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.

Agree with this.
And instill good values in them from when they are young . And teach them to think critically

And ensure they keep doing activities that mean they are busy in the real world and mixing with sensible role models.

Both mine do around 10 (or more) hours of stuff outside school a week. And we always have a family dinner and I spend time one on one with each of them too.

My son (14) is watching adolescence with us at his request and didnt know what an incel was ornwhs the emojis meant.

I am not saying theye won't be exposed to bad stuff. I worry about it and we do have filters and do phone checks. But I don't think we should just feel helpless either or assume keeping them safe means banning phones. Ensure they have lots of good adult role models around them. Ensure they aren't spending endless hours with their peer group unsupervised/on their phones. Ours will go to the shop after school or hang with friends for a bit but they are always home for tea and hobbies.

Even if I banned phones they would see and hear about the stuff from peers at school

Also my son watches lots of documentaries on his phone, he knows more from this about geography and science and history etc than he has learnt in school,- I know because he loves to talk to me about them. The internet isnt a wholly bad thing.There are some great resources out there. He does an online astronomy course and the tutor has just sent them all links to all sorts of interesting website

Oh, my son was/is exactly like this. Even at 12/13 was always watching videos on youtube about history, philosophy & politics. More likely to be watching a discussion of the defensive positions employed in some ancient Roman battle than anything manosphere or porn related. He's in uni now studying history & politics so in that sense it was a good thing. Obviously these days I have no control over what he does on t'interweb, but when he was younger we used to talk a lot about social media, what was good and bad about it, etc. I never felt I needed to snoop to find out what he was watching, but maybe that was because we already had a relationship where we could talk about stuff, and I got lucky in that he stayed like that through his teens. He's never liked the whole Andrew Tate manosphere shite and thankfully none of his friends from either school or uni seem to be either.

i have a good relationship with my son and we still do things together, we’re out tomorrow doing something in town he thought we’d both like. We do talk as a family and we have discussed what he does on his phone. He’s not a closed book, neither is my daughter but like someone said earlier she’s 18 so it would be inappropriate for me to check her phone.

i don’t mean to sound defensive btw but just answering what someone said above.

I use Qustodio, combined with the Apple controls. And of course she knows I have it, she asks me to add websites to the allowed list or to give permission for a new app every so often.

It’s a bit of a pain to set up, and there are glitches, plus I’m sure there are some workarounds that a determined child could find and it doesn’t control what she sees on friends devices. But combined with an ongoing conversation, it makes it easier for her to make the right choices, and that works for us.

Qustodio - is one I hadn’t heard of before, I’ll take a look.

The more I think about it, I really think social media should be banned for under 18s. It does them zero good and as we know opens them up to all sorts of harm.

Absolutely.

I work across primary and secondary schools including in safeguarding. I work in a normal range of schools, one or two deprived areas of the county but mainly not.
The Safeguarding mantra drilled out of everyone in schools/education is ‘it doesn't happen here’ - because it does.

Regular pupil voice sessions in schools show that as adults:

-Children know far more than us
-The rate of change in online access, types of apps, groups, and the capability of IT is so rapid that we can't keep up
-Children know they know more than we do.

Additionally:
-The vast majority of children say their parents don't check on them
-The subtleties of ‘brainwashing’ through algorithms are beyond the understanding of children
-Developmentally children don't have the understanding of inference in text ( think about how this is taught in reading) leading to online bullying, chats with strangers, etc.
-Children are exposed to language and concepts far beyond their maturity. An eight year old girl talking of her classmates as ‘the lads being players’ and them ‘dry humping me’ in the playground turned my stomach. This language and knowledge would not be provided and accepted in most family homes.
Safeguarding Conferences and training with the police show some unimaginable horrors that our children are exposed to.

Parents are SO naive. Adolescence was a really good portrayal of an ordinary family who assumed they knew what their child was doing. It is excellent in promoting much needed discussion, raising the profile of the dangers.

Online safety and online access is so dangerous.

So what do you teach parents to do @MarnieJADE ?

I already know I can’t keep up with my DD who is 12. But we have agreed no social media and no phones in bedrooms after 8pm.

Can you provide a checklist of what to do?

I don't teach parents.

Schools offer parents IT/safeguarding events, regularly. Often poorly attended. These can be more general but are often informed by school IT system ‘flags’ and analysis of logs, so as to address current happenings.

Some schools produce a regular online safety newsletter or buy one in from a specialist company to share with parents.

Safeguarding concerns that come to light in school are recorded on CPOMS with an individual follow up with the parent. Child tracked overtime, relevant agencies referred to and support gained.

School websites are often a wealth of information for parents and include links to expert charities and businesses which specialise in online safety.

The school computing curriculum and PHSE lessons support children to keep safe.

The changes in the online world are so rapid it is difficult to keep up.

Age old, ‘prevention is better than cure’. The less access children have the more the dangers are limited.

My sons school shared this recently

https://www.virginmedia.com/blog/online-safety/childrens-internet-safety-test/

(My son wasn't groomed to be an incel btw but he was exposed to harmful content, despite us doing nearly of the stuff everyone is saying they do below. we did all the talking about being safe online conversations and maybe that helped the most as in that he went to the safeguarding lead to report it?

It's really is challenging to get this right.

It wasn't meant as a criticism or to make people feel defensive, but I do feel it is important to discuss non technological solutions to teen behaviour/phone use.

When my brother started to go off the rails my parents bought him a drum kit and I was appalled they "rewarded" him for getting in trouble with the police that way. But it was a stroke of genius. He refocused, made a new group of friends through music and shifted away from his old peer group.

All the filters in the world won't help if children are hanging out with the wrong sort of friends.

My husband lived in a very difficult part of a city as a teen and his parents were brilliant at getting him and his brothers into a sport that took up nearly their whole free time. I think his life could have been very different if he hadn't had such commited parents

Kind of. The gaming devices and computers live in the living room with screens facing outwards. No devices or tvs in bedrooms. All phones have parental controls on and turn off at bedtime til 8am.
I'm not delusional, I know they are looking at stuff I won't like and may have the ability to bypass the controls. But I've have made it as hard for them as I can.

When I saw porn, as child, we had to find it ourselves.
Now, people are buying devices so kids can watch it every day.

I have graphic memories of the things we used to see.
It was very sporadic / much milder than anything available now.

I spoke to my son yesterday about porn and he said they learnt a lot about it PHSE in primary but not so much in secondary (as in damage it does rather than the porn itself).

we went out all day yesterday for the first time in ages and had a really good chat about all sorts yesterday. It was really lovely.

Kids go on tik tok and lie about age and stream when they shouldn’t and are prone to all sorts of crap i suggest you make sure he has deleted TikTok cos he could be lying see if he has the app still on there

A lot of it seemed to be places to get various melted cheese goods in towns and cities around the UK, which I am in favour of. There is tiktok and they have snapchat but would rather sit and watch than participate. Like to read free books online and most of the time dd is laughing her head off at a book that is some Japanese romance or something. She has BBC, Guardian and Independent on her home screen to get her news. Now and then will talk about what ridiculous thing Trump is doing or another book that has been banned in US. I think I am OK.

Yeah ya fine