Do you monitor your kids social media/phone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did not do this with my older DC but I put a monitoring app on my almost-15 DD phone because she neglects her school work and it shows in school reports. I do this mostly to see how much time she spends on her phone when she's supposed to be working on school stuff.

Depending on how it goes, I'll ease up or do more monitoring.

What's the name of the monitoring app?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. Partially. She's very street smart and modest so although I check in I'm not worried. I did freak the other day when her friend sent her a link to the 21 best cocks or something but it was chickens.

That is hilarious. That sounds like something my daughter would do, who is also street smart and modest.

I check my daughter's text messages from time to time. It's usually pretty boring stuff. She usually makes good decisions, and she has seen the fallout from kids circulating naked pictures of other girls in her school. I send her links to articles about kids getting blackmailed with nude pics. I have to have faith in her choices because monitoring apps aren't really that useful.

Do you read the ones just on her phone or also the deleted ones from your cell phone carrier? Kids delete the text they don't want parents to see

Do you read her Instagram and also her Finstagram too? Most kids do a good family/college friendly social media accounts and then make up others to air our their dirty laundry

Do you allow Snapchat? You have no idea what goes on in that.

Do you you disable her ability to delete her web searches? If not, you have no idea what she is doing and searching online.

Do you disable her ability to delete apps she uploads - needing a code from you to delete? If not she can delete her apps every night and re-up them each morning.

Do you know about all the apps that make the apps she doesn't want you to see disappear on her phone? If not she can hide any apps she doesn't want you to know your using.

Yep. It's complicated. Seems easier to build a relationship of trust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. Partially. She's very street smart and modest so although I check in I'm not worried. I did freak the other day when her friend sent her a link to the 21 best cocks or something but it was chickens.

That is hilarious. That sounds like something my daughter would do, who is also street smart and modest.

I check my daughter's text messages from time to time. It's usually pretty boring stuff. She usually makes good decisions, and she has seen the fallout from kids circulating naked pictures of other girls in her school. I send her links to articles about kids getting blackmailed with nude pics. I have to have faith in her choices because monitoring apps aren't really that useful.

Do you read the ones just on her phone or also the deleted ones from your cell phone carrier? Kids delete the text they don't want parents to see

Do you read her Instagram and also her Finstagram too? Most kids do a good family/college friendly social media accounts and then make up others to air our their dirty laundry

Do you allow Snapchat? You have no idea what goes on in that.

Do you you disable her ability to delete her web searches? If not, you have no idea what she is doing and searching online.

Do you disable her ability to delete apps she uploads - needing a code from you to delete? If not she can delete her apps every night and re-up them each morning.

Do you know about all the apps that make the apps she doesn't want you to see disappear on her phone? If not she can hide any apps she doesn't want you to know your using.

Yep. It's complicated. Seems easier to build a relationship of trust.

The first mistake of parenting a teen is trusting that teen from a relationship of trust.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. Partially. She's very street smart and modest so although I check in I'm not worried. I did freak the other day when her friend sent her a link to the 21 best cocks or something but it was chickens.

That is hilarious. That sounds like something my daughter would do, who is also street smart and modest.

I check my daughter's text messages from time to time. It's usually pretty boring stuff. She usually makes good decisions, and she has seen the fallout from kids circulating naked pictures of other girls in her school. I send her links to articles about kids getting blackmailed with nude pics. I have to have faith in her choices because monitoring apps aren't really that useful.

Do you read the ones just on her phone or also the deleted ones from your cell phone carrier? Kids delete the text they don't want parents to see

Do you read her Instagram and also her Finstagram too? Most kids do a good family/college friendly social media accounts and then make up others to air our their dirty laundry

Do you allow Snapchat? You have no idea what goes on in that.

Do you you disable her ability to delete her web searches? If not, you have no idea what she is doing and searching online.

Do you disable her ability to delete apps she uploads - needing a code from you to delete? If not she can delete her apps every night and re-up them each morning.

Do you know about all the apps that make the apps she doesn't want you to see disappear on her phone? If not she can hide any apps she doesn't want you to know your using.

Yep. It's complicated. Seems easier to build a relationship of trust.

The first mistake of parenting a teen is trusting that teen from a relationship of trust.

And NOT because the kid isn't "trustworthy". It's because kids get sucked into things, find themselves doing things, discover unhealthy things can be very, very interesting...and they simply have no idea how to be open about these things. It seems scary and out of control to them, yet also completely absorbing. So even when there is a fantastic relationship, they hide these things from their parents, because they truly do not know how else to deal with it. And then every parent goes from "my kids would NEVER do or look at that" to the utter shock of "I can't believe my kid did THAT!" So much better to stop it from happening in the first place.

