Turning my child’s phone into a brick

You can regulate lots of things but if you want a phone that will only talk and text, it would be better get your child a feature phone.

Read here for what you can do:

Use parental controls on your child's iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

I don’t think there is any way to fully block maps or FaceTime. The others can be blocked w screen time (app limits and downtime). BUT if your teen is like mine, you’ll get outsmarted and outgunned at every turn w this. Also it is not without glitches. We use Kidslox which is an app that overlays on teen’s phone. It has a spying kind of function but we don’t use it (and your kid would know if you did—the app doesn’t allow hiding it). Also not without substantial glitches, updates that are hard to install, and generally some trickiness w the interface bw it and Apple parental controls. It was supposed to be simpler—and therefore clear boundaries for time spent plus content, instead of what feels to teen like punitive measures. Alas. What I am currently researching is the Brick. It is a physical device that you keep in one spot and it hard locks all of the apps you don’t want. It cannot override apples, default for always allowing FaceTime and Maps so if you didn’t want those, you would still have to use some screen time limits. But I am very inclined to try brick. It is by far the simplest and clearest thing I have seen and it looks like it will actually visually simplify the phone as well.

Evangelinecan wrote:

I see a lot of questions on this subject, but none of them current. Has Apple come up with anything so that parent can disable a child’s phone except for talk and text. My son has a 12. Mini.

No, not really. If that's what you need, I'd recommend a basic phone.

Rakel43 wrote:

But I am very inclined to try brick. It is by far the simplest and clearest thing I have seen and it looks like it will actually visually simplify the phone as well.

It's an interesting concept. However, nowhere can I find an explanation of how it does what it does. That gives me pause.