Hellobee Boards

I have a 15 year old step-daughter. She had a 'dumb' phone until this past fall, but could access some apps on her ipod that she's had since she was 13. She's had snapchat and instagram, but does not have a facebook account yet.

My DH periodically checks her apps and will go through snap chats. Last year we had her un-friend a LOT of her friends on snapchat (pretty much the entire school) so that she's only friends with real-life friends. This happened after DH caught her (then 14) facetiming (in snapchat) with an upper classman, in her bed, at 10 o'clock at night, "because he kept bugging her".
On instagram, her account is private and I am actually friends with a lot of her classmates, if a friend of hers requests to follow me, I usually follow back, so I can keep tabs on what is going on.

Of the two apps Snapchat is most worrisome since there's no way to see what she's doing / who she's following. But there does have to be a little bit of trust there I guess that she's making the right decisions? It's hard. She's a really good kid so we trust her. If there was ever an issue we would have her delete her account in a heartbeat.
I have warned her in the past not to follow (or accept a request to follow) anyone she doesn't know.

For my two little one's I don't want them having access to apps like that until they're older, 12/13? I don't believe young kids need personal cell phones.

*sigh* yeah, I don't think I'll let my kids be online unsupervised until they know what malware, identity theft, trolls, stalking, and Swatting are. And no pictures of themselves anywhere with no access restrictions. Only some of my five-year-old's friends already have iPads, and even many grown adults don't seem to think twice about putting info that makes them easily identifiable out there. I'm going to look like such a kook to the kids...

And probably no smartphone until they're old enough to pay the monthly bill, if only because it's addictive and such a way to waste time. If I can keep that out of their hands until they're responsible enough for at least a summer job, that will be a win.

DD has a Tinitell phone watch with a phone number. So no data (for a long time) but can call/receive select phone numbers. I also let her go on kids' Kudos app for a few weeks and she got tired of it. Whenever I post, I always ask her first to teach her about privacy. There are a bunch of digital citizenship resources on Common Sense Media.This is something we need to impart in age appropriate stages.

I was thinking about this more, and I could have been more clear in my post: I'm going to take the approach outlined in the article, likely minus the monetary bribe. No social media. I'll give my son a full explanation as to why when we get to that point, but the bottom line is no.

@kiddosc: You're right--you can't lock these things down and I think trying to monitor is a losing game. (Not to mention that monitoring this cr*p is a complete waste of your time, too!) The only reasonable approach is to say no. I liked the WSJ article linked in the Scary Mommy post. The boy they quote clearly has sensible parents, even if it's presented as his decision.

@kiddosc: You can video-chat through snapchat if both people are on at the same time. Snapchat is definitely more worrisome because it makes it so easy to sext, and then kids might think they're safe but it's also super easy to screenshot.

The thing with snapchat for my stepdaughter (15), is that it is the main form of communication for her basketball team, they have group chats so they discuss team outfits, practices, etc. directly through that. It's also the main way she talks to her friend group, so banning it completely would seem extreme.

So for a teenager, I think the best thing to do is just monitor usage, and educate on the dangers of accepting unknown users or sending images.
And delay, delay, delay on allowing these apps to begin with.

@josina: I hate snapchat. I hate it SO MUCH. I am very much praying it goes away before my kids are teens

@honeybear: it's not school-sanctioned, but that's how the girls communicate. They have dress-up days on game days so they discuss what they're going to wear to school, stuff like that.

My son is four, and I am currently baking twin girls.

All of his screen time consists of kids videos on Amazon Prime and Netflix. When he was younger I used to show him YouTube videos sometimes, but he quickly figured out how to surf to other videos and I was worried that it was not controlled enough.

I would never in a million years voluntarily download an app for him. Not sure when/if/how that might change.

He only watches videos at home in the evening. He is a little addict which I hate. But at least there are no commercials so I consider it an improvement on tv.

I don't know when I will allow him to use social media but my gut says middle school is too young and college is too late. So I will probably start to keep a closer eye on that issue when he is in late elementary school in order to have a baseline of information.

Unfortunately there may be a social component to some of this, and I don't want to cut him off completely if all of his friends are on a particular platform. But I will definitely not allow him to "friend" anyone he does not know IRL. He can wait until he is an adult to do that.

My husband and I just talked about this! He’s a HS teacher and is super anti-social media. My only social media is stuff like HB and Reddit, and my husband is the same (no Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, etc.).

His biggest issue as an educator is how he sees that every single kid with a smartphone is majorly addicted to them. Any minute they’re allowed to be on their phones, they are. And when the school does phone-free trips, the kids spend the entire time complaining and whining and begging for their phones. It’s truly an addiction (which I say from my phone, of course!).

It’s interesting to me because I’m a major loner, and probably like a lot of people here, I’ve found various internet communities to be incredibly enriching. And even though it’s not as easy, my DH basically said that kids are social creatures and will find ways to communicate. There are kids who don’t have phones and they still have friends and socialize. I guess my biggest worry is that you’d be isolating your kid, but in my husbands experience that doesn’t happen to phoneless kids.

So he’s adamant our kids won’t have smartphones or tablets, and I’m not really opposed. I do think I spend too much time on the Internet, though what I’m usually doing is watching YouTube tutorials for things I never have time for (last night I watched a bunch of quilting tutorials, idk why).