To think parents should NOT let primary aged children on messaging/social media?

[SocialMediaPITA]

I'm a primary school teacher in year 6. I spend lots of time having to deal with pupils falling out with each other on messaging apps/social media outside of school hours. They then bring these issues into school the next day, and there are tears, tantrums and, on some occasions, fights. And staff have to give up lunch hours, break time and learning/lesson time to deal with the fall out. Children can't learn if they are brewing on what's happened the night before, eg falling out with their peers.

Why do parents let their children on social media? The min age for WhatsApp is 16 - it's 16 for a reason! Many primary aged children are not emotionally able to deal with issues via messaging - even as adults we can recognise that tone and body language can play a huge part in communicating - social media and messaging removes that important aspect and if we as adults can get it wrong, why do we expect children to be able to deal with it? It's affecting their mental health.

I've mopped too many tears this week and much of it can be avoided.

WhatsApp is 12 on Apple App Store so I’m assuming 16 is on android?

I found 6 months of WhatsApp in primary with very strict and careful monitoring and teaching dtds how to use it (all group chats banned - they, ime, cause 99% of the issues). We made dd1 wait to get WhatsApp and she was in secondary, playing catch up to learn appropriate use was hard.

monitoring is everything. That said, dd1 had an issue in Year 9 with a boy from school sharing hard core porn. I have to say, secondary school teachers were amazing. It was out of school hours but they totally took it on and dealt with it with the boy and his parents. I’m so so grateful DD’s school does see this as their responsibility to get involved.

I think this stuff happened before in years gone by but now there’s actual evidence so it’s harder to ignore. I do think many parents don’t monitor though and that is an issue.

Do you not wonder why fb is 13+ and WhatsApp is 16+ and why that might be? How can she be too young for a 13+ rated SM if you let her use a 16+ one?

I agree. I was very badly bullied the whole way through school and home was my safe place. It wouldn't be nowadays if SM was allowed to follow me home. I'm very worried about it. My eldest does game, but not online (so Minecraft but just playing in his own world) and when/if I allow online gaming I'll be locking down messaging for a very long time due to his vulnerability due to ASD/ASHD and I have no intention of allowing him anywhere near SM until at least the legal age.

I agree however I go a step further and say mobiles should not be given to any child at primary.

In my experience this all started long before we had even heard the word covid. Smartphones and devices have been creeping in younger and younger over the past decade so I really don't think covid can be blamed for this.

I know the senior teachers in my school have spent countless hours dealing with the fallout of social media.
Parents are very quick to come up the school regarding the device they handed their child.

Same here0

Agree !! Mine weren't and aren't allowed phones til y7

Roblox and Fortnite aren't suitable either as they are 13+. Why don't you just let your kids play in real life and be kids, it's better for their development? Presumably for an easier life for yourself? Kids are saturated with media consumption and online gaming and other lazy, dumbing stuff, and then parents say when the kids is 6 or 7, oh they don't play any more. No shit, they have no imagination, ability or interest, all destroyed by this media consumption since almost birth.

Do you not ever make your own decisions around parenting? I've let her watch a 12 film that was appropriate for her, but there may be a PG I wouldn't let her watch. All children are different and things aren't black and white. I don't have an issue with her phoning or messaging a friend (WhatsApp) but I do have an issue with her posting photos etc. for other people to judge.

Roblox is from 7 with automatic restrictions if under 13. My DD plays it sometimes. I don't let her play it for an easier life (not sure what is easier for me by her playing it?) I let her play it because it is fun. It doesn't mean she doesn't play in real life. She is almost 11 and still plays with her toys and has a great imagination.

I allowed DD to use my messenger in year 6 because we went into lockdown. So she could message her friends and they played online games together etc.
We still had grief though and we had to block one girl as she started to become very controlling of DD and when she wouldn’t do what she wanted, so started group chats calling her names. The whole thing was ridiculous and I can’t believe people can be bothered with the grief.
We went to a party when DD was in year 4 and the girl got an iPhone and the mum started complaining no one else hands phone for her to message people on.

I get why people don’t supervise or set up appropriate controls. It’s taken me and tech savvy DH ages to get it set up, and lots of fiddling around to make simple things work, as the Apple controls don’t interact well with the net nanny software. And every time we think it’s sorted, there’s some other problem to solve (eg suddenly an app she needs for school doesn’t work on the private VPN) which takes a frustrating evening of googling and trying different settings to sort out.

I took a hard line on phone use compared to other parents I know, including no web browser or WhatsApp at primary school age (just calling friends in her address book, texting and location finding, as she was walking to school by herself). But for secondary, where a phone is needed for the commute and because all social event arranging is done via WhatsApp, it’s much harder.

I could (but won’t, it would be damaging to her ability to do homework and contact her train friends) go down the no phone / dumb phone route. Or I could make my life much easier and just hand her a fully internet enabled smartphone and leave her to it. Actually supervising, putting in controls, debugging the resultant problems, keeping on top of who she’s in chats with etc is quite time consuming.

Then let her text a friend.

WhatsApp is 16+ because of group messaging and the potential for bullying, ability to delete messages to cover it up.
Sharing photos, videos is the main feature of WhatsApp so your reasoning is illogical.
One of the worst WhatsApp problems I've had to deal with this year was a child sharing porn videos (he'd been sent from older brother).

