To regularly check my 14 year old's phone

[Frazzels]

14 year old DD has had a phone since she was 10 but I've always monitored what she does. She didn't mind it up until recently and she's saying her friend's parents don't do this. I'm doing it because she could access anything through that phone, I just want to make sure she's being sensible with it and she's safe. It does feel a bit like an invasion of her privacy and most people I know with DC of a similar age don't do this

The rule in our house is that whilst we pay it, we can check it. That said I don't check it very often as in the past I have found nothing on my DS's phone.

That said we had an incident recently where a girl he knows sent him very abusive texts and I was very close to going up to the school about it when she stopped. Now that young lady should definitely be having her phone checked by her parents.

@subscribeBelow

Absolutely, it's fantastic to have an open, honest relationship with your children and definitely to be encouraged. It doesn't replace the need to actively parent (v).

I had a great relationship with my parents and would talk to them about MOST problems. However, I was badly bullied at school which I never spoke about but led me to dark thoughts (which I kept buried). This was before the days of social media and instant messaging which makes you accessible 24/7. Had these existed and NOT been detected then, not being melodramatic for the sake of a point, I may not still be here today.

I find it interesting that there is a view amongst those who do check and or / spy on their teenagers phones perceive that the non-checker/spyers are somehow disinterested, disengaged or possibly even negligent in their attitude.

I don't think I could have taken internet safety any more seriously with my two, in the same way I couldn't have taken the conversations about drugs, drinking, unprotected sex, managing their finances etc more seriously.

I think not checking their phones from time to time is madness (see previous examples of the teenage boy being groomed and murdered by another boy and the poor girl who committed suicide) but I wouldn't do it secretly. I paid for DD's phone and pay for the top ups and part of the deal is that we can check it at anytime and she isn't allowed it upstairs, not that she cares - it's usually at the bottom of her bag until she remembers it needs charging. I think a lot of her friends parents don't bother checking.

DD isn't allowed WhatsApp but her friend shows her some of the group chats and even DD says some of it (especially the misogyny and swearing - this is Y7s) is awful. I'm pretty sure if some of the parents saw what was going on they'd be horrified. But then one parent (different school, different friends) has told me that I've just got to learn to trust my child .... despite there being a problem in their Y6 with a child talking about depression and suicide on a WhatsApp group.

Waspnest my DC show me the horrible stuff, the nasty comments, the cock shots and so on. We talk about it. They often ask me what kind of person gets off on posting stuff like that. For us, anything like that is a conversation starter, not something to be avoided.

They also show me the hilarious stuff, the interesting stuff and the really positive stuff too.

I trust my children to share their lives with me, whether online or in the classroom or with their friends.

I don't think it's negligent etc. per se I think it's just giving them too much responsibility too young. And it's ignoring the fact that peer pressure either in personal groups or wider social media can be way more influential than the values we hope we have instilled in them.

I'd be horrified if my 12 yo was receiving cock shots.

Good point Waspnest and it is one of my favourite lines to say to my DC that with freedom comes responsibility. I think that's why they share the shit stuff with me, so that they are not taking responsibility for it by themselves. They have raised more than one safeguarding issue with me, along the lines of knowing that a friend was meeting someone in a dodgy place and lying to their parents about where they would be and asking another friend to look after their phone, so the tracking device that their parent insisted they had appeared to be in the right place.

I know about many deceptions that their friends have done who don't seem able to talk to their parents. It makes me so sad and so often they are the teens being spied on or tracked, so they do stupid things to get around the restrictions. As another poster said somewhere no amount of spying, checking will compensate for a lack of parenting.

My DC are 18 and 20 now, but at that age we had an agreement that I could have a look at their phones if I felt i needed to. They were each given a phone just before finishing primary, so they could exchange numbers with friends before going off to senior school. I checked quite regularly at first, less as time went on and I rarely checked once they were settled into senior school properly. Then I only really ever checked if I felt that something was going on with them and occasionally just to make sure things were ok.

I think it is absolutely necessary to keep an eye on any means of internet access, to protect them from various things, especially at that age! Teenagers do not always make the best decisions, and aside from the dangers of interacting with the wrong people, anything that they say, or photos and videos that they post are online forever, and can really adversely affect their future.

But what's the point. A 10 year old could hide stuff so deep on the OS that you'd need a computer science degree to find it.

Just browse through the app store.and you'll see literally thousands of "hidden" apps and "secure vaults". Not to mention sites like "talk with strangers". And the like, and thats just the first result on google when you search for "chat rooms".

Short of not giving them a phone you cant stop anything they do on line, it's a pointless exercise. So you "check" their phone and completely miss that the calculator app is really a hidden message and photo vault filled with stuff that would give you a heart attack, but you'll never know because you cant access it.

Checking phones is completely a waste of time. Any kid with half a brain will be happy to hand theirs over, because you'll never ever find their messages or photos.

Check their phones!

Confusednow I agree and think that checking is a slightly lazy way of convincing yourself that you know what your child does online. People say to themselves, 'ah but I check' and this gives them reassurance - which in my opinion is entirely false.

