To be thankful I dont have a teenager (olly stephens)

[dottypotter]

metro.co.uk/2022/06/21/olly-stephens-girl-who-lured-teen-to-death-said-im-so-excited-16865296/

This is scary, do those of you with teenagers worry about social media? Glad I dont have to worry. Despicable that the social media companies arent doing more to protect people? Parents are also paying for phones and have no idea whats going on?

How do you deal with all this? Do you think the age should also be raised to use it?

This makes me so sad.

you cant beleive it can happen really can you?

I agree, it is the stuff of nightmares. Beyond comprehension really.very hard to read about it.

I feel so incredibly sorry for his family and friends, wish there was a campaign to join or something… Surely something has to change, the social media companies can’t carry on turning a blind eye and getting away with it. There have been so many high profile cases now, how many more kids have to be exposed to this stuff, how Many more will have to die before there is some real action p? And it’s not just the boy who was murdered, it is the ruined lives of those kids who have been influenced to do this awful stuff - if they couldn’t access horrible material online so easily they might just have been “regular” nasty bullies, instead of their minds being so immersed in darkness that they became murderers.

I am scared for my daughter growing up, it seems all too easy for kids to lose themselves in an online world that bleeds back into real life with disastrous outcomes.

They ought to raise the age and also carry out checks i think at the moment you can join up to Fb at 13, there isnt even any checks done on your age.

Youd think Mark Zuckerberg would care about children etc wouldnt you?

Awful. Not really the social media companies' fault though, I think. If this murder was planned over the phone I doubt anyone would say BT shared responsibility.

Definitely all to do with sm and Snapchat. He was threatened over Snapchat. Pictures of knives were posted on sm and not flagged up.

Watch Panorama a social media murder.

I watched this last week it was horrifying. I'm glad my children grew up before all this started. No wonder so many youngsters have mental health problems. I fear for my grandchildren.

I agree - it’s tragic
but i think Snapchat / social media is not the cause - it’s the vehicle for communication-
if it wasn’t that way it would be another way to bully / intimidate and violence to happen

however I DO blame social media for rise in body dysmorphia, dissatisfaction and eating disorder psychopathology

Tbh I watched the documentary and was surprised that the parents were not taking more responsibility for not checking their childs phone and understanding what their son was involved in.

Social media is just the vehicle for the hate, not the cause.

Why should social media parent children?

If a 13 year old watches a 18 rated film on DVD who is to blame?

You can see that all the 13 years kids who had a nice safe life where playing gangsters over social media. But where were the parents intervening before it got to the point of a boy being stab?

People need to stop passing blame onto social media for their failure to parent teenagers. The internet is not as healthy place and needs monitoring and censoring for children at all times.

How do you check Snapchat though? Isn’t the whole idea that the messages/images disappear as soon as they are read?
we have an agreement with my 13 year old that we can check his phone - but Snapchat defeats me. Any tips?

And no OP, yanbu. I am finding it nothing short of terrifying trying to parent in the digital age.

They probably didn't know how to dont they disappear anyway.

You never mentioned the murderers parents weren't checking their phones also and didn't know their sons were bullying people and posting pics of knives.

Isn't the answer just a hard no on Snapchat? If you can't check it, it isn't suitable for a 13 year old

That was intended for PP, not blaming Olly. His death is so tragic, his poor family.

Anyone can open a fb account no proof needed. They could do more but don't.

I worry about social media all of the time.
There are often ‘challenges’ going around that dare viewers to self harm or take sexy photos and things and it’s honestly awful.

This story is so sad but things like this has been happening years before social media existed.
Many boys and girls have been killed because a girl has lured them into a trap.

Weird threat title. Millions of people around the world have teenagers that this doesn’t happen to.

Are schools tackling this or fostering it?

I think it's quite extreme to be thankful you'll never have children/grandchildren/nieces or nephews in case this happens. It's like saying "I'm so glad I'll never travel in a car/train/plane. Have you seen that crash that happened?" Or "I'm so thankful I'll never walk down a pavement. Someone got knocked down by a car recently"

I thank my lucky stars, every day, for my teenagers.

I think (/hope) future generations will look at how we raise our kids and their access to social media and think wtaf! There will be a watershed at some point…

I agree with this- a bit like the way we look back on parents smoking in the car with their children unrestrained in the back etc and think "how could they not have got it?"

That case is so sad, that poor boy.

My ds is 13. He’s not allowed Snapchat or Tik Tok. He has WhatsApp to keep in touch with his friends and family, and I check his messages every night.
Time and time again on this forum I see parents sneering at other parents for checking their kids phones. Saying
“you are invading their privacy “
”oh luckily I can trust my kids”
”in our house we talk to each other”

I just think yeah.. whatever…

I don't think social media is just a vehicle for commuication though - it's a way of gaining popularity and making an impact, and can develop into a mass hysteria of the very worst kind - in the same way that people in a crowd will do dreadful things that they wouldn't when alone, because a sort of "hive mind" takes over, social media can initiate and encourage appalling behaviour in people (not just children) that they wouldn't even consider otherwise.

Without other people suggesting (possibly even not seriously) this sort of horrible assault would it even have occurred to these tow boys? Would this girl have got caught up in it?

Social media normalises this sort of extreme behaviour. Sadly I can't see us getting rid of social media altogether, but there should be much more stringent controls over both the content and who can access it.

I have 2 teens, neither really use social media in the way most teens do, both are on the autistic spectrum, dd1 uses some social media but spends more time on Twitter following political crap then she does socialising. She has a group of friends who is group chat on WhatsApp or thy video call. Dd2 doesn’t use social media at all (she more severely autistic).

I don’t think social media is too blame, yes social media made it easier for these teens to plan and bring their plan together but I’m sure without it they would have found another way. It’s pretty rare that something like this happens but bullying does happen a lot and there are many suicides that may not have happened if it wasn’t for bullying and the sharing of videos/photos on social media.

Glad I dont have to worry

What a strange thread. Your gloating that something doesn't affect you?

You sound like a journo anyway.

So tragic.

I’m often so glad my dds were teens before everyone had phones and SM. There’s the porn thing too - boys expecting girls to behave like porn ‘stars’. I do worry for Gdds, still only little.

Sexism that simply wouldn’t be tolerated nowadays was rife when I was a teen/early 20s, but it often seems to me now that we’ve merely exchanged Horrible Things A&B for Horrible Things C&D.