Daughter has the whole family blocked on her Instagram

[tennismum17]

(sorry if my English is bad it's my second) My daughter is 11 years old and in year 7. She, like all my other children, has an Instagram and a SnapChat account. ( I agreed to having all my children have Instagram as long as they use the 'private' feature ).
Recently, it has come to my attention that I had been blocked :(. I found out because I got suspicious that I could not see any of her pictures on my feed - I asked her if she had deleted her account and she said no. She said that she just didn't feel like posting anymore.
I shrugged it off at first but then I noticed that when my youngest son(8) was looking at her profile there were new pictures that I had not seen before. I thought it was just a glitch so I went to her profile and it said 'user not found'. My oldest son(15) said that it meant that I'd been blocked 😢.
I confronted her about this and she got upset; she said it was normal for a girl her age to have privacy and that all of her friends had their parents blocked.
My oldest son came to me and said that he'd been blocked by her too, so had my oldest daughter(12). I asked my husband if he could see her pictures and he said no.
So now the only family member that wasn't blocked was the youngest. I asked him to show me whenever she posted a new picture and he did. He also showed me her Instagram stories and there was nothing too strange - she was posting the same kinda stuff she posted before I was blocked. 🤔
When she found out about the youngest showing me the posts she got angry with him and blocked him too.
So... right now I'm don't know what to do because I have no way of seeing what she is posting. I'm know that she is not a dirty girl she would not post anything inappropriate, swearing or anything like that BUT I'd still like to be able to see what she posts. I can also see where she is coming from and I DO think that my children deserve privacy. I just want to find some sort of middle-ground.

So AIBU if I expect my 11 year old daughter to keep me unblocked on all her social media?

P.S: I also need to see their posts to see the comments underneath, I want to make sure there is nothing mean being said.

Don't assume that their Internet History is all that they browse. Many kids will know to use Private Browsing for porn.

I read something this week about a curious 12yo searching "12 year old porn". That was ... complicated.

In the olden days when Facebook was all about networks, under-eighteens could only sign up on a kind of limited account where it was very difficult indeed to find them, and very difficult for them to find or befriend strangers.

I'm surprised that more SM sites don't have that kind of restricted account from which you couldn't post beyond friends, or have one-on-one conversations, or whatever. Wouldn't it be great if you had to have adult verification of friend requests, for example.

Obviously it would be possible for the truly determined to work around it, but the average child/young teen who just wants to share their day with their real life friends would have no need to and wouldn't accidentally fall into dangerous situations they aren't prepared for.

"I am allergic to the English isn't the OP's first language as an excuse to post idiotic things like using phrases "dirty girl".
This has nothing to do with someone's mother tongue or the lack of language skills."

^^ That's wrong.

I can think of a few languages and cultures where the term "dirty girl" does not have the sting it has in English.

As PP has said, she shouldn't be on social media at all at the age of 11. Take he phone off her and delete all her accounts. This may seem OTT but believe me it isn't. She is far too young.

Shouldn't this be reported to the school as a safeguarding issue?

DS is 14 & I insist I have all his passwords to social media accounts.

Only this weekend I discovered he & two girls from school had been private messaging a stranger (Ds initially mistook the person for someone at school wit the same name as they knew certain information & they were already a”friend” of two schoolfriends.

He has now blocked him & tried to warn the girls (some of the things this person is saying is a bit disturbing) but the girls are urging him to unblock this person & one actually said I don’t need to be careful. He only wants to be friends. Meet ups were mentioned.

My DD is 6 and we recently had a letter reminding parents about the correct ages for social media accounts. School are trying to teach e-safety and along come dim witted parents to destroy the good work. My mind actually boggles.

This. I can't even think of the world where this is actually normal. I can't comprehend the thinking of parents who just give their kids a blank cheque on electronic devices because they "think" the settings are high enough. Then they are surprised that strangers are allowed to chat them up and worse. This is truly a paedo and bully paradise. No cop on whatsoever.
You have no idea. You try don't know. Your kids are naive. We teach them from birth to have manners. Be polite to strangers. Say thank you and please. We teach them to be wary of strangers on the street while at the same time saying that we respond with a greeting when someone says hi.
We need to be the smart ones. Get educated on internet safety. Be knowledgeable of all dangers lurking out there. Take courses, be up-to-date with the latest apps and platforms for kids. Monitor and supervise their use of electronic devices. Restrict their ability to access their social media accounts, any devices where you can communicate with strangers, purchase stuff with one click etc.
Cop on people. Don't be bloody dimwits who want to avoid the hassle and arguments with their screaming teenagers and the "everybody has it so why not me". They're easier to handle than a teenager bullied into posting naked photos of themselves or even suicide by anonymous pervs and bullies.

She's probably blocked you simply because it's 'not cool' to have your parents as friends on social media. But I think 11 is very young to have an Instagram account personally. My son is 10 and doesn't have a mobile phone yet, not until he goes to secondary school but when he does he'll not be allowed to join social media groups until he's 13. If it were me and I was not being allowed to even look at her account, I would confiscate the phone until she did. And then make it a condition that I was unblocked if she were to keep the account. All this is inevitable stuff and I am not looking forward to my kids having phones and all the baggage that come with them!

