Do you audit your teen's phone?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. I also have pretty responsible kids and I believe in privacy.

Privacy LOL it is not a diary.

Parents like you are idiots.

[Anonymous]

I only looked if I felt something was off.

I pay then it is my device and I can look anytime I want.

I had great kids so no I didn't look often.

Once or twice just to make sure mean girls shit was not happening on my watch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you who think “not my kid,” I am the cautionary tale.

We had all the talks with our very kind and introverted DS. Many times. At 16 yo, we thought he had decent common sense.

Never in a million years did I think that I would one day get a text with nude pics of him from a random number trying to blackmail him.

That is a very real and very scary thing that happened. I wish I had been spot checking his phone (and laptop) all along.

At the end of the day your children are just that. Children. And there are adults on the internet who basically have made a business of exploiting their naïveté.

If anyone thinks parents are “creepers” bc they want to mitigate risks to their children online, then you are also very naive.

This is good advice and nice of you to share, especially when so many people act like only “bad” kids or kids whose parents haven’t talked to them about internet safety can get into this type of situation.

+1 My friend's 14-year-old was sending nearly nude photos to boys she liked. I would never have thought that respectful, sheltered kid would do something like that. If you aren't spot checking their phones, you'll have no idea what they may be engaging in.

84% of teens ages 12-16 have sent a provocative picture.

Even the good ones.

.

Source for that stat?

[Anonymous]

DD got a phone in 8th grade. We told her she should have no expectation of privacy. We have the passwords to accounts.

DH works in cybersecurity so he gave her and her friends a lesson on social media and showed them how adults can access their info at any time several years ago. It's not that hard, even with privacy settings, and it is also not that hard for kids to find workarounds if motivated. Both controls help but are not foolproof.

We always have used the Grandma Rule: If you would not want Grandma to see that, you shouldn't post it.

DD also knows that as soon as you write something, it may be used against you, especially by other middle schoolers. She has seen this play out several times with others in large group text chains.

DD tells us most everything and we have used examples from large text chains to try to teach her what we expect from her.

She generally possesses sound judgment but we still monitor occasionally and her phone is put away in a common space at 8pm nightly.

Waiting til 8th was a good decision for us as I feel like DD has matured and is less impulsive than she was in 6th and 7th grade, which is when many of the other kids got phones. YMMV.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No. I also have pretty responsible kids and I believe in privacy.

Privacy LOL it is not a diary.

Parents like you are idiots.

Agree and they are always like “not my kid!”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have the log ins to all my teens accounts. Snap, tt, insta on my phone. I can log on anytime and check.

Trust me - check. It’s crazy what teens do and say. So many parents are clueless

It's practically impossible for you to know that.

How? NP. I have all three apps on my phone and I can log into my teen’s tik tok, her insta, her finsta, and her snap. The agreement was I know the passwords.

Just another story that if your teen gives her password to any friends to do snap steaks etc… they too can log in on any account at any time and your teen won’t know. And they can download saved snaps on their own phone. That happened in our school to someone. So tell your teens to not give out info, Face ID their phones and individual apps, and change passwords often.

They create new accounts that they use in browsers. Using emails you may not know exist. Creating social media accounts you may not know exist.