Hi, OP. I'm a lurker, but had to register as I'm further down the road you have started to travel. My DD is 17 and was a beautiful, happy, delightful, dainty child. I couldn't believe my luck that I had such a wonderful girl. She had been bullied in secondary school by her so-called friends, but didn't say much about it to her dad and I, so we were only aware of teenage cattiness, but not much else. She has never spoken to them again after school. When she went to college, she was given an android phone as she would need it for college work etc. This was a big mistake.
At first she would use it all day and all night, so my DH did something with the parental control we have so it shut the phone down at 11pm. Dodgy sites and inappropriate material were blocked as she had been accessing websites which I never thought existed. Then there was snapchat, kik, fling and all the other secret messaging sites that had to be blocked (there's loads out there!). As soon as one was blocked, she'd find another. She also had facebook, which we would monitor now and again. I insisted that I had her log in password so I could fully see what was going on. Yes, it's a fine line between respecting her privacy and monitoring, and I was uncomfortable at reading her stuff so only did it occasionally.
Through her new 'friends' at college, she found out how to use facebook to get around the parental monitor we have installed AND the parental block we have on the home hub. She became withdrawn, aggressive, rude, refusing to do what was asked of her, slovenly, lying, stealing from us and extremely disrespectful to both her dad and me. She self-harms if she believes we are being horrible to her (as in a simple asking her to put her clothes in the washbox) This is such a tremendous shock as she was such a sweet, loving child.
We took away facebook and she attempted suicide. She has turned to hating us for trying to "control" her and make her unhappy (by limiting her time on the internet and taking away her facebook friends - people she has never met in RL). We then found facebook messenger. I have read hundreds of messages no parent should ever have to read - groomed for sex, drugs and everything else. She has been encouraged to kill herself numerous times, to stop eating, watch sick videos posted by groups she's been added to and listen to suicide-inducing music. She has been encouraged to post naked pictures of herself. She isn't bothered by any of the above, it's like she has been brainwashed. She shrugs when I speak of all this. I'm afraid of her as she doesn't have any kind feelings for us - only when she wants something from us. She will be very nice and I think that maybe we are over the worst of this and getting through to her, but no. It's like a cat playing with a mouse.
She is getting counselling, but to be honest, it isn't helping. They will not diagnose her with anything as they do not wish to label her as it might affect her in later life. How can they treat her if they won't say what is wrong? At the rate she is going, there won't be a "later life". The counsellors have said that she mustn't have any internet access but fail to understand that she needs access for college work and she can access it at college. The police have a backlog of this kind of thing to investigate, the counsellors don't seem to fully appreciate how bad this is, how frightened we are for her and of her, even when there was a massive crisis. I've begged all of them, in floods of tears until I couldn't cry any more, to help her and help us. They see her as someone who is just having a normal teenage tantrum and us as parents who don't understand modern-day teens and we can't handle a rather lengthy tantrum. They wouldn't read any of her messages on fb outlining how she was going to kill herself as it was "private". They.would.not.listen. And so she tried again.
You may well judge me - I would have done if I was reading this three years ago. My DD was seldom out of the house except to go to college as her "friends" don't live in our town. A good portion of the damage has come through the internet and onto that little phone. She cannot, or doesn't wish to, self regulate her internet use. Even with all the parental controls in place, she still managed all the above.
So, tonight, as my username suggests I have broken. She will be leaving our house tomorrow which is what she wants, as we are the people who are making her so miserable she self harms. I'm utterly broken, as we cannot reach her, cannot reason with her and cannot save her from herself. She doesn't believe that we love her, despite us doing everything we possibly can to make her happy. Only those people on the internet love her and care about her, not us her parents. I'm exhausted from sleeping with one eye and ear open and going into her room to make sure she is still breathing.
So, my advice to you is get that phone off her. Get it off her NOW. The above will show you what can and does happen. Please, please don't suffer the heartache that this family is going through now. All because of what comes through that phone she can't put down.