How often do you check your teen’s phone?

[Anonymous]

Set your alarm for 3am a few Fri and Sat in a row and you will quickly see if your kids are some of the ones that go to these late night drinking/drug parties. It’s always at single parent houses that work night shift.

My kid snuck out once (or more than I know) and now we have 360, make sure no spare keys and have an alarm set on all windows/doors. Friend group changed quickly and grades went up after we were more attentive. The party kids won’t hang with the non party kids. What scares me are the girls at these parties and how they could be assaulted or abused. I told my kid to stay away from the druggie party girls and guys. Get your crap together. I don’t care if I am over the top. He was going down a terrible path of self loathing and his childhood friends left him as they arent losers. I travel a lot. There was a lot of dynamics at play. Therapy helped too. One of the parties was busted and I am grateful my kid wasn’t there. He was too. Juvenile charges across the board. I gotta hope he keeps it as straight as possible.

[Anonymous]

I check my tween’s phone a late. Kid doesn’t have good phone etiquette yet and I have to discuss this often. Also told my kid to assume every text and snap is read by friends’ parents. Also track phone on family360.

[Anonymous]

I have a high school senior and I check his phone nearly every day.

The idea that people think phones are private is hilarious to me. It's the internet. Everything on the internet is public. Your phone could be subpoenaed. It's not the same thing as walking on your kid in the bathroom.

I don't want my kid to learn to assume that phones are private because they are not. It's akin to hiding behind a tree and saying, "See? I'm invisible!"

[Anonymous]

Your kid needs to become more tech savvy. In 2023 they should have it set up to where you can’t see anything. All of the “control”apps are a waste of time and money

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t ever check my 15 year old’s phone. I stopped before high school. He’s pretty open about things and I know a lot of friends are drinking, doing drugs and even driving without a license. I know some of their parents know but I know my kid has also tried drugs and alcohol. We are trying to keep the lines of communication open and think that’s more effective than checking phones. I can’t keep up with what apps they use to communicate. They aren’t texting.

As for the other stuff, we stopped allowing sleepovers many years ago. We sleep with our car keys in our bedroom. I don’t think he’s leaving in the night since I’m the lighter sleeper in the house.

Your kid is only 15 and has already tried alcohol and drugs and you don’t look at his phone ever? You don’t think he is sneaking out but you aren’t even sure? What about girls, sex, bullying, harassment, or getting in cars with drinkers, etc… You think a 15yr old boy tells the truth to his parents. He told you every time he tried things or made mistakes. His friends are the bad ones but he isn’t? Come on!!!

I’m not a troll. I think a lot of sophomores have tried alcohol or vapes. You are the clueless ones if you think this isn’t common. It’s a blessing and a curse that my kid tells us a lot. No, he’s not perfect at all. But I’m a realist and know the things you are checking on the phone aren’t likely the apps where they do their primary communication. The second you start demanding to see Snapchat they will change the settings and you won’t even know what you aren’t seeing.

+2 My 15 year old honors and AP student is also drinking and smoking weed at parties or hanging our with friends. Yes, we have caught him. All of his friends are also doing this. These are boys from homes with engaged parents and HHI, active in school, sports, good grades. They all think weed is much more tame than alcohol. I don’t know about vaping. I thought that wasn’t as popular anymore. Those nicotine pouch things (zin?) are everywhere though.

What consequences did you implement when you caught him smoking weed and drinking? Or do you think it's not a big deal for a 15 year old to be engaging in those activities?

Punished appropriately. Why would you assume I think it is no big deal? However, short of keeping my kid home every weekend for the next 2 years and isolated from friends, you can’t really control what they are doing when they are not with you. Surely you remember being a teenager?

Do you didn’t say how long they were punished and your “they are teenagers” comment is giving cool mom vibes. Your kid is worse off than you think. Do you drug test them once a week? Do you take their phone? Do you have life 360 so you know where they are?

Once a kid loses my trust like that, there is no way I just let them go back to their normal junkie friends. I am guessing this kid has drastically changed friend groups too, huh?

Junkie friends? This must be a troll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a high school senior and I check his phone nearly every day.

The idea that people think phones are private is hilarious to me. It's the internet. Everything on the internet is public. Your phone could be subpoenaed. It's not the same thing as walking on your kid in the bathroom.

I don't want my kid to learn to assume that phones are private because they are not. It's akin to hiding behind a tree and saying, "See? I'm invisible!"

Your kid will likely go totally off the rails as a college freshman with the new freedom. Best of luck to you.

[Anonymous]

Haven’t had to yet. I would not let me kid stay in an environment you described. If I felt sth weird was going on I would certainly intervene.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Your kid needs to become more tech savvy. In 2023 they should have it set up to where you can’t see anything. All of the “control”apps are a waste of time and money

How can a teen get around downtime and screen time if you have a parent code they don’t know? It shows when the code was inputted and it shows down to the exact minute how long they are on each app. So even if they got around the code it would be obvious to see

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a high school senior and I check his phone nearly every day.

The idea that people think phones are private is hilarious to me. It's the internet. Everything on the internet is public. Your phone could be subpoenaed. It's not the same thing as walking on your kid in the bathroom.

I don't want my kid to learn to assume that phones are private because they are not. It's akin to hiding behind a tree and saying, "See? I'm invisible!"

Your kid will likely go totally off the rails as a college freshman with the new freedom. Best of luck to you.

Lazy parents always justify things this way. They are minors until 18yrs old and many make extremely poor choices.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean, some may be doing that…and some may say they are doing that. The false bravado amongst boys is very strong…don’t believe everything they say.

Ummm I think the parents that think this way are just avoiding the very real issues of how teen boys with 24/7 porn and internet/social media content change drastically. They don’t want to deal with it.

