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?

Parents are saying they do random invasions of privacy

What people and their children need to understand is that at lot of what is online and on phones is not truly private. It can so easily become public. So you and your D.C. should not put anything out they could not share.

I don’t go through my children’s phones. I might change my mind if I had any reason to suspect. My mum always read my diary if she found it and I found that a huge invasion of privacy.

Moving on from the idea of online stuff being not truly private and acknowledging this, moreover, I would not want my D.C. to be ashamed of anything. I aim to foster an environment where they can tell me about anything that concerns them. Checking through phones is not about being a strict disciplinarian it is about open discussion, honesty and a concern that they receive nothing untoward on them.

So when your teen kills themselves over an issue you could have resolved had you watched their phone/laptop messages you can console yourself that you respected their privacy. By all means make it clear you are monitoring them - it is then another indirect way of them letting you know they are in trouble without worrying about how to bring it up - and it gives them a "let out" if the information involves their friends.

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
Parents choosing to have a policy of openness about devices isn't policing everything and your argument of 'you can't police everything so don't bother at all' makes no sense.

Parents choosing to exercise parental responsibility regards devices their children use based on them knowing their child does promote more online safety than deciding grooming and online safeguarding issues couldn't happen to people like us.

The first group accept that safeguarding issues can affect every child, including theirs. The second group have decided that safeguarding issues wouldn't affect children like theirs because it's only the sort of thing that affects other people's children.

Checking through phones is not about being a strict disciplinarian it is about open discussion, honesty and a concern that they receive nothing untoward on them.
This, but according to some posters parents looking at their children's devices as part of a healthy, open dialogue is needs to be spoken of in hyperbole of invading privacy and is tantamount to trampling all over their child's human right to get up to whatever they want online and access content or build relationships that they may not have the maturity to realise arent healthy.

The 'it couldn't happen here / to people like us' is a naïve or arrogant view.

So when your teen kills themselves over an issue you could have resolved had you watched their phone/laptop messages

There you go, thinking your kid is safer than mine because you do watch your kids communications.

By all means make it clear you are monitoring them - it is then another indirect way of them letting you know they are in trouble without worrying about how to bring it up

Yes, because basic behavioural science tells us that people who know they are under surveillance are less likely to volunteer information. They just wait and see if the watcher will notice it and then confront them on it. I don’t see this as an advantage like you do. Surveillance breeds secrecy.

Lola Exactly. And when they want to join social media sites I always say, tell us because we'll go through the privacy settings with them to make sure they are happy with what they set up and they aren't bothered by trolls or worse.

Lola
I’m in a third group. People who know these things can happen to any child but think that surveillance of their phones is an unnecessary tool that provides no lowering of risk compared to utilising coaching and support tools instead.

because basic behavioural science tells us that people who know they are under surveillance are less likely to volunteer information.

But if the sharing information is consensual they are not under surveillance. If they value your support and your opinion they will ask for it. Only today my teen was asking my advice of what to say in a text.

when they want to join social media sites I always say, tell us because we'll go through the privacy settings with them

That is a great example of coaching and support.

Reading diaries and checking a phone is not really the same thing.

A diary is a tool for recording thoughts, feeling, reflections etc.
I would not read my child's diary, unless they shared it with me.

However, with a phone, it is a 2 way communication device. On one end you have a child, on the other end... Who knows?

I stand by the case that checking your child's phone, is the same thing as asking your child who they're going to the cinema with on Saturday. And if they reply with a name i am not familiar with. I will ask "who's that?/how do you know them?/when are you going?" Etc.

I am not going through their WhatsApp messages with a fine tooth comb or checking their insta feed for a full 50 minutes checking each and every follower etc

But, if for some reason we were looking at photos on their phone, for fun, like 'oh show me the photos from that netball match the other week, you know when you all did the silly pose" and all of a sudden the child got shifty or made to grab the phone or something like that. Then I'd be concerned.

But if the sharing information is consensual they are not under surveillance. If they value your support and your opinion they will ask for it. Only today my teen was asking my advice of what to say in a text.

Yes very very. This is similar to what I do. What other parents are saying is not consensual sharing of information. It’s not the teen coming to them to ask advice on a text. It’s parents randomly checking texts, messages, posts already sent and received regardless of whether the teen consents. It’s usually a condition of having the phone that the parent can then go through it and read whatever they want, whenever they want. So, it’s under duress, and consent under duress is not consent.

To back up @PlanDeRaccordement, nearly every phone issue our dc have brought to us, irresponsible parents that we are, has involved dc with supposedly more responsible parents that check phones as standard.

Most were minor issues, a few have been major, one later involved police charges. My dc wasn't involved, just the one that realised another dc was at risk and brought it to the attention of us and school. Almost as though they actually understood the risks and were confident enough to raise the problem. Rather than the dc that understood they needed to hide phone activity from their parents. Stranger still, the only calls from school have been to inform us of the mature approach taken in a handful of incidents.