And I agree with the PP who mentioned not allowing kids to leave the house alone, yet full access to the internet is somehow reasonable and practically the kids birthright. Yet the internet is absolutely bursting at the seams with inappropriate content - even things that we as adults don't hardy notice - bad language, indecent ads, violence, etc etc. I guess if you let your kids have full access to cable TV then they've probably already been exposed to a lot of it anyway.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. Partially. She's very street smart and modest so although I check in I'm not worried. I did freak the other day when her friend sent her a link to the 21 best cocks or something but it was chickens.

That is hilarious. That sounds like something my daughter would do, who is also street smart and modest.

I check my daughter's text messages from time to time. It's usually pretty boring stuff. She usually makes good decisions, and she has seen the fallout from kids circulating naked pictures of other girls in her school. I send her links to articles about kids getting blackmailed with nude pics. I have to have faith in her choices because monitoring apps aren't really that useful.

Do you read the ones just on her phone or also the deleted ones from your cell phone carrier? Kids delete the text they don't want parents to see

Do you read her Instagram and also her Finstagram too? Most kids do a good family/college friendly social media accounts and then make up others to air our their dirty laundry

Do you allow Snapchat? You have no idea what goes on in that.

Do you you disable her ability to delete her web searches? If not, you have no idea what she is doing and searching online.

Do you disable her ability to delete apps she uploads - needing a code from you to delete? If not she can delete her apps every night and re-up them each morning.

Do you know about all the apps that make the apps she doesn't want you to see disappear on her phone? If not she can hide any apps she doesn't want you to know your using.

No, I don't check those things. I would have mentioned it. She shows me a lot of the things she finds on the social media she follows. If she wants to look at porn and hide it, there's not much I can do about that. She is going to have to make her own decisions. If I have to follow every single thing she does online, why would I bother giving her a phone?

Are you a parent of a teen or a younger child? Teens need to learn to make decisions, even if it means they make mistakes from time to time. I can't micromanage every Instagram post. She will be an adult soon. We talk about consequences. She sees the consequences in her school. I leave most of the rest up to her. If she was getting into trouble or making bad decisions, I'd be checking more. Learning independence is more important than making sure she doesn't see any "bad things" online. The world has bad stuff in it. I'm pretty sure it's not going away anytime soon. She will have to learn to deal with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did not do this with my older DC but I put a monitoring app on my almost-15 DD phone because she neglects her school work and it shows in school reports. I do this mostly to see how much time she spends on her phone when she's supposed to be working on school stuff.

Depending on how it goes, I'll ease up or do more monitoring.

[/b]What's the name of the monitoring app?[b]

I use Screen Time. Not perfect but OK for my purposes. It tells you how much time is spent on each app, has some blocking capabilities (I don't use), etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. Partially. She's very street smart and modest so although I check in I'm not worried. I did freak the other day when her friend sent her a link to the 21 best cocks or something but it was chickens.

That is hilarious. That sounds like something my daughter would do, who is also street smart and modest.

I check my daughter's text messages from time to time. It's usually pretty boring stuff. She usually makes good decisions, and she has seen the fallout from kids circulating naked pictures of other girls in her school. I send her links to articles about kids getting blackmailed with nude pics. I have to have faith in her choices because monitoring apps aren't really that useful.

Do you read the ones just on her phone or also the deleted ones from your cell phone carrier? Kids delete the text they don't want parents to see

Do you read her Instagram and also her Finstagram too? Most kids do a good family/college friendly social media accounts and then make up others to air our their dirty laundry

Do you allow Snapchat? You have no idea what goes on in that.

Do you you disable her ability to delete her web searches? If not, you have no idea what she is doing and searching online.

Do you disable her ability to delete apps she uploads - needing a code from you to delete? If not she can delete her apps every night and re-up them each morning.

Do you know about all the apps that make the apps she doesn't want you to see disappear on her phone? If not she can hide any apps she doesn't want you to know your using.

Yep. It's complicated. Seems easier to build a relationship of trust.

The first mistake of parenting a teen is trusting that teen from a relationship of trust.

And NOT because the kid isn't "trustworthy". It's because kids get sucked into things, find themselves doing things, discover unhealthy things can be very, very interesting...and they simply have no idea how to be open about these things. It seems scary and out of control to them, yet also completely absorbing. So even when there is a fantastic relationship, they hide these things from their parents, because they truly do not know how else to deal with it. And then every parent goes from "my kids would NEVER do or look at that" to the utter shock of "I can't believe my kid did THAT!" So much better to stop it from happening in the first place.

