To wholeheartedly agree with Brianna Ghey’s mother

[Moonpig82]

I spotted this article this morning. We personally do not allow Tik Tok, Insta, Facebook, Snapchat. For our eldest who has just got a phone when starting Year 7. However we have succumbed to whatsapp.

What are people’s thoughts? How can we ‘police’ our children’s phones?

Or AIBU and there is no policing for social media? I know my Year 7 child’s friends do have these apps. Not all of them though.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68193103

“This. Schools are a huge part of the problem by insisting on tech. Even in reception their reading homework is to be done on a tablet.”

Im shocked by this tbh- we’ve never had reading books on a tablet in primary. We do have things like rocks stars but they don’t need a phone for that as can be done on the main computer.

I work in tech, but heavily intersecting with other industries (my DH is the tech fanatic and I’m more the creative industries one) and this is well known in the industry. We and many others heavily restrict access to devices, despite working on the ‘cutting edge’ of the technology sector. People are often surprised to find out the boundaries we have with technology for our children, but a lot comes from understanding the development and design of certain technology and how it could be misused or impact young brains differently. Equally, there’s a level of logic with overuse or type of use. If a baby is distracted by television while you change the nappy, it takes away from the parent-child engagement and also from the baby processing sensory things and putting that into language (eg. “I’m sorry, little one, was that wipe a bit cold?”).

For older children, it’s quite scary for parents to think about what they can access. It’s not a new issue - we had pro-anorexia sites and very dark material online in my generation - but the huge accessibility and the fact access is often alone in the teen’s bedroom is a new issue. We’ve already decided on basic phones without internet as the first phone and I don’t think I’ll rethink that until much older. We also have a family rule that all technology in the house can be checked by parents and will have limits and parental controls on.

Even things like Google weren’t designed for children - for example, the connotation of certain phrases that might sound funny or literal to a child, but to an adult may have a different meaning.

It’s very possible to restrict use in the majority of cases, but it’s not always easy and it can be very hard when those rules aren’t in place from early on. We saw plenty of post COVID mumsnet posts asking for help reducing screen time as rules had become lax, going back from that point is tough, but imo it’s one of the best things you can do for your children’s development.

Edit to add: I agree too much technology in schools is an issue, even just down to less ability to memorise facts and less sensory input.

I’m going to get flamed for this but I think, judging by Brianna’s social media she too was accessing material that was completely inappropriate. The comments about suicide, bimbofication, drugs, sugar daddies. I don’t know what the solution is.

Exactly. I just couldn’t do it.

There need to be legislation against social media for the under 18s. The only way to tackle this is from the top. People won’t stop on their own.

She is deeply disturbed but how did she become that way?

Did I read she has a diagnosis of conduct disorder, thats normally given pre 18 because you cant diagnose PD prior to 18, later she will probably be diagnosed with anti social PD or EUPD.

Most, if not all actually, of the adults and children with those diagnoses I have worked with have had a number of childhood ACES. If you add to that her exposure to whatever/who knows what, it spirals. She will have caused harm (well she did already) no matter.

I don’t agree with you at all. I use TikTok and I’ve never seen anything remotely sinister because I dint go looking for it…..and neither does my daughter.

Parents need to be a bit more ready to be disliked by their kids in the name of their own safety.

And if you don't have a main computer(most families don't anymore, even laptops are becoming slightly obsolete unless people need them anyway for work)? Or you have 3 kids that want to practice because the school offers awards and prizes? Or one had TTR one has reading eggs and one has to research and make a powerpoint/project about the romans.

The internet has nothing to do with the fact the killer girl has psychopathy and no empathy. It might have given her a source of ideas and inspiration for doing bad things but the underlying psychology was already there social media or not. Cutting access to the modern world is unfair to those children who have good psychology.

So you've never seen anything where women are scantily dressed, filtered, diet and weight loss focused?

You might not call that sinister in the way of blood and gore but for very young minds it draws them into a world they often dont understand and navigate.

100% ban on Smart Phone for under 18's. I think it is more damaging than Alcohol and cigarettes. Couple this with restricted use of laptop's at home.

Really should have happened already.

Disregarding all the horrendous stuff online, just the addiction to the phone is a huge worry.

I know it will be difficult, but I think it needs to happen. After all, it has only been widely available for 10 to 15 years.

From listening to the podcast, though, the internet enabled her to intensify these interests. What appears to have started off as an interest in horror films has led her, by way of algorithms, to firstly likeminded people, and then to people with darker tastes. This then led to her finding out how to use TOR browsers to access the dark web, and watch livestreams of torture.

