What to do when other kids are filming?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yikes y'all are strict! My son had a smartphone in 3rd grade, so did all his friends. They filmed, took pics and so on. All are in middle school now and never had any issues at all.

A lot of folks posting on here are being naïve. Kids know very well how to upload anything to Internet. And it's a very, very short distance from posting or texting something embarrassing and a kid ending up the subject of serious bullying. I know of a school where a group of sixth graders got in a ton of trouble at school when parents discovered kids with smart phones were posting kids' pictures on Instagram (where anyone can see them) with "lists" of who would make good couples. I'm glad the school called in all these kids and shut it down before kids started getting hassled about "the list."

If you think kids are just having innocent, goofy fun, that's fine for you, but when it ends up online somewhere and your kid is the one who finds if embarrassing and knows that the entire class has seen it -- then you might realize that kids are being allowed to do these things with no supervision and no brakes. When did technology seduce us so thoroughly that we decided kids could police themselves on it and we would stand by and applaud?
Kudos to the parent who collects the devices at the door on play dates.

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So well said.

We haven't gotten to this age yet (close) and I'm grateful to have had the discussion on this thread to get me thinking about the issues -- so when the time comes, I'll be collecting devices at the door, too.