And I agree with the PP who mentioned not allowing kids to leave the house alone, yet full access to the internet is somehow reasonable and practically the kids birthright. Yet the internet is absolutely bursting at the seams with inappropriate content - even things that we as adults don't hardy notice - bad language, indecent ads, violence, etc etc. I guess if you let your kids have full access to cable TV then they've probably already been exposed to a lot of it anyway.

Yep. Trust but verify.

I also urge parents to separate these issues from concerns about school. Obviously, if your kid is spending so much time on social media, etc, that schoolwork is suffering, you need to lay down the law. But please don't make the mistake of thinking that kids who are good students can't be stupid on the internet.

[Anonymous]

We don't use anything yet for DS who is 12, but a co-worker shared this with me

http://www.bewebsmart.com/parental-controls/pocket-guardian-maintains-teens-privacy/

[Anonymous]

I occasionally pick up his phone and scroll through instagram and texts. I don't use a screening app. I understand the dangers of social media, but at the same time, I think he should have some privacy. I would have hated my parents listening in to every phone conversation I had as a teen. they use instagram/snapchat/texts like we used the phone. it's a balance for me.

[Anonymous]

I can't remember how, but I found DD's Finsta. It's really, really cute. I had to resist the urge to Like any of the pics.

[Anonymous]

Yes, I have monitoring software on my 11yr old's phone. It turns off data during certain hours and even then only allows a certain amount of data a day. I can see absolutely everything he does, down to his exact location.

He's still a child, so my main concern at this point is making sure his face is not jammed in it all hours of the day and night and that I know where he is. We live in the city and he's on metro a lot and has a lot of free range. I wouldn't unleash him on the city without one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. Partially. She's very street smart and modest so although I check in I'm not worried. I did freak the other day when her friend sent her a link to the 21 best cocks or something but it was chickens.

That is hilarious. That sounds like something my daughter would do, who is also street smart and modest.

I check my daughter's text messages from time to time. It's usually pretty boring stuff. She usually makes good decisions, and she has seen the fallout from kids circulating naked pictures of other girls in her school. I send her links to articles about kids getting blackmailed with nude pics. I have to have faith in her choices because monitoring apps aren't really that useful.

Do you read the ones just on her phone or also the deleted ones from your cell phone carrier? Kids delete the text they don't want parents to see

Do you read her Instagram and also her Finstagram too? Most kids do a good family/college friendly social media accounts and then make up others to air our their dirty laundry

Do you allow Snapchat? You have no idea what goes on in that.

Do you you disable her ability to delete her web searches? If not, you have no idea what she is doing and searching online.

Do you disable her ability to delete apps she uploads - needing a code from you to delete? If not she can delete her apps every night and re-up them each morning.

Do you know about all the apps that make the apps she doesn't want you to see disappear on her phone? If not she can hide any apps she doesn't want you to know your using.

No, I don't check those things. I would have mentioned it. She shows me a lot of the things she finds on the social media she follows. If she wants to look at porn and hide it, there's not much I can do about that. She is going to have to make her own decisions. If I have to follow every single thing she does online, why would I bother giving her a phone?

Are you a parent of a teen or a younger child? Teens need to learn to make decisions, even if it means they make mistakes from time to time. I can't micromanage every Instagram post. She will be an adult soon. We talk about consequences. She sees the consequences in her school. I leave most of the rest up to her. If she was getting into trouble or making bad decisions, I'd be checking more. Learning independence is more important than making sure she doesn't see any "bad things" online. The world has bad stuff in it. I'm pretty sure it's not going away anytime soon. She will have to learn to deal with it.

So because a 13yr old will eventually be an adult, we just sever the ties? Honestly this is some scary shit here that most parents seem to do. They helicopter their child's every move on a playground, won't let them go off in elementary school to play in the neighborhood, but then hand them a smartphone at age 11 and say they will learn from their mistakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. Partially. She's very street smart and modest so although I check in I'm not worried. I did freak the other day when her friend sent her a link to the 21 best cocks or something but it was chickens.

That is hilarious. That sounds like something my daughter would do, who is also street smart and modest.

I check my daughter's text messages from time to time. It's usually pretty boring stuff. She usually makes good decisions, and she has seen the fallout from kids circulating naked pictures of other girls in her school. I send her links to articles about kids getting blackmailed with nude pics. I have to have faith in her choices because monitoring apps aren't really that useful.