We have all seen how social media shows us more and more of what we show an interest in, whether it's as innocuous as cleaning tips or very harmful like radicalisation or eating disorder content. It's insidious.

Thing is, the technology to monitor and restrict certain things is already available - it's either ineffective or easy to work around.
Kids aren't stupid. They know how to access their way around blocks and controls. It's very easy to lie about your year of birth to access age restricted content.
My 15 year old has a password on her iPhone, so I have to type in a password before she can download any apps or make any in-app payments. But a lot of platforms have Web based versions too, so she could just use those if she wanted to.
I can set to be notified if she logs in to certain accounts, so she can just set up a new one. I can access her emails, so she can easily set up a new one.

And talking about the dark web is irrelevant; most kids aren't accessing that. There's plenty of dangerous content available on the mainstream Internet.

Also how do you protect a child(16) or very young adult(18) once they're out of your house and relax the rules and they have full access to everything and anything with very little understanding of how it works or what the dangers really are? How will they know when to ask for help and support? How will they know when to stop? How will they know what the limits are? If they fuck up will they speak up or consider it their fault and internalise their shame and pain? Will they be vulnerable to blackmail and pressure? Will they be vulnerable to skewed views and everyone does it because it's what they're shown?

Yes. If an adult had introduced this material to a child it would be called grooming. Some of these children are being exposed to very adult material

id there was a ban of all u16s using sm tomorrow (and everyone stuck to it), I would support it in a heartbeat.

that is not realistic and until it, I’m not going to commit my child to the social wilderness. This is just reality, and all those piously saying they don’t sgreee with sm for their children, either don’t have teenagers or their teenagers aren’t socially active.

instead, parents (imo) need to limit screen time and content…that’s achievable. Not banning.

Teens like to be sneaky but if your relationship is good they will be able to hide very little from you

I've encountered, or even had to sort out a mess that DD's teen friends got into because they couldn't tell their parents the truth about their problems, which had nothing to do with anything on SM. Their parents thought they had good relationships with their DDs. Which went with frequently checking their phones, of course, like "all responsible parents should".

Imagine being a gay kid in a family & religion that thinks being gay is evil and a school culture that has intolerance. And you have no access to internet. Where do you get support from then?

Yeah, kids never did anything bad before SM. Except in my family . Got up to all sorts of wild norty things in 1930s-1970s.

So a 16 yo can join the Army or become a parent but can't have a phone? Brilliant!

What happens at 18 when the floodgates open? Are they magically safe , but not at 17 and 11 months and 30 days?

I dont think the internet made her that way. There are millions of teenagers with access to the internet and I don’t think ive ever heard a case of kids being so sick and evil as Brianna’s killers were in decades.

I was referring to sinister content….ie torture etc, and no, I haven’t seen anything like that.

I don’t count what you are talking about as sinister, no….but very unhealthy. I dint see much if it, as I dint interact with those sort of videos, but my daughter will see more (she’s nearly 14), but thankfully she mainly uses am for chatting with her mates.

No Im not saying its sinister either, but its inappropriate and as you say unhealthy, in fact thats an understatement.

I don't think anyone has suggested pretending social media doesn't exist and never talking about it, never educating them and never relaxing certain boundaries as they get older and prove themselves competent.

I see it as the same approach I take to road safety, swimming and drug/alcohol use. No, I can't ensure that my adult son and daughter never get in a car crash, get pissed or drown, but I can do everything in my power to educate them.

Sinister content has been online from day 1. Rotten.com and AOL chatrooms anyone?

Cazpar

Who ever wrote that Spectator article should actually look up what ADHD is

ADHD might be called Attention Deficit HyperActivity Disorder but it’s correct name should be DD or Dopamine Deficiency.

The influx of people being diagnosed aren’t children and teens but older adults, especially women who because of how ADHD presents in females, we were missed when we were children.

If anything it was lockdowns which I think caused undiagnosed women to suddenly stop coping
The mask they had worn for years that kept them in a routine and trying to look normal in front of their colleagues fell and sitting behind a desk at home trying to focus without outside influences to keep them on track became incredibly hard.

Trying to link smartphone use with the rise in ADHD is akin to saying if everyone with bowel cancer has a smartphone then smartphone usage gives you bowel cancer.

There hasn’t been a rise in the number of people with ADHD overall. ADHD has always been there but people just weren’t diagnosed for decades, didn’t know they had it and were left to struggle through life.
The rise in diagnosis is I would think directly linked to smartphone usage as it is people using a smartphone to look up symptoms or coming across videos of people talking about their ADHD and having the realisation that they too have it and then getting a diagnosis