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

Impressive interview with Esther Ghey on Laura K this morning. She talked about the violent content accessed by Brianna's murderers and also how access to pro-ana content exacerbated Brianna's mental health issues, she seems to have completely accepts her child's trans identity. Where does she think that identity came from? Children with fragile mental health, eating disorders, neurodiversities and so on are the most vulnerable to online gender ideology.

Personally think her idea is good but it’s just not workable, working in mental health, the number of times we were told people were depressed/stressed etc because of something someone had said on social media was unbelievable, it’s also constant once it starts, one of those inventions that maybe wasn’t good

I didn't have a smart phone much till I was mid teens and it was fine. However that's not the world our children are living in, to say that we coped is a complete false equivalence.

It's like how we have no ability to function in this country with snow or power cuts but countries that have no power regularly are set up for it

For various reasons I often use a non smartphone for extended periods but always end up back with one.

In the last week for example my bus ticket is cheaper bought via app, the bus times are only available via app, the bus stop it's self just has a qr code. My parking is paid via app. To watch TV I had to sign in via the app on my phone to register my account.
Somethings you can do via phone but often you need to Google a number first which you can't do without Internet

My own family barely spoke to me last time because they communicate via groups on WhatsApp

I work in digital inclusion for the elderly who will emphatically tell you the world is set up for smart phones

I think most people would agree, but as others have said, the genie is out of the bottle and can't be put back in. Kids are tech savvy - way more than their parents in the main - and if they want to access something, one way or another, they will.

Not do I think that blaming social media is the answer - there has always been a tendency to look for something to blame when (especially) a child does something particularly horrific. Today it is social media. There was the same "moral panic" when watching a specific horror film was blamed for the actions of Jamie Bulgers killers - except that they hadn't actually seen the film in question! In the past it was the influence of devils and witches.

I am the last person to defend social media - I think it is way out of control, and I'm the one that has WhatApp and nothing more. I once wondered how you found the dark web, but still haven't got a clue. But there have always been "exceptional" cases of children who kill horrifically. The "fascination" is preceisly because they are rare cases, and in all there has been a moral panic around what caused it. But in the end, there is only one explanation. We like to think of children as innocent, naive and "pure". But they are adults in training, with all the same temptations, foibles and drives. Adults who deliberately kill do so because the want to. Children who deliberately kill also do so because they want to. There may be other factors at play - mental illness, environment etc. But in the end it comes down to having made a decision to kill because they want to. And we seek answers because we cannot accept that simple fact.

I’m in a FB group which is mostly Americans. A lot of parent are moving to bark phones which don’t have access to social media and have far superior parental controls and auto flag ups of certain words & phrases.

Getting these available in the uk would be a start.

You aren’t going to get the horse back in the stable though. It bolted when we were teens. I didn’t have a smart phone as they weren’t invented yet and I was on all the pro-ana sites getting myself into a pickle.

Well I didnt like to bring that into this thread but this is exactly right. I would argue that her child was exposed to dangerous and damaging content which led them to deal with their ASD and MH issues by considering they have a gender issue. It could have easily been something more dangerous.

The dark Web isn't the issue. The sort of videos that kid would have seen willl be on reddit etc. The dark Web can actually be a good thing as it allows whistle-blowers for serious shit to contact journalists and organisations etc completely untracked.

Ban smartphones for under 16s

Apps like Google family etc allow you to control what is downloaded, accessed, time limits, lock it etc. It's very easy to put on and sidesteps a lot of this. My kids are early teens. I can instantly block anything unsuitable ..I get a notification on my phone and the kids' phones won't open an app they've downloaded if it's above the PEGI rating I have set. They have WhatsApp and one has 30 mins of Snapchat a day but rarely uses it. No tiktok. Neither are excluded or ostracised and no one is getting shown stuff in the playground because if a phone is seem at school it gets confiscated and there is a detention.

Mobile phone and app use is absolutely embedded in life now, for education as much as anything else. I teach secondary, I'm a total luddite and wish it hadn't been invented but it has. I don't think legislation or brick phones til 16 is realistic but extensive, wide, educational info about parent controls, possibly at point of sale for phones with a service run via libraries maybe to help parents install it is an option. Also..parents pay the bill. You can just stop. Until they earn their own money, it IS up to parents.

Scarlett was accessing the dark web. Even if social media for under 16 was banned this wouldn’t have stopped this murder. I do think these apps are bad for young kids, my friends youngest has had tik tok since year 5. I saw her once have a huge tantrum because of something and she was sending nasty messages to her friends on some child friendly app. My youngest thankfully naturally limited access to social media as she’s naturally introverted and didn’t want to get drawn into whole class apps which are generally full of horrible messages

Also agree. And some of the screenshots/snips I saw from Briannas tiktoks were quite provocative looking too for the age. So Brianna was clearly exposed to harm of a different type too. But I get the feeling reading some of the comments that Briannas mum acknowledged that tbf.

The issue is not enough is being done to stop content that shouldn’t be viewed by anyone, it needs a worldwide response to stay ahead of the v ugly side of SM

Is this information from the police investigation? Im wondering what is meant by that because people have different meanings to dark web

I do have a lot of sympathy for this view, however I was that 13 year old who wasn't allowed MSN or Facebook. I was 15 when my parents caved and let me. It did me no harm to wait those few extra years, and it wasn't as big of a deal as I made out to my parents. The most popular 'queen bee' girl in my year didn't have SM at all until she went to uni. People found ways to include her.