Do you read the ones just on her phone or also the deleted ones from your cell phone carrier? Kids delete the text they don't want parents to see

Do you read her Instagram and also her Finstagram too? Most kids do a good family/college friendly social media accounts and then make up others to air our their dirty laundry

Do you allow Snapchat? You have no idea what goes on in that.

Do you you disable her ability to delete her web searches? If not, you have no idea what she is doing and searching online.

Do you disable her ability to delete apps she uploads - needing a code from you to delete? If not she can delete her apps every night and re-up them each morning.

Do you know about all the apps that make the apps she doesn't want you to see disappear on her phone? If not she can hide any apps she doesn't want you to know your using.

No, I don't check those things. I would have mentioned it. She shows me a lot of the things she finds on the social media she follows. If she wants to look at porn and hide it, there's not much I can do about that. She is going to have to make her own decisions. If I have to follow every single thing she does online, why would I bother giving her a phone?

Are you a parent of a teen or a younger child? Teens need to learn to make decisions, even if it means they make mistakes from time to time. I can't micromanage every Instagram post. She will be an adult soon. We talk about consequences. She sees the consequences in her school. I leave most of the rest up to her. If she was getting into trouble or making bad decisions, I'd be checking more. Learning independence is more important than making sure she doesn't see any "bad things" online. The world has bad stuff in it. I'm pretty sure it's not going away anytime soon. She will have to learn to deal with it.

So because a 13yr old will eventually be an adult, we just sever the ties? Honestly this is some scary shit here that most parents seem to do. They helicopter their child's every move on a playground, won't let them go off in elementary school to play in the neighborhood, but then hand them a smartphone at age 11 and say they will learn from their mistakes.

Where did I say I was talking about 11 or 13 year olds? At some point, you have to give them some independence. If you can't trust your teen with an Instagram account, how the hell are you going to hand over the keys to your car?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Eh. Partially. She's very street smart and modest so although I check in I'm not worried. I did freak the other day when her friend sent her a link to the 21 best cocks or something but it was chickens.

That is hilarious. That sounds like something my daughter would do, who is also street smart and modest.

I check my daughter's text messages from time to time. It's usually pretty boring stuff. She usually makes good decisions, and she has seen the fallout from kids circulating naked pictures of other girls in her school. I send her links to articles about kids getting blackmailed with nude pics. I have to have faith in her choices because monitoring apps aren't really that useful.

Do you read the ones just on her phone or also the deleted ones from your cell phone carrier? Kids delete the text they don't want parents to see

Do you read her Instagram and also her Finstagram too? Most kids do a good family/college friendly social media accounts and then make up others to air our their dirty laundry

Do you allow Snapchat? You have no idea what goes on in that.

Do you you disable her ability to delete her web searches? If not, you have no idea what she is doing and searching online.

Do you disable her ability to delete apps she uploads - needing a code from you to delete? If not she can delete her apps every night and re-up them each morning.

Do you know about all the apps that make the apps she doesn't want you to see disappear on her phone? If not she can hide any apps she doesn't want you to know your using.

No, I don't check those things. I would have mentioned it. She shows me a lot of the things she finds on the social media she follows. If she wants to look at porn and hide it, there's not much I can do about that. She is going to have to make her own decisions. If I have to follow every single thing she does online, why would I bother giving her a phone?

Are you a parent of a teen or a younger child? Teens need to learn to make decisions, even if it means they make mistakes from time to time. I can't micromanage every Instagram post. She will be an adult soon. We talk about consequences. She sees the consequences in her school. I leave most of the rest up to her. If she was getting into trouble or making bad decisions, I'd be checking more. Learning independence is more important than making sure she doesn't see any "bad things" online. The world has bad stuff in it. I'm pretty sure it's not going away anytime soon. She will have to learn to deal with it.

So because a 13yr old will eventually be an adult, we just sever the ties? Honestly this is some scary shit here that most parents seem to do. They helicopter their child's every move on a playground, won't let them go off in elementary school to play in the neighborhood, but then hand them a smartphone at age 11 and say they will learn from their mistakes.

Where did I say I was talking about 11 or 13 year olds? At some point, you have to give them some independence. If you can't trust your teen with an Instagram account, how the hell are you going to hand over the keys to your car?

THANK YOU, thank you, thank you!

The Woe_Are_You_Most_Ignorant_Parent treatises are so annoying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I have monitoring software on my 11yr old's phone. It turns off data during certain hours and even then only allows a certain amount of data a day. I can see absolutely everything he does, down to his exact location.

He's still a child, so my main concern at this point is making sure his face is not jammed in it all hours of the day and night and that I know where he is. We live in the city and he's on metro a lot and has a lot of free range. I wouldn't unleash him on the city without one.

What software do you use?