I can almost guarantee that if you let your child use WhatsApp in primary school they will be exposed to porn and cyberbullying. Maybe just as a bystanders rather than directly, but they will. If you're happy with that...

I don’t understand why WhatsApp is needed for them to text individual friends, if that’s all you’re letting them do?

For every parent saying their primary aged children are responsible and all has been ok on it, there are children that are not.

And it's specifically issues that are happening online, therefore outside of school, not being dealt with by parents themselves but instead passed to the school to deal with. Every week, sometimes more than that, we have parents tell us other children are bullying, name calling, arguing online, and then expect the staff to deal with the fall out. If parents are choosing to allow their children on social media underage, then surely they should take that responsibility on, not leave it to school?

If you suggest the child come off social media the parents insist that it's not their child that's the problem, but fail to see how allowing them underage access exposes them to just this kind of unhealthy interaction. Children this age are still learning how to communicate effectively and need to read body language and facial expressions to help them get it right. Messaging doesn't allow for that.

I wish the days that kids did play out after school could come back, it really did help their emotional development.

Yes. I have no issue with this particular app or the school asking the children to use their phones for school work. I was pointing out to the poster who said that kids didn’t need smart phones until they were 16 that that’s an unrealistic expectation.

I posted earlier on in your thread OP. I agree, I believe as a parent its my responsibility if I give my year 6 child access to these apps not the schools. My son has no apps, and he's not having them any time soon. I think it's unfair on teachers being left to deal with this during school time. I want my child to be learning in school, not having to wait so the teacher can sort out arguments from the night before.

He was playing fortnite with some dc from his class once, that turned in to a bit of a nightmare, where certain people were doing things to annoy him, kicking him off the game/ or making a loud explosion or something, not sure what really. He was getting upset so he came off it. I was cross, home is his safe place, and I feel once things start going wrong online, home doesn't feel so safe either. Technology can be great for young children, but it does need to be monitored by adults!

But the days of playing out won’t come back. Due to a few horrendous and well published events, there are perceived threats around every corner. Plus huge increase in traffic.

The world has moved on, and unfortunately it is geared towards tech. Like a previous poster, my eldest was allowed a phone for the last term of yr6 to get used to it and collect numbers of friends etc before moving off to secondary school. She was of an age where I could help her start to navigate the minefield of social media (WhatsApp) before yr 7.

I’m glad we did - we navigated some drama together, which has given her the tools of dealing with stuff going forwards. Also, secondary school seem to rely on the kids having online access on their phones for numerous things - school email, notifications, homework. Perhaps if schools weren’t relying on it, it would be easier to hold back.

At our primary school, the kids who had phones earlier (yr 3 or 4) where often from families where the parents weren’t together. It was initially at least a way of the child talking to whichever parent they weren’t with at the time.

From our limited experience, the kids that are going to cause drama, will cause drama however they can. Remove phones, and they’ll find another way.

I agree with you OP. My DD is in year one and there are 5 and 6 year olds with their own mobile phones, like it's a completely normal thing, to be fair they are mostly FaceTime-ing grandparents/cousins/close school friends or watching youtube kids but the fact that at such a young age they are being given such a device at all worries me. It's one thing using my phone to FaceTime a mate when one of them has been off sick and they miss each other when I'm sat next to her and can monitor the call, it's quite another for a child to have their very own iPhone.

If I could get away with giving DD a basic Nokia when the time comes she needs one then I would. It's such a minefield. Kids can be mean and I don't want her to be singled out, I know how that feels. But I will definitely be very firm on social media. No games consoles in rooms, laptops will be as locked down as possible. There are enough adults who can't handle it, never mind expecting kids to reign themselves in.

I will also be instilling the idea that she only give her number to the people she wants to have it. Obviously that doesn't stop others giving it out so I will also be stressing how you shouldn't just hand out other peoples numbers as well. When I think about how badly bullied at school I was and how much worse it would have been if they had had a number to contact me outside of school
as well I don't think getting her onboard with the idea that she can choose who she allows to contact her is a terrible idea.

Wow @MissDollyMix I can't believe a school would leave themselves open to encouraging pupils to break terms of service like that.

I am a year 6 TA and agree. I have spent most of this week trying to deal with an issue that occurred last weekend. Still not resolved as the girls refuse to accept responsibility for anything they have done. I also found out that a group of girls in my class saw me out shopping last weekend and took pictures of me and posted them on the class group chat. The girls told me themselves what they had done and had no concept that this was unacceptable behaviour. This is what happens when children are given technology that they are not mature enough to handle.

@FranticHare but having a phone to text and call parents is one thing - that I feel is acceptable use of a phone and you can use a bog standard phone for that. Allowing them access to WhatsApp or other social media and use it to create and carry on drama with it is another.

I wish I could say to parents, "you allowed access, so you deal with it!" In year 6 there are whole class groups and the behaviour from some on there is like it's a bun fight, everyone pitching in. As a teacher we don't allow children to play at break and lunch unsupervised and for good reason, because they need support when things go wrong. We deal with it then, I don't feel parents would like it if we handed them back an upset child telling them to sort it. But that's what a lot of parents are asking us to do, for choices parents are making.