I gave some very low tech examples of ways I know my DC's friends get around their parents' checks. DS had VPNs installed on his phone from when he was trying to do his GCSEs because the school had so many blockers in place, he was unable to access the music files he needed for his Music GSCE!

My DC also looked at things on other people's phones. Their spied on friends also used to ask them if they could use my DCs phones to log into their Whatsapp / Insta accounts etc. But hey, the parents were checking / spying so that's all fine!

@Confusedfornow

"Just browse through the app store.and you'll see literally thousands of "hidden" apps and "secure vaults". Not to mention sites like "talk with strangers". And the like, and thats just the first result on google when you search for "chat rooms"."

All the more reason to be cautious surely. Besides, I work in IT and am quite nerdy so I don't think I'd be out-tech'd by my 12 year old stepdaughter. Even if I wasn't then I think the idea that 'there may be something hidden so I won't bother looking at all' is missing the point.

When I was a teenager, I used to pretend I was going to friends houses and instead we'd hang out at the park and drink (cool eh?). Are you suggesting, by the same logic, that, because I may well have a hip flask of vodka hidden in my sock, that my parents shouldn't bother checking what's in my backpack?

"Confusednow I agree and think that checking is a slightly lazy way of convincing yourself that you know what your child does online"

And not checking is what? Proactive?

PBo83 educating, trusting and having open communication is proactive!

I don't get this idea that checking your child's phone is somehow 'spying'.

If your child walked out the front door would you not check where they were going? If your child's in their room watching TV at night would you not check what they were watching? If they left for school with a second bag, would you not ask what was in it?

It's not like you have to look over their shoulder or install some sort of Mi5 tracking/hacking device. Just a quick scan of internet history, sent/received photos and a glance at messages (you don't need to fully read them) is all. And you don't have to be sneaky about it, just make it a condition of buying them the thing in the first place.

As for hiding stuff, if your kid's always messaging and there's no messages on WhatsApp or if there's no internet history then there is no greater sign that something is amiss than that!

PBo83 educating, trusting and having open communication is proactive!

Absolutely agree and we do our best with all these things but isn't it better to be as safe as possible? Can we really 100% trust curious, hormonal, teenagers who think they know-it-all to be completely safe with social media and something as vast and potentially dangerous as the internet?

You just answered your own question.

How many parents work in I.T?

So yes, it's pointless. Why check a bag that you know is empty?

None of the previous posters have any idea what they're looking for when they "check" the phones. Their kids are laughing at them when they do.

I have just downloaded a hidden vault to check it out. It looks and works just like a regular calculator. But if you type in a special series of numbers, the app "opens" and you can call, text, and send pics. There is absolutely no way of knowing about this feature. Its completely invisible. So what would be the point of checking my phone? You would never ever ever find anything hidden in that app. Ever.

I don't feel the need to check because I know that if they truly wanted to hide things from me, they could. I practised all manner of deception myself as a teenager, so know perfectly well there is a way around everything. If you checked my bag as a teenager, I would hide items in a bush in the front garden or give it to a friend. Other than incarcerating your child, you cannot completely control what they do.

I have always wanted my DC to feel I trusted them and thought that they could handle whatever responsibility they were given. I expected them to play an active role in taking responsibility and showing they were trustworthy. It's how I did it with them right from the start and it was the same with a phone. If I checked, it meant I didn't trust them to be open and honest with me.

and you might be groomed. And abused. And murdered.

and your parents would have to live with the fact that they never once ever bothered to try to check up on whatever evil their kid might have accessed because 'what's the point'.

These are our children we're talking about.

I don't know why but you're post has made me really fucking angry.

RiverTam my DC tell me. We talk about it. I care massively about them, love them more than anyone else in the world, but that doesn't mean I need to check or spy on their mobile phones. It means I need to have a relationship built on trust with them, so that they know I have their backs and that they have been given the right tools not to be groomed, a target for abuse etc.

my comment was actually to Confused, but anyway, I really don't care for your accusation of spying, it makes you sound like a teenager yourself. But I can't agree with you. I will of course have all those conversations with my child, but I will also check. Not spy, check. Because I am her parent, and she is a child.

And that's fine for you and your child RiverTam because as you say, you are the parent and that's how you chose to do it.

I'm just explaining why I don't and why that doesn't make me negligent or somehow leaving my child more open to being abused, groomed or murdered.

What makes me angry is the number of young people I know, through my DCs and also the work that I do with young people who have to hide so much from their parents. In my opinion (and that's all it is) they are the ones vulnerable to abuse, grooming and the bad stuff because they have no adult to talk to, no adult who trusts them and doesn't think they are a foolish child and so they just keep it all under the radar and fuck up all by themselves.

It's OTT to assume that checking a phone your child would make the difference as to whether your child is murdered or not.

At age 8 I would check. At 14 probably not, I need to be teaching them the skills to take care of themselves as they go out into the world, and they're more IT savvy than me anyway.

I wouldnt want somebody to check my phone and I'm not doing anything wrong, just feels like an invasion of privacy.

You are an adult, and you pay your own bill. Really not comparable to a 14 year old.

And why would an 8 year old be having a phone in the first place? And if they did, you'd probably check?

Parallel universe sometimes.