If people want to include you, they will. If they want to exclude you, they will. My (ex!) friends started excluding me when I was 16 - seeing it rubbed in my face on social media was awful.

No it's not going to happen, not that she's wrong, but from the dawn of time young people will always break boundaries. What needs to happen is creating better alternatives, better content & the culture of online available media which is safer & healthier for people, not just children.
These platforms are a lot of the time open to anyone, unmonitored to a large extent & it's not just parents responsibility, it's also the platform who often allow unsuitable content to go out.
I've also seen horrendous reels on FB which I will never forget it was that traumatic, so easy to click on something, thinking it's about one thing but turns out it's something entirely different. These videos are so easy to access yet even reporting it doesn't get anywhere.

My 22 and 19 year old when 3 or 4 years old didn’t sit in restaurants watching tablets and mobile phones. They coloured in pictures, played with little toys or Uno. Very Long car journeys we had a DVD player and watched DVDs or we played eye spy. They didn’t sit in their pushchair playing games on a mobile phone. We talked. They got their first phone when they went to secondary school. Then the arguing started with them. It was impossible to limit the time they spent on them and what they viewed. In the school playground they would view other kids phones who had unlimited access. They would go on play dates and play online games that were banned in my house. However they are now very respectful lads so we did something right. Still obsessed with their phones……but so am I - even now!

it wasn’t my kids generation that ruined it. It’s now. Speak to your kids in restaurants, play with them, take a colouring book, read to them.

Not sure but just been mentioned in the interview with Brianna’s mum on BBC and was mentioned in the press the other day. Said she was watching videos of torture on the dark web

My dc is 12. He's has a phone and does go on YouTube, but he doesn't have any apps like WhatsApp, snap chat, etc.

Put them in front of a screen. DVD player is still a screen.

Some people just have it in them, they grow up to be the Peter Sutcliffe and Fred west's of the world . Doubt stopping access to the Internet would stop them

Same for my kids who are 30, 19 and 16. Eldest two didn’t have a phone until secondary, youngest was around year 5 as she had her dads old phone but only had what’s app and a few friends. I never restricted access to phones, and to be honest none are obsessed with them. Daughter who had a phone the earliest uses hers the least. I’ve always let me kids regular their own bedtime / phone use as they were pretty good at doing it, I might not have if they were up on phones all night. It is tough as a parent trying to limit access as friends will undoubtedly let them use their phones and then you’ve got no control at all. It’s tough for sure and I do think Pandora‘a box has been opened now

Smart phones have been the biggest issue our house. Until you have had teens with phones you will not understand the worry.

If you DC becomes withdrawn is it hormones or are they accessing troubling content. We managed to get our DDs phone once and she was accessing all sorts of morbid stuff. Going down rabbit holes is very easy. We had to confiscate the phone which then caused her to run away.

Our Government needs to find a solution. I support Brianna's mother and agree with a smart phone ban until 16.

My son was shown an Isis beheading on a phone in a lesson in an outstanding school with a very proactive no phone policy. I have literally just found out about it 4 years later. If it hadn’t been the classroom it would have been the playground and if it wasn’t the playground it would have been the bus. What was I supposed to have said no to exactly?

Steaming sites are full of paedophiles, grooming and abuse. My daughter told me pretty matter of factly that sleepover entertainment was often talking to strangers on streaming sites. All those blaming parents are you stopping your teens from attending sleepovers/ coffee in town, meet-ups etc or somehow enforcing no device bans on parents you rarely if ever meet?Teens are way ahead of all parents, they swap ways to beat the system spending a lot of time researching it. Those smugly saying just say no. No to what?

Just to be aware the most isolated teens are the ones most likely to work even harder at beating the rules set out by parents and finding company and entertainment online.

The thing is, I remember this debate raging back in the 1990s with regard to 'video nasties' when James Bulger was murdered by Robert Thompson and John Venables - before we had phones and tech. Those boys were damaged and committed an evil crime. The average teenager these days would not go out and do this kind of heinous thing because they have access to horrible material and messaging apps. The news makes a big thing of the fact that these kids came from 'good families' but to plan and do something that awful, they were most definitely damaged and in need of some kind of intervention from someone. Those two would have done what they did regardless of their access to the dark Web and messaging apps.

But in parallel, do I wish we all had more control over everything our young people are routinely exposed to? Absolutely. Do I think that large social media corporations should do more regarding their social responsibilities and be far better regulated? Definitely. The 'always on' nature of social media is that there is literally no escape from anybody, or anything these days. Only last night, our 13yo ds was in tears due to a particularly vindictive exchange he had with someone he believed was a 'friend'. 30 years ago, this would have been left in the playground, both boys would have reflected overnight and come back to school remorseful the following day. But instead it escalates, and it escalates, and it escalates.

Also, the number of conversations I've had with ds about TikTok not being a reliable source of news content!

Yes ours watched tv at primary age but no other screens held off phones until secondary but couldn’t hold out longer than that as was affecting social inclusion it just was.