So agree that the online garbage will transform kids for the worse. It's horrible. Save your sons (and daughters) and just take the phones. Have heard college kids' anecdotes who wish their parents had been more hard-nosed about phones at age 12. Phones are products sold to parents and kids for profit. Give kids flip phones for emergencies, use computers at home -- no screens in bedrooms, etc. You will save your kid!

10 good reasons not to give your kid a phone-- This is worth reading: https://raisingamericans.substack.com/p/more-than-they-can-handle

[Anonymous]

My teens have to plug their phones in at 10pm

We check a lot and can easily see which kids don’t have their phones checked by how they act/text online.

My question is what do you do if you see that another kid is doing something very wrong and you are friends with the mom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My teens have to plug their phones in at 10pm

We check a lot and can easily see which kids don’t have their phones checked by how they act/text online.

My question is what do you do if you see that another kid is doing something very wrong and you are friends with the mom?

Unless it is life threatening, I wouldn’t say anything to the mom. That’s a tough situation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your kid needs to become more tech savvy. In 2023 they should have it set up to where you can’t see anything. All of the “control”apps are a waste of time and money

How can a teen get around downtime and screen time if you have a parent code they don’t know? It shows when the code was inputted and it shows down to the exact minute how long they are on each app. So even if they got around the code it would be obvious to see

There are apps to unlock the phone.

Other simple functions still work depending on what your settings are. Like for iMessage, if they take a screen shot. You then have the ability to forward that messages via iMessage/text which then allows you to add text and just delete the screenshot before sending.

Don’t know if it still works but when the one minute warning comes up swipe up to close the app and then reopen app and time limit will start again.

If you have limits on specific apps they can just delete the app and reinstall the limits will be gone.

Also depending on what you use they can just creat another iCloud again. Delete second profile on device and just add whenever they need to get on.

Just Google options.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your kid needs to become more tech savvy. In 2023 they should have it set up to where you can’t see anything. All of the “control”apps are a waste of time and money

How can a teen get around downtime and screen time if you have a parent code they don’t know? It shows when the code was inputted and it shows down to the exact minute how long they are on each app. So even if they got around the code it would be obvious to see

There are apps to unlock the phone.

Other simple functions still work depending on what your settings are. Like for iMessage, if they take a screen shot. You then have the ability to forward that messages via iMessage/text which then allows you to add text and just delete the screenshot before sending.

Don’t know if it still works but when the one minute warning comes up swipe up to close the app and then reopen app and time limit will start again.

If you have limits on specific apps they can just delete the app and reinstall the limits will be gone.

Also depending on what you use they can just creat another iCloud again. Delete second profile on device and just add whenever they need to get on.

Just Google options.

You are not one step ahead of these things which are just the parents not doing their homework.

You set up the parent code to do downtime, 5 contacts allowed during downtime, app restrictions, always allowed, and content restrictions.

You can set each app and customize every single day. And when you put the app on time limit, there is a toggle you must switch on that they can not extend time. So they only get 1 extra minute only. After that they must input the parent code for more time.

As far as deleting and reinstalling the app, under screen time, content and privacy restrictions, you can toggle on for needing the parent code before they can add and/or delete apps. Same with iCloud.

Unfortunately downtime can only be set once a day for a certain hours. I wish I could do school hours and then night hours.

Also when you click on screen time it shows exactly how long they have been on the phone each day in the weekly graph. If you click on current day (or any day) it will show you exactly how many minutes they have been on each app. There is no way getting around that. So if you set Tik Tok for 2 hours and see they were on it for 3.5 hours that day, it’s easy to see the kid figured out a way to get around that restriction.

It’s very easy to check once a day to get an idea.

And yes I do let my kid get extra time and I am not always super strict. It really depends on grades and how they are doing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your kid needs to become more tech savvy. In 2023 they should have it set up to where you can’t see anything. All of the “control”apps are a waste of time and money

How can a teen get around downtime and screen time if you have a parent code they don’t know? It shows when the code was inputted and it shows down to the exact minute how long they are on each app. So even if they got around the code it would be obvious to see

There are apps to unlock the phone.

Other simple functions still work depending on what your settings are. Like for iMessage, if they take a screen shot. You then have the ability to forward that messages via iMessage/text which then allows you to add text and just delete the screenshot before sending.

Don’t know if it still works but when the one minute warning comes up swipe up to close the app and then reopen app and time limit will start again.

If you have limits on specific apps they can just delete the app and reinstall the limits will be gone.

Also depending on what you use they can just creat another iCloud again. Delete second profile on device and just add whenever they need to get on.

Just Google options.

You are not one step ahead of these things which are just the parents not doing their homework.

You set up the parent code to do downtime, 5 contacts allowed during downtime, app restrictions, always allowed, and content restrictions.

You can set each app and customize every single day. And when you put the app on time limit, there is a toggle you must switch on that they can not extend time. So they only get 1 extra minute only. After that they must input the parent code for more time.

As far as deleting and reinstalling the app, under screen time, content and privacy restrictions, you can toggle on for needing the parent code before they can add and/or delete apps. Same with iCloud.

Unfortunately downtime can only be set once a day for a certain hours. I wish I could do school hours and then night hours.

Also when you click on screen time it shows exactly how long they have been on the phone each day in the weekly graph. If you click on current day (or any day) it will show you exactly how many minutes they have been on each app. There is no way getting around that. So if you set Tik Tok for 2 hours and see they were on it for 3.5 hours that day, it’s easy to see the kid figured out a way to get around that restriction.

It’s very easy to check once a day to get an idea.

And yes I do let my kid get extra time and I am not always super strict. It really depends on grades and how they are doing.

Ok you ignored the key points of what I said. Keep thinking they can’t get around it. DS is in the ethical hacking community and he has told us that most kids know the work arounds.