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?

Smile and Lola don't be silly, while parents would never ever consider breaching the privacy of their children or showing any kind of preoccupation with their online activities, they definitely expect schools to observe, intervene and fix anything that might go wrong.

Princess
But these things apparently don't happen to nice children with good grades so surely there'd be nothing to report.

All schools in our area have had to do staff training in county lines, and some of those schools are in leafy areas with high performing students. Thanks to this thread I now know the police were wrong.

Sultana Begum - the young lady who was a “jihadi bride” was a very, very high performing student at a lovely school.

Is she the correct demographic to target or not?

I’m so confused.

Did anyone let criminals and predators know that nice kids are off limits? Seems like an essential campaign.

That would seem sensible.

Me too Smile.
It will be interesting if anyone cares to let us know whether she's the right type of girl from the right demographic.

It will also be interesting whether we'll get told there was no need for her parents to concern themselves with their child's online activity as it would have been such an invasion of her privacy and human rights to do such a horrible thing to her. It's only the real world that matters after all, such a high performing student couldn't possibly have been radicalised online.

Indeed. @PlanDeRaccordement and others - should Sultana Begum’s parents have been more aware of her extensive online activities?
(And they absolutely weren’t - it was a letter from the school raising concerns that was the first flag)

Her name is Shamima. I hope the reference to Sultana is an autocorrect.

Oops - sorry Cherry, you’re correct.

(Although I think one of the other girls who went was called Sultana?)

I can go through their phones. I have done so very rarely and their presence. I think that secret snooping is not ok.

YABU. If you're a parent doing it it's fine.

i work in child sexual abuse cases, i will always check my child's phone.

I agree that up to say 16 parents should look over their kids' devices periodically. A condition of having them should be access on request. Too much online bullying and grooming happens for phones to be a complete blind spot to parents.

I started using the internet at about 13 and my parents didn't check my usage (it was a new thing to have so they wouldn't have known to, to be fair) and I was talking to all sorts of older men on the PC and texting them. Thankfully you couldn't so easily send photos in those days. I ended up moving away to be with one a few years older at a very young age which fair buggered up my education until my 20s!

disagree - depending on age of teenager. My DS got his phone age 11 on condition we could look at it whenever we wanted. We just check for inappropriate websites (we do have parental controls but some things can get through) and cyber-bullying. I will continue to do this - with diminishing frequency - until he's about 14 I reckon. I try not to really read his messages, I kind of scan them for alarming content. I have seen stuff that I don't like but I don't pick him up on but would if he did it in real life in the house - like swearing - as I don't want him to feel like his privacy is totally invaded. I think it's negligent not to look at phones for young teenagers. Stuff going wrong online is a major cause of teenage depression, anxiety, poor body image and suicidal thoughts . . . . why would I not want to be aware of whether DS was exposed to damaging content or not.