I am thinking about getting a phone for my son.
There are some really cheap android phones around.
But I also want to restrict what he can do on it while he is still young.
I was thinking something like net guard but with a password, so the settings can’t be easily changed.
I could just get a dumb phone, but I also have some old android phones hanging around.
What options are there for this kind of app/network control?
I agree with you. Luckily I spent 15 years of my life without a smart phone so I was able to come into that world with a little maturity. That being said, I would put a VPN on the phone so that whatever the child does end up doing you don’t get in trouble for. And by “trouble”, I mean possible flagging+throttling by your internet service provider. I grew up poor so the only way to watch tv and movies was on pirating websites, which can make your ISP annoyed with you haha. With a VPN, everybody is protected as it will encrypt your internet traffic. Proton VPN offers a free app for Android, also highly trusted by the community. You can see that it works by visiting https://browserleaks.com/ip after you connect to the VPN. Just to give you peace of mind as the internet is a wild place and you never know. As MMA referees say, protect yourself at all times!