^ my son and his friends are 18/19. They did NOT do this and log into each other’s accounts.

I’m one of the PP and fyi- it’s a thing where they all have access to each other’s accounts. I don’t understand it at all but DD tells me I’m old. So even if you think you are monitoring and there isn’t another account out there, your kid could be logged in on the friend’s devices.

My DD is a freshman.

**she came to us and we reinforced how important that is etc. Sorry, first sentence had typos

She’s 15. It’s not intrusive. You are her parent and trying to keep her safe.

We had a catfishing incident my 14 DD ran into. She was really upset and scared and we reintroduced how important that she came to us.We as parents took over, reported, blocked etc. It ended fine in the end but scary for all

Monitoring matters less than having the connection, relationship, and trust that they will come to you if it something doesn’t feel right/goes wrong. This particular event happened in the course of a one night and the next morning unless we were monitoring daily morning and night, logging in as her, we would have not known via monitoring

We have a 1 hr time limit on all apps, waited to give her a phone until 8th grade and she’d only had IG for about 3 months when this happened, we’d waited on that too. She had a good digital literacy class at school, is otherwise bright and has good sense and we talked it many times in many situations.

We all to remember they have undeveloped brains and will make mistakes

No, I’m not monitoring this for my 15 yo. At some point you need to talk to them and trust them.

Even if you think you are, that’s the fake account and they really post on a different account. They might not be doing anything bad, they just want privacy from parents at that age.

Anonymous wrote:My teen only uses Instagram for her sports and to follow other people in her sport. We support her use of Instagram and don't monitor.

It’s nice to think this might work in theory, but that’s not how the algorithmic nature of these apps operate. She might start out only following specific sports accounts, but eventually Instagram will start showing her posts about things she’s searched on the internet, or texted about, or even mentioned out loud with her phone nearby. And if she even lingers on one of these posts for half a second longer than another, it’ll start to branch out in that direction.

Would you prefer instagram or Snapchat for a teen boy? Thinking of allowing one for my soon to be freshman with a lot of monitoring. I’m inclined to do instagram because he seems interested in that for cooking and sports stuff vs Snapchat. Thoughts from experienced parents? I may also just say no all together, but I was thinking it’s better to try now when he is still open to and ok with my regular monitoring of texts etc. I assume that won’t last after early high school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My teen only uses Instagram for her sports and to follow other people in her sport. We support her use of Instagram and don't monitor.

I don’t mean to be snarky- but if you don’t monitor how do you know what she’s doing?

Because we talk about it and I trust her.

Anonymous wrote:My teen only uses Instagram for her sports and to follow other people in her sport. We support her use of Instagram and don't monitor.

I don’t mean to be snarky- but if you don’t monitor how do you know what she’s doing?

No, it's not safe

My teen only uses Instagram for her sports and to follow other people in her sport. We support her use of Instagram and don't monitor.

^me again

I meant to say the creators DO NOT allow their children on social media (or much screen time). They also send their kids to schools that don’t allow phones.

My DD behaved very inappropriately on Snapchat after we set some boundaries. Her behavior was DANGEROUS. Now we don’t allow ANY social media. The creators of these platforms do let their own children use them - why should we? Plus they are banned (or in the process of being banned) in several countries.

No need for me to monitor or intrude now. We do have controls on apps she can download. And I had control over her email- tied to her phone.

If you have teen supervision on your kid's account, do you ever log in as them to see what they're doing on there? Check their messages? My 15 year old just got an account, so I'm trying to learn how to help manage beyond limiting time allowance per day and who can contact her. If I log in as her, will she know? I know her username and password, but that feels intrusive. What do you do?