Aibu - not to know how to deal with DD's secret Instagram account

[seriouslylong]

My dd is 12, she has asked me for an instagram account lots of times and I said no. I recently found out she created an account without telling me.

I was going to tell her right away that I knew and deal with it but I decided to monitor it for a few days.

Now I have seen she has posted photos of herself in a bikini which she knows is unacceptable. I now feel like I can't trust her.

I will be swapping her phone for a brick phone, but I'm not sure how else to deal with this as she completely went behind my back with this and then took it much further by putting up bikini photos of herself.

[seriouslylong]

Thank you all for the advice, it has been very helpful.

I know I can not ban her from the internet forever but right now I thought it's the best thing to do until we can discuss it and then decide fully how to manage it.

One poster suggested an internet safety course, I'm going to look into this as I think it's a great idea.

Also the comments about making her look into grooming stories are also very useful.

I do agree the main thing is to make her understand the safety issue.

Also I have read her private messages on there and she has added someone she doesn't know and told them what school she goes to, this person said they know people from her school she she named a few people. This is the things that I find worrying as she had a private account but adds strangers.

Also my dd has been bullied at school in her first year of secondary school and perhaps she is trying to make new friends etc and fit in with her school friends, however she would have known that I would be unhappy with bikini pictures so I find this very unacceptable.

I'm also worried if she is going behind my back at this age what will she do when she is an actual teenager

[Jellybeansincognito]

She has told someone her school? Wow that’s extremely concerning.

[Numbersaremything]

I imagine that she is naively trying to fit in. Mo vitor what she does, block the stranger and ensure she knows that if you don't know someone in RL, you shouldn't befriend them on line.

[Numbersaremything]

Mo vitor = monitor!

[NoCauseRebel]

The thing about telling kids about the perverts etc out there though is that they only imagine that it happens to other people and are IMO less likely to take those kinds of threats seriously. TBH, the whole social media thing isn’t dissimilar to kids smoking when we were teenagers, and it’s an almost impossible situation to get round.

In my DS’ case, he actually asked if he could have instagram and I said no. But he set it up anyway without my consent or knowledge and then landed himself in hot water because he encountered some bullying from other kids online and because he’d set the account up in secret he couldn’t tell me it was going on. It was a hard lesson for him to learn.

I wouldn’t remove phone or internet but I would very much tell her that you know about the account (how did you find out btw?) and that is a good indication that she clearly isn’t as hidden as she thinks she is online. And that these age restrictions are there for a reason.

[NoCauseRebel]

And tbh, there are plenty of adults who are pretty clueless wrt internet safety. You need look no further than mn to see the amount of idiots who e.g. give money to online strangers because they’ve sold them a sob story, and even some who have met up with others in rl who have turned out to be trolls.

[FishCanFly]

Create a fake account and give her a scare

[BiBabbles]

It's not unreasonable to not be sure on things like this. Personally, I think education is important, but can only ever go so far and that environmental controls that make the risky things harder to do will do a lot more. Most have done things that we've been well educated would be bad for us that we probably wouldn't if the bad things weren't so easily available.

My oldest had some internet trouble when he was 13. He did it all on a laptop when in the same room as me or his father. We thought the talks, being open about everything including the horrors of the internet, setting ground rules, being there and some basic blocks were enough, certainly better than the no supervision my DH and I had from our parents. They weren't enough though. When we asked DS why even though he himself said some of the stuff he saw over those few weeks he says himself was upsetting and disturbing, he said because it was so tempting and easy. He certainly seemed to feel like he should be able to handle whatever like an adult and it was all right there.

So, we had a lot more talks over the next few weeks and - at his request because of the temptation - we used ScreenTime to block the internet browser on his phone and removed a couple media apps and he can only use the internet browser here on the main computer that is attached to a TV (far less tempting to do when everyone can see it). It's been over a year and those are still in place. I've recently asked him and he still feels not yet ready for open access. I respect that. He now has a few internet apps we monitor (including Instagram which he asked for after taking a photography course), but we didn't really have any of the pushback or rebelling people say will happen even before that when all he had was essentially a feature/brick phone with some books on it. That may be his personality though.

I do not get the whole 'they can do it at school or friends' as a reason to make things easier to get within my own house. It reminds me of growing up where it was just expected for kids to drink and had the whole 'if they want to, they'll do it anyway" and thought they were being better and more modern parents by supplying and allowing kids to drink in their and their friends' homes when really without ease of access, there would have been a lot fewer kids who had drinking problems in that area. I'll never forget coming home to my sister (who did not live there) and her friends all absolutely shitfaced - they were 11ish. Most people I've met since I talk about this with think those parents ridiculous, but really, the lasting impact and mindset isn't much different to many with kids using internet-enabled devices.

We don't block off all waterways, but throwing weak/non-swimmers in at the deep end - while something we know happens - is still generally frowned upon as a shitty and sometimes traumatizing way of learning to swim. To me, that's what is happening with too many kids and young people on the internet which, as the video above says, doesn't have a shallow end. I'm all for education, but the idea that talking about it will ever be able to beat temptations, I just don't think that's realistic even with the most compliant kids.

[johnwinstonlennon]

I know this is not the point, but why on earth does a 12 year old wear a bikini?