Parents still able to track kids with iMessage?

[cbroberson23]

I'm a parent of two teenagers who have iPhones. My husband and I have Android phones so iPhones are a little foreign to me. We have a policy in our house that we, the parents, will monitor all of our kids' text messages, both in terms of quantity and quality. We have historically checked our phone bill to determine if they are staying under the limits we've assigned them. Yesterday, I checked the phone bill for the first time in a while to discover that a lot of the kids' text messages are not showing up on our phone bill. A little online research pointed to the fact that with iMessage, text messages between Apple devices aren't counted as texts if they are sent over Wi-Fi. I can see how this is considered an advantage in most circumstances, but it isn't an advantage if you're a parent and you actually want every text to count, and you want the ability to monitor your child's text usage. My solution to this was to turn off iMessage on my kids' phones. But now they complain that many of their texts are not going through....their friends aren't receiving them. This doesn't make sense to me. If iMessage is turned off, they should still be able to text anyone with a phone number and a text plan, right? Can anyone in this forum please explain this phenomenon, and advise me on how to best monitor my kids' text usage, while still allowing them to fully utilize the allotment we have given them?

 

[xrayeyes]

You are correct..they can still send and receive sms and mms texts over cellular with iMessage turned off. If they are in a "wifi only situation, then they won't be able to send texts to other iphone users if iMessage is turned off.

Also, keep in mind even if you disable iMessage, there are other wifi enabled text services such as Viber and Whatsapp.

 

[KevinJS]

If their friends are using iPads or iPods to send and receive texts, they will not be able to receive SMS messages, as those devices lack telephony.