I think it's unacceptable to go through a teenagers phone

[orangedod]

Am I the only one? I hope I'm not the only one.

I see so many threads and hear so many mums talking about going through teenagers phones and I really disagree with it.

I completely understand about keeping them safe but to me it seems like a major invasion of privacy. I know full well that my mum never went through mine and there was a massive trust there.

What's everyone's stance on this? Am I alone in my opinion?

Well, again, clearly when I work in a school and the safeguarding lead, who takes advice from official/expert bodies says check their activities... Obviously I know nothing and you're doing the right thing by not looking. Well done. You know better than the people that deal with the problem every day.

@PlanDeRaccordement

You keep using the word snoop. Which implies that people are doing this behind the kid's backs.... Not as part of open and honest conversations....

“experts”

I mean it’s also the advice of the NSPCC, but okay...

The whole attitude of ‘my daughter Isn’t the type to be targeted and inneundos to the type of girls targeted’ smacks of victim blaming and echos the opinion people have that rape victims were asking for it or to blame in some way,

Plus your child being ‘middle class, studious and well behaved’ isn’t a magic shield. They might not come across nefarious types on a typical basis but all it takes is for some other child at thier school to be targeted and then to say to your child they get paid to carry parcels of drugs or to encourage your child to come to a party etc. The rich kids are the ones that have the money to buy drugs so dealers need kids to be in with that crowd of rich, privately educated kids to deal for them. Don’t think that the underworld only targets poor, council estate Kids.

SmileEachDay but we don't need experts, or training from professional bodies. What really matters is anecdote based on snobby classist undertones.

Could you imagine if we translated some of these attitudes into school safeguarding?

"Yes I overheard something in the corridor about Sarah's boyfriend being quite a bit older, but she's such a nice girl and has square friends so nothing to see there". (Sarah's new boyfriend is a 17 year old boy who has been recruited to groom girls for CSE)

"Daniel seems a bit withdrawn of late and seems to have distanced himself from some of his friends, but he has middle class parents and good grades so there couldn't possibly be anything going on there". (Daniel took some weed at a party and has ended up being roped into county lines by blackmail)

01
I am using snoop because PPs didn’t like the word police. Also because it reminds me of the U.K. snooper law that allows the U.K. government to monitor every residents online activity, whenever they want and keep a 12month record of it. Which is also supposed to be for your own safety funnily enough.

Whatever you call it, it is still looking through your child’s phone whenever you feel like it regardless of whether or not your child consents.

Open and honest conversations would not require a parent to do such a thing. Parents do it because they feel the child is a) not honest or b) not open in their conversations. They feel a need to verify if the child is telling the truth and following their rules.

Open and honest conversations would not require a parent to do such a thing. Parents do it because they feel the child is a) not honest or b) not open in their conversations. They feel a need to verify if the child is telling the truth and following their rules

No. Parents/carers do this because they know teens are not always able to identify danger until it’s far too late.

Quite, Lola

@plan
Noone is a perfect parent and there is always the chance they won't tell you. Or that they won't think to tell you until things have gone too far. Social interactions are complex, especially online. Teenagers get stuff wrong, sometimes they are naieve. no amount of openness and honesty will prevent that.

01
With the greatest respect, school functionaries often come up with ideas in teen parenting that are useless in real life. Because they’re not the parents who have to actually try and put these ideas into practice. Schools are also very authoritarian in their approach which is not ideal when you have a teenager not a young child.

Trawling through my teens’ hours and hours of texts, messages, chats, posts, etc for signs of untoward things is a needle in a haystack mission. Every hour spent doing that is also an hour less I have to personally interact with them and facilitate awareness of their physical and mental states.

I’d rather teach my teens what untoward things to watch out for and entrust them with the task to report back to me if they see anything that remotely resembles them. Then they can share it with me and get guidance and advice. Those are open and honest communications. These are teenagers, they are ready for some bits of responsibility and learn better through coaching and support rather than a (im)perfectly controlled and restricted environment.

Plan

School functionaries?? I’m unsure what this means.

Is your experience of teens limited to your own family?

Yes Dumbie,
No one is a perfect parent and as there is risk that a teen may not notice something they should, that same risk exists for parents who are scrolling through things checking randomly. Because no parent is perfect. Parents can miss things just as easily, especially since they lack the context that goes along with the online communications. And it’s physically impossible to check every text, every message, every post, all the time.