I'm not saying there aren't exceptions where checking is sensible and the least harmful route, but lets drop the pretence that not doing so as standard is somehow irresponsible or a safeguarding risk.

Plus fwiw, I can think of dozens of occasions where my dc have inadvertently told me about dc dodging their parents phone snooping. Nothing serious, eg showing me a photo of a friend's new dog on an Instagram account the dc supposedly doesn't have, or showing me a funny message sent at 2am from a dc with parents that remove screens at bedtime. Possibly parents like some pps, smugly judging those of us with a different, open and educational approach as being irresponsible.

But Plan, the idea the phone is not private was established years ago when mine got their phone. It charges downstairs, I'll tell them if they've got a text and I hear it go. I might read it or go through it just as I share an apple account with my DH and we both message from it. Texts and emails generally aren't really considered that private in our house, we all discuss them.

Veryvery,
Texts, emails default to private for us. The key though with both your family and mine is that the same rules apply equally to both parents and teens.

Possibly parents like some pps, smugly judging those of us with a different, open and educational approach as being irresponsible.
I think most parents on this thread have advocated a reasonable middle ground where they have parental responsibility and reserve the right to monitor device use without being this straw man police state caricature being drawn up by others.

Offline very few parents would say one day their child has to be driven to friends' houses where the parents know each other, the children have to be supervised, the child doesn't walk places alone to go to town alone, and then jump to saying it's fine for their child to travel round the region, meet up with who they like and be horrified at the idea of checking who their child is with because they have a right to privacy. Few would say 'off you go' and then say 'but my child isn't the type of child to get into difficulties... They get good grades don't you know'. Few would say 'i let my child chat and meet up with anyone, after all they're not the type of girl who'd get groomed. They're the wrong demographic'.

Most would understandably say that the amount of supervision decreases as the child gets older but the starting point isn't allowing a child to wander where they like with who they like.

Yet when it comes to phones and the internet some seem to think it's totally fine to give their child access to whatever, whenever whilst being horrified at the idea of monitoring their child's use.

That has been my experience too trainspottingwelsh
Thank you for sharing yours and writing it so well. :)

Texts, emails default to private for us

Thing is they are not really. They can be monitored. It is good online hygiene not to treat these type of communications as truly private. It sets up a good attitude for the future. Confidential communications require much greater security.

Lola
It’s not a middle ground if you “reserve the right to monitor”! Parents rights end where the teens right to privacy begin. There is no right to monitor.

And for someone complaining about strawmen, you really know how to build them! The real world doesn’t have an off switch.

When I say they can be monitored, I mean by outside agencies, that is other than parents.

If people acknowledge the lack of privacy they are less likely to write stuff they would regret. The old 'walls have ears' idea. Don't say stuff you might be ashamed of.

Very very,
Private between each other. Of course it is a given they are monitored by government agencies and susceptible to hackers. You do know it’s AI doing the monitoring? And that a human agent only looks if a message trips an algorithm?

Plan Yes, I do ! However, aiming to not say anything you'd regret online or through text is a really good way to live your life. Texts and emails can easily be forwarded on. It's also easy for people to slip up for example on monitored works accounts if they are used to treating texts and online commutations as completely private.

I agree very very. And, trust me, it was one of the first internet safety lessons we taught our DCs. We even showed them case histories of young people aged 20 being sacked from their job and blacklisted out of their budding career for a very very bad (think homophobic, or racist) tweet as an immature 14yr old. They know that we don’t leave electronic footprints, but electronic tattoos that last for life.

Plan, so why all the talk of invasion of privacy regarding checking phones when you acknowledge texts and online communications are not fantastically private platforms by their very nature?

I think you're missing the middle ground @LolaSmiles. Many of us raise our dc to be able to do those things gradually, we didn't wait till they needed to rapidly learn responsibility to avoid being left behind by peers. And then because they had no experience of independence, supervise them constantly because a mistake would be too risky at that stage. We introduced online safety in the same way as anything else.

Long before the eldest had their own brick for texts, I expected, and allowed an age appropriate level of independence, which came with responsibility and in an environment where we could provide a safety net if they screwed up. If I'd waited till 13 to allow some independence, perhaps I'd feel the same about phones. In fact the first phone they had private access to was an old iPhone with tracking when I first let them hack together unaccompanied. If I could trust them to follow the rules for riding and behave sensibly with two ponies, I certainly wasn't going to check to see if they'd stopped off and used the phone to get hidden social media accounts like some of their more supervised primary age friends had.

My parenting philosophy has never been to supervise like fuck and then check up on them when forced to allow some independence, I wasn't going to introduce that method for phones.

plan not at all, and in the real world I don't think we're that unusual, much as some people may prefer to think it is just luck to have navigated most of the teen years without checking.