First phone parental controls guides, iPhone and Android

Free, sourced answers for a parent of an 8-to-13-year-old who already has a first phone in the house. Every rule on these pages carries a marker like [S012] that resolves to Apple's, Google's, a carrier's or a regulator's own page, with a date. Each guide opens with the direct answer, then the steps, then the honest limits.

• What Are the Best Parental Control Options for a First Phone?
  For most families it is not a paid app: Screen Time and Family Link are free and cover almost everything, if they are set up in the right order and tested.
• Screen Time Not Working? Kid Found a Way Around It
  A setting that looks configured and one that is enforced are not the same thing: block app deletion, then test on the child's own device.
• Parental Controls When One Kid Has an iPhone and the Other Has Android
  No single setting governs both: Screen Time and Family Link are two separate systems, and a mixed household needs both sequences done properly.
• Parental control app not working? Check these two settings before you ask for a refund
  Before a refund, check the two settings the app never controls: app deletion blocked and settings locked on iPhone; Developer Options off on Android. Then test.
• Kid bypassed parental controls: what to do tonight (iPhone and Android)
  Do not argue, test: open the limited app on the child's phone. If it opens, redo the two settings, trigger the override yourself, re-test off WiFi.
• Parental controls on a child's first mobile phone (UK): carrier content locks, Screen Time and Family Link
  Three free layers in the UK: the network's 18+ content lock, the phone's own controls, and each app's settings. Set them in that order, then test.
• Family phone agreement template: what the free ones leave out
  The free PTA and Common Sense templates are good pledges. They leave out the settings each line maps to, what platforms let you see, and the lost-phone plan.