Honestly - do you know what your teen is looking at on the internet?

[englishpear]

Obviously inspired by a certain show...

I'll start - my DC are 14 & 18 (boy & girl). I'd say for my son (he's younger) I probably know most of what he looks at - I check his phone (probably not as much as I should) and his laptop use and it all looks pretty tame. I don't really know what goes on, on his snap chat though and he's on there a lot. He did actually delete Tik Tok as he said it was 'brain rot'. I don't have access to his Instagram either.

My daughter, the oldest, I'll put my hands up and say I know very little of what she looks at. I know she is on snapchat and tik tok more than she should be though. I haven't looked at her internet history for years.

All on me - I just wondered how much others were aware.

No I don’t. Or didn’t-mine are late teens now so I wouldn’t expect to as much but I was certainly not as aware as I should have been when they were younger. I know have two dss’s. Dh has no parental restrictions on their phones, (which he pays for), due to reluctance to argue with them about it (and also as their mother is ridiculous and tells them he will use it to spy on her -he genuinely couldn’t care less about her but she has convinced herself
and them so there we are). I have strongly told him that I think this is extremely risky. He watched the programme. And im
hoping it’s made Him think.

DH and DS are watching tonight - such an eye opener

Anyone who thinks they do is delusional. Most 12 year olds are more tech savvy than parents.

I worked in cahms and would meet lots of kids with strict parental controls who were able to access all sorts of things. There are apps disguised as other things for example, many messaging formats that auto delete, alternate accounts but also alternate ways to enter browsers

Most filtering type stuff relies on parents knowing the "language". For example (using that tv show as an example) if someone commented 80/20 or pill emoji would you know what it meant? Would your safe search be triggered?

The chain is only as strong as the weakest link so it only needs one friend in school to have discovered an old iPod touch with browser in a cupboard, or have a less monitored phone to send all sorts of stuff, or just show kids in person.

I'll try and find the stats but something like 60% of kids have seen porn by 12, mostly during the school day and 80% of parents think they hadn't.

Its why they have to assume that kids in primary will encounter porn, because huge amounts of them will via some way. You can hope that they don't, and work hard to prevent it, but never be assume that they can't

In the same way my mum would have no idea of what I was able to access on the Internet as a kid, or in older generations assumed you were safe at a friends when you were drunk in a field. Teenagers have always been a closed group

I don't check DD11's phone as often as i should but she's got fairly strict time limits and she only has WhatsApp and YouTube. I watch videos over her shoulder and it's fairly make-up heavy plus stuff like YouTubers who go round theme parks or deserted buildings etc.

She's secretive though so I've no doubt I'll never find out if she does access something she shouldn't!

It’s scary isn’t how little we know about what they access to.

Yes I think I do. I'm not very tech savvy but I am very invested in what the DC access so have figured it out.

I work in a high school and seriously what the kids there can see and do with their phones gives me nightmares.

All mine have phones/tablets that are linked to my account so it's easy enough to see what they are up to. The younger 2 need me to put in passwords to download things and have strict time limits. Oldest DC(13) has more freedom with times but I get an alert every time he downloads stuff and things like tiktok/Instagram are banned, he can do what he likes when hes paying the bills.

Parents gotta parent.

DH does apparently
He works in IT on Govt contracts and has all sorts of monitoring stuff set up.

It would be like chasing water. The sustainable solution is to have a strong enough relationship with them to be able to discuss, discern and process what they might look at.

Your daughter is an adult.

Yes, by and large. Lots and lots of shit on YouTube. K-pop. People talking about K-pop. Various aesthetics on Pinterest. Analogue horror.

She’s very open with us and if she sees something that distresses her she will say so. We have some parental controls.

She’s 15. We talk about the internet quite a bit.

I work on VAWG and parents need to check their kids phones but also have discussions, OP you need to check your DS's phone especially Snapchat a lot of sharing of nudes happens on there.

