> I totally lost my teen to TikTok and deeply regret succumbing to their (and my wife's) pressure to give them an iPhone at 14 (they're 16 now). It's like hours

> I totally lost my teen to TikTok and deeply regret succumbing to their (and my wife's) pressure to give them an iPhone at 14 (they're 16 now). It's like hours upon hours of mindless scrolling, with occasional gaming sprinkled in. We are struggling with this as well. Gave our son a phone for his 12th birthday (after putting it off for a couple of years) but with the agreement of no social media apps. We locked down the phone so he can't install any apps. However, YouTube doesn't require an app, so he can still do hours of mindless scrolling of YouTube shorts. He has a chat group with his friends (Messenger) that works well, and does some gaming (Genshin Impact and similar), which is fine. But the mindless scrolling is what's most detrimental. Apple has "Screen Time" controls but they're either useless or broken as they somehow reset on their own (anyone else have this problem)? I have network controls on the wifi so it's blocked after a certain time, but haven't found a good way of controlling the time on specific apps or websites. He keeps pushing for a TT account and we're adamant that he can have one. But it's relentless because "everyone has one".