Just to add to the 'no social media before 13' thing - one of the reasons this is an issue is that some sites - e.g. Facebook - will show your date of birth on your profile. So if you joined your daughter up at 11, and let her say she was 13, when she's 14 her profile will say she's 16. Which means that if she DOES get approached by anyone you'd rather she wasn't approached by, they'll be able to say they thought she was 16, because that's what her profile says, which will make it much harder to prosecute them for approaching a minor. (This isn't just an issue for actual paedophiles - she might easily get approached by 17/18-year-olds who would be horrified if they knew how old she really was.)

@shockthemonkey , please tell me which ones, because I know a few and the "dirty girl" has a very nasty context in any of those.

DR - I filled in a CEOP report & sent an email into school but as we are on Easter holidays I havnt yet had any communication from school.

CEOP dont think criminal activity has taken place yet but are concerned & want further info.

That's good, Alexander Always better safe than sorry. Your son sounds like a sensible lad, btw.

Dd 13 and ds 15 (16 this month) are not allowed snapchat or instagram, They both have whatsapp and dd has FB (Spuervised). Dd downloaded snapchat without us knowing and had her phone removed as punishment for a week and she was rold if she does it again it will be removed permanently. We pay for the phones so we say what apps they can have. Ds had FB until he was caught sharing intimate pics with a girl when he was 14 - Account deleted. Both of thier fb were set up with one of my email accounts and they don't know the passwords so it can be removed instantly - Strict? I don't care. Ds could have gotten into some serious trouble with the FB thing and it was nipped in the bud asap because we were supervising his account. They can do what they want on social media when they are 18 and if they don't like it they can lump it.

Crikey. I think everyone has said it all. You know you’re the adult and she’s the child, right?

At 11 your dd should not really be on the likes of instergram, but if she is, and I do get that some parents let their child have social media accounts, but if she simply must have her own instergram account, then you should have full access.
The account should be fully accessible by you, you should have full control of the log in details, the password etc and be able to read any private messages sent to your child.
Bugger letting an 11 year old have any privacy when they are online. She either has an account that you have full access to or she has no account, nothing else is good enough.
Would you send her to London, Birmingham or Edinburgh (whichever is furthest from your home) alone and exp ct her to find herself a hotel when she arrived? Of course not, so why let an 11yo child have unhindered access to the internet which is full of weirdos and pervs.
Now do some parenting and sort her out!

The best way would be to insist on looking at her phone every night /every so often. That way you can see what she is posting, and what others are saying to her. I did this until DD was 13/14.
The deal is still that I have to know her password so I could pick up her phone if I wanted to. She is now 14 and I don't want to read her chats as want to give her some privacy. Her friends knew I used to look at her phone and were very careful what they sent or said to her as they knew I could see it.
Win win .

If my 11yo blocked me, that would set alarm bells ringing. I suspect somebody has told her to block you and I find that thought very scarey.

Op this is a massive parenting fail here. Why does your 8, 11 and 12 year old have Instagram accounts??

And what is your dilemma here? You are the adult and parent, take the phone away and delete their accounts. They don't get to have this type of privacy at that age. Sounds like you want to be their friend rather than the actual parent🤔

Deshasafraisy - thanks for the link to that article. Worrying!!

been here got the T-shirt Op and apologies if anyone else has mentioned this already but there's another few things you need to do.

When you do get access to her phone (and it should not be under protest or with any warning) look at the account in detail. Who is following her? are they likely to know her? DD had a number of salubrious looking men following her in far flung countries that had no business following her.

Also look at the private messaging in the app. has she been using it and if so, what sort of content is there? then go to the posts she has liked in her settings. you need to see how comfortable you are with this to make a judgement on how soon you let her have access back and what the rules are. if anything is ringing alarm bells then you need to have a discussion.

In our case it was a hard line, you want a phone before 18? you do it under our supervision and rules, when you're 18 you can have it on your terms, not before.

Take her phone. She is 11. You have 100% rights to control her Social Media access!

Mine has SM and it's all linked through my iPhone and the family iPad. Any messages (text and messenger) show up on my phone and iPad. She can have all the privacy she wants when she has her own house and I'm not funding her tech.
I have all the passwords to her phone, FB and everything else. It's been that way since day one of saying okay.

Be the parent. Take charge.

dirty girl

Take the booody phone off her.

She's too young to have those tbqh and way too young to be expecting online privacy, can't believe you need a forum of strangers to tell you that tbh

What's already been said - no phone and no WiFi code for her unless you can access all her social media at any time.

Well, the OP is rather suspiciously MIA. Wonder why?

OP - Does you Instagram nickname make it obvious that you are DD's mum? Do you use a profile pic of your kids? Have you ever liked or replied to her posts? Do you have any of her friends as Instagram friends?

What I'm trying to say is that when you follow your child, you need to be invisible to her friends. She won't want people to see baby pics of her and having mum like a post is embarrassing. (If you need to discuss something she has posted obviously bring it up in person. )