As to your daughter she's an adult you can't really be checking an 18 year olds phone that ship has sailed

Also this is the skill they need to learn,
Now more than ever. What's the source , what's the bias etc etc. Controlling internet access in the teens is not going to work, for the same reason that banning books doesn't

Yes, I can see exactly what she’s been doing via the net nanny software on her phone - which searches, websites, apps etc. I can’t see the content of messages, but she doesn’t have Snapchat or similar. We also talk about internet safety and porn and stuff.

Which programme is being referred to?

@LogicalImpossibility wow what's net nanny and will she know you have that

I’m horrified by parents who don’t check. Even if you think they will be able hide things, you shouldn’t always check very regularly. There is lots of advice on how to do this on YouTube etc. in Adolescence, the mum said that Jamie would be on his PC at 1 a.m. but she did nothing to stop him.

No devices in bedrooms overnight here. I’ve seen DD’s friends messaging while we have her phone downstairs, it’s mad how many have their phones in their rooms overnight.

There is porn on Spotify.
www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-03-20/porn-on-spotify-is-infiltrating-the-streaming-service-s-top-podcast-charts

I have to say I thought I was pretty down with the kids but I had no idea about this 80/20, incel, red pill stuff was until I watched said program. I asked dd12 if she knew what an incel was, she genuinely had no idea. I could tell by her face, she looked at me like I’d gone mad. I check her phone, spot checks, so she doesn’t delete stuff, most of the time I see what’s coming up on her what’s app as it goes off 1000 times a day. She’s not allowed her device In her room after 10 either.

@Tarantella6 !

"She's secretive though so I've no doubt I'll never find out if she does access something she shouldn't!"

Jesus christ. She's ELEVEN.

Presumably you pay the bill? So it's your phone.

I honestly think we'll look back at this time in 50 years the same way we look back at the Victorians sending kids up chimneys.

One of my children has been the victim of online grooming and there was a police investigation.

So I know I didn't get this right.

We monitored stuff regularly, his phone switched off at 8pm. He can't down load any apps we don't approve, but it still slipped through on WhatsApp school group that we had checked several times.

Mine are older (my youngest is 17) but they didn’t have smartphones till they were 14/15. Phones were banned from bedrooms until after GCSEs.
I did check their phones, and it was all innocent gamer/tv show fan stuff. Although I did catch my oldest watching gay porn on my pc. So we had a chat about porn not being realistic, and I asked if he was gay (yes)
I asked my youngest today if he’d seen porn and he reminded me he’d been shown some at school when he was 14. He has adhd and ASD and is quite young for his age so is more into games than girls. He mainly goes on discords about memes, and is very vocal in his dislike for Trump, Musk and Tate. All my boys think they are appalling men.

My children are only small but I was a secondary school teacher and have seen the negative effects of the Internet on teenagers and it can be devastating. Even if you have all the controls and check their devices regularly they could be shown beheadings or extreme pornography on a friends phone on the bus etc. Where is the safeguarding? There was a phone in on LBC about online safety all day on march 10th with parents calling in about what their children had experienced online and it was horrifying.

I read this article today and wondered why we as a society are letting this happening to our children?

https://www.thetimes.com/article/602e2322-5012-4efc-b961-a501ae2faf8f?shareToken=6c9795cf780b8ee57ef55102b54f2b88

If you have parental controls you should always look up how you can get around them - there are so many sneaky workarounds. I've heard of secret apps that look like calculators, other children sharing their screens to devices so secret social media accounts can be set up etc. Take a look at officer Gomez on Facebook as he posts a lot of the workarounds.

Absolutely this. If you rely on checking or tech solutions you’re missing the point. I get no parent wants to talk about porn, incels, beheadings to their kids but you have to. Sadly the idea of “age appropriate” conversations needs to take into account that what a parent may think is age appropriate now is likely out of date with what kids know or have seen.

"Adolescence" on Netflix. 4 part drama.