Ds is 12. He's in first year at high school. (Scotland)
We had some (a lot) of trouble in primary school last year with snapchat and bullying. Things were being said of an evening that were being carried over into school the next day. I am not pretending ds was innocent but he definitely was not the ringleader and would have been happier if the whole thing was not going on. But it was going on, he felt he had to defend himself when things were said about him, he just wasn't mature enough to completely walk away.
We took snapchat off his phone and all calmed down, mostly.
Things have seemed calm at high school, the primary school 'gang' has been broken up. Until today. I've just had a teacher call me to say there has been an incident today where a group of boys were trying to stir up a fight between ds and another boy, based on something that was said on snapchat last night. We let him have snapchat back because everyone uses it, he uses it to communicate with family who don't live nearby, he has a group chat with all his cousins. That's all fine, I encourage that. He snapchats my brother all the time which is lovely, because they don't see each other very often.
But there are obviously still issues with school and he obviously is still not mature enough to deal with the unpleasant side of snapchat.
So when he gets in from school today I am going to take his phone from him. I am thinking maybe we will sit down later this evening and he can look at snapchat while I am there. I won't look at anything that is going on in family/safe chats, but I want to see what is going on in the dodgy groups.
Is this the worst plan ever? Am I being too soft? Should I just remove snapchat and not allow him to have it any more? If it's not snapchat it will be something else though, won't it? And I can't take away his entire phone. That's too much.
Social media is the absolute worst. I'm a big fan, I use it a lot, but when it's used badly it's awful.