What age do you stop monitoring what they are doing on the internet?

[haggistramp]

Dc will be 9 on birthday. At the moment heavily monitored, no social media, everything they do on tablet is sent to my phone, they need permission to download new apps. I can see myself continuing most of that until they are 16 but obviously i cant stand over their shoulder whilst they are watching you tube etc constantly. What age do you give them a bit of space? Im so worried they will start watching 'wrong' stuff on youtube, I know how easy it is to get inadvertantly sucked onto the dark side of youtube. Is there a way to monitor what they are watching on you tube? I have age restrictions on but even then I dont think you tubes restrictions are up to all that much.

Well you can’t. My children didn’t have mobiles until 11 and tablets had restrictions on what websites and also time limited.
You’re right I once tried to have YouTube limited and I couldn’t do it. The ‘no adult language or content’ only works if someone had reported it.
I think you can just about manage it for another couple years but you’d be naive to think any boy (girl) hasn't seen some porn or whatever after age 12.
You can limit internet after a certain hour why not try that.

yes the fear that dc will see some sort of porn scares the life out of me. Even 12 seems just so young. I dont think i seen any form of porn till i was about 20! His internet is already time restricted anyway.

Make sure you have filters on your router (so all porn for example is banned on your WiFi). My 12 year old has a smart phone, but no data. I called up his phone provider to cancel data on his plan. That means he can only be online on his phone at home and friends' homes. Doesn't eliminate everything, but prevents him from watching stuff at the park, for example.

It was about 16 for me, at the end of the day she is old enough to leave home.

Admittedly she was born end of May so GCSEs had nearly finished and I figured she needs to manage her own life / self regulate if she is about to start 6th Form.

But although TBF I wasn't that strict on checking internet history on the PC / her laptop, did the odd spot check from time to time. And she was about 12 when this starting happen, her first phone didn't even have internet and we didn't even own an ipAD until she was 14.

Absolutely LOL that you think you’ll be doing that when they’re 16!