How much do you monitor your teens devices?

[Kibble19]

I have a colleague (genuinely, it’s not me!) with two teenagers. They’re almost 14 and almost 15.

Both have all the usual devices with WhatsApp, Snapchat, insta, Facebook, internet access. Both have VPNs on their phone to bypass the school wifi (which I presume blocks some of the above apps) and don’t hide this (hence how she knew about it).

It came up this morning at work that she doesn’t monitor anything they have on their phones or what they’re doing on them. Both phones are passcoded, of course, and she doesn’t know the code. She was quite blase about it, emphasised their right to privacy etc. I don’t know how long the kids have had smartphones but she did say she’s never been a checker.

I have a much younger child but my thought has always been that if they were older, I’d want to know what they were doing. I don’t mean reading every message, but just a general sense of their activity and who they’re in touch with.

Whats the norm these days, in your experience? I’m glad I don’t need to think about this for years to come!

My teens got first phones when they were 11. With the understanding that I had full access, needed their passcode etc. I would check it periodically. I'm aware though that some apps have disappearing messages so I can't see everything. Oldest is now 16 and I wouldn't dream of looking through his phone. For the 14 year old I still have his passcode and would take the odd look but it feels somewhat intrusive. I think though if they wanted to hide something from me they definitely could've regardless.

That’s sort of my thought too. Delete the photos, erase the internet history, delete messages. It’s not hard to filter out the stuff you wouldn’t want your mum to see if she decided to have a look.

DD has a smartphone since Summer term Y6, we always know the password, similar that we know the one for her laptop.
Her phone was also downstairs from dinner time onwards until she was 15/16.

We monitored her phone until she was around 15, mainly as her ND meant she run in some misunderstandings in WhatsApp groups so we had long discussions and she often askede for help decoding them.
She knows that we always had the right to check unannounced and if we would find a changed password or violations of the agreed rules there would be consequences.

She uses WhatsApp for some of her clubs. Insta was restricted for years, we approved every photo she uploaded and we checked with her who she allowed to follow her, the rules were that she has to know the person in real life.
We had long discussions about "what is posted on the internet stays on the internet" and luckily her school also is pro-active.

When she was 17 she had her own account and we don't approve any app downloads anymore. But that's because her behaviour means we can trust her.

DD will be 18 soon, she is open about what she does and she uses our laptop for lots of things on a different browers but she knows we could see her history. Luckily she is a very homebody girl and never caused us any concerns. She openly talkes about what she is texting friends.

It’s very difficult to monitor phones. Snapchat is popular with teens for a reason - the messages and pics disappear so you wouldn’t know if your child was bullying, bullied, sexting or doing something illegal…
Browsers have private mode so the history isn’t saved and teens often have multiple social media accounts including a finsta so that parents think that they are in control and successfully monitoring.

We have a 12 year old daughter and a 15 year old son both with smartphones which they've had since final year of primary.

We know the passwords for both and insist that they bring them down at 9:30 latest before going to bed. We told them that we would retain the right to look at them and periodically I do just look at what they have been doing but as others have said though theres not much to see - they mostly seem to use snapchat rather than whatsapp for messaging etc. I'm not aware that they have vpns etc.

Our concern primarily is to stop them using the phones at night. We told them that as long as they are in our house they had to follow our rules. I am anticipating pushback on this when the 15 year old starts in the sixth form

One of their friend's parents did warn us about a situation where their son had two phones - the one he handed in every night and an additional handset that he used out of hours. I dont think we have this situation but I'm not sure if we would ever know!

I think it's really strange that parents coop up their kids in their bedrooms to "keep them safe" and then hand them an unlimited unsupervised portal connected to literally every predator in the world.

That’s virtually the overarching point of Adolescence. I’m sure Stephen Graham’s character talks about how they thought their son was safe at home, not running the streets etc, but that the threat was in the room with him.

Well, just don't approve SM apps.

We only allowed snapchat when DD was 15, nearly 16 and after lengthly talks about SM in general.