No matter how much snooping you do or don’t do, these things can still happen to any kid. Yours or mine.

plan
Nobody is saying spend hours going through every element of a teen's device. You're deliberately creating a straw man to attack, presumably because it's much better to try and argue you're against some sort of parental police state where parents spend hours invading privacy than it is to accept that isn't what people are saying.

The examples of school safeguarding aren't about schools telling people how to parent. It's pointing out the ridiculous nature of claims on this thread that their children are too nice / middle class / get too good grades / have square friends / get on with us as parents too well to be affected by online issue sand grooming, and worse that their child isn't the right demographic for groomers because they're not the 'type of girl' groomers go for.
It's hard to establish whether it's smug clasissm or genuine cluelessness with regards to safeguarding.

The first rule of safeguarding is it could happen to any child, anywhere (not as some posters on here think, happens to that type of girl from a certain demographic).

Smile,
When it comes to knowing teenagers, it’s depth that matters more than breadth. Living with several 24/7 from birth to adulthood gives more insight imho than interacting with 200+ superficially during school hours.

@plan

You can concurrently build trust and openness and look at your teens online activity. It's not one or the other.

Smile,
When it comes to knowing teenagers, it’s depth that matters more than breadth. Living with several 24/7 from birth to adulthood gives more insight imho than interacting with 200+ superficially during school hours

Except you’re wrong. You know your teenagers really well. (Although actually most parents say that and it doesn’t always protect them). I’ve know many hundreds of teens “superficially” as their teacher (and STILL had them occasionally disclose things their parents didn’t know). I’ve known a hundred odd teens really well as the DSLO and every single one of them has disclosed stuff.

Don’t discount schools with such scorn.

Lola
You prove my point. Unless a parent can police everything thoroughly, it is virtually useless from a safeguarding standpoint. So why invade privacy for the illusion that it makes a child safer?

plan
Nobody is saying the parenting relationship and school ones are the same. Again, you're building more straw men.

When it comes to commenting on safeguarding trends then the people who are trained in safeguarding and have a range of experience in that area are better placed to comment than those who only have their own children and think that grooming only affects certain types of girls from particular demographics, or that good grades and a middle class family rules a child out of issues linked to safeguarding.

Smile,
Yet you are discounting parents with scorn. Saying you’re an expert and that I’m “wrong” and telling me how to parent my teens. Sorry, but I am the one with the responsibility, not you. Your advice is noted. Thank you for your concern.

You prove my point. Unless a parent can police everything thoroughly, it is virtually useless from a safeguarding standpoint. So why invade privacy for the illusion that it makes a child safer?

Nobody is saying parents have to police everything!

better placed to comment than those who only have their own children and think that grooming only affects certain types of girls from particular demographics, or that good grades and a middle class family rules a child out of issues linked to safeguarding

Well that’s not me because I’ve said repeatedly it can happen to any child.

Disagree. My work had a training day and one of the survivors of grooming in Rochdale spoke. She was totally incredible and urged parents to look at their childrens phones if they felt something was wrong. So I do.

Smile,
Yet you are discounting parents with scorn. Saying you’re an expert and that I’m “wrong” and telling me how to parent my teens. Sorry, but I am the one with the responsibility, not you. Your advice is noted. Thank you for your concern

You are wrong to think that knowing a couple of teens in depth is better than the experience safeguarding professionals have in terms of understanding risks like this.

There’s no scorn - you’re free to ignore advice, but don’t generalise your specific experience to other families.

100% disagree. Looking through my 12yr olds phone was how I found out she was being bullied by her "friends" she never told me and I thought we had a fantastic open relationship.

Nobody is saying parents have to police everything!

I know that. I did not say that. Parents are saying they do random invasions of privacy when the whim takes them and they wrongly think this improves their child’s safety. It doesn’t. It’s a wild stab in the dark and a hope you might find something. It’s no different thinking from those saying my kids are safer than yours because middle class or I drive them to/from school, or I control all their friends, or they’re too bookish.

You’re literally saying your kids are safer because you randomly snoop on their phones. Logically, they can’t be because you cannot monitor everything. You are skipping so much, a lot could just be going on that you never see. You also are encouraging them to hide things from you because privacy is a basic human right that all humans, especially teens, crave. This reduces your chances of actual honest and open communications.