on every setting on day one. Start with the settings that solve the problems you’re most likely to have in your house.

On iPhone, start with Screen Time. Apple says Screen Time can manage downloads, communication and content access.

On Android, start with Family Link. Google Family Link supports supervised parental controls for child accounts.

4. Update the software. Install any available updates and turn on automatic updates. They often include security fixes, so this is one of those boring five-minute jobs that’s worth doing before the phone disappears into a backpack.

5. Add another layer of parental controls with Verizon Family Plus. Verizon Family Plus can add content filters, screen-time controls and location alerts, and can let you pause their internet access.

6. Protect against what can come at them through the phone. This is the piece I didn’t think much about with my daughter’s first phone. The Federal Trade Commission is warning parents that tweens and teens are getting scam texts and these scams are getting harder to spot, and happening more frequently. Cybersecurity company F-Secure found that 56% of consumers encounter scam attempts at least once a month. For teens, a scam might look like an offer of free game currency, a "friend" asking for a verification code, or a sneaker drop that ends in 10 minutes.

That helped me think about online safety for kids a little differently: Parental controls are about what my kid does with the phone. Security is about what can come at my kid through the phone. Verizon offers two layers of protection through the Verizon Protect app, available to teens and adults (who can use them to protect other family members’ information and PCs/Macs/tablets as well).

Verizon Identity Secure helps protect your family’s personal information— things like passwords and account details. It can also alert you to possible breaches, help remove personal information from some data broker sites and provide support if their identity is ever compromised.

Verizon Digital Secure helps with the stuff that can sneak in through the phone — risky links, sketchy websites, scam messages and unsafe public Wi-Fi. Its Scam Protection can help identify suspicious texts before a recipient acts on them: on Android, it can filter SMS and WhatsApp messages and alert users to risky texts; on iPhone, it can help identify scam SMS messages and filter risky texts into the Junk folder. It can also flag online threats and, with premium service, add a VPN that encrypts their connection when they’re away from home.

If your child is a tween, you can also use your own subscriptions to help protect them. For example, add their personal information to dark web monitoring through your Identity Secure subscription, or ask a Security Advisor questions about securing their devices through your Digital Secure subscription. These are steps you can take through your own account before handing over the phone.

I don’t need my kid to understand how all of that works before they get a phone. I just don’t want their first lesson in phishing to come from falling for it.

The handoff

When the phone is ready, show your kid what you set up and why. Things like, “Doing this keeps your passwords and personal information safe” lands a lot better than “I don’t trust you.”

A first phone is a milestone. Kids who understand the reasons behind the settings have a better chance of becoming partners in the plan instead of trying to pick the lock.

Help protect their passwords, accounts and identity with Verizon Identity Secure.