To not let 13 year old have TT or SC

[Yope]

I'm really against it.
He's 13, school year 8.
Everything in me says don't let him have these yet. Nor Instagram.
He's got WhstsApp. That's enough. He doesn't need social media at his age.
The way I see it is, the more of this stuff they have on their phones , the more they will be exposed to and the more social shit they'll have to deal with.
But he's getting mocked for it by mates.
A lot.
And this morning I saw a message sent from a mutual friend to another mutual friend with a crying laughing emoji and a piss taking comment about my DS not being allowed to have SM.
I'm not saying never.
I'm just saying not yet.
AIBU?

Snapchat and WhatsApp are completely different beasts
🥹

@VivianLea are teenage girls somehow inferior to teenage boys?

No. Both are equally useless.

I was only commenting on the fact that it's extremely unusual for a group of teenage boys to mock another boy for not doing something that would be considered effeminate.

In my day, you were mocked for being shit at rugby or football, not for not having a girl's mobile phone app.

I suggest you should understand how an app works before you let your teenage daughter have unfiltered access to it

YANBU - if his so called friends are taking the piss out of him on WhatsApp they may do so on TT and SC as well. Trust your gut feeling on this. If only more parents were strong enough to do this instead of following the crowd..

because you are trying to pretend these things dont exist, when they do, and the best thing to do is to educate your child how to use them safely

Yes I agree the schools are doing the heavy lifting as most parents are quite lazy.

Its the adults who are afraid as they dont understand it, the kids on the whole are all over this

No they are not. They are terrified to tell their parents if they have engaged with people they don't know. Cimmaron Thomas aged 12 shot herself in the head with her father's gun when a man she sent images to blackmailed her. Her body was found by her 9 year old sister. Her father took his own life a year later.

that is sad but not representative of all of the children who use SM

I disagree. I don't pretend that these things don't exist, I just refuse to pretend that they're harmless.

@@FunnysInLaJardin
How do you know that?

Kids that are terrified to tell their parents are 9 times out of 10 the ones that have been banned from using SM and know they will be punished for admitting they have been on SM and blamed for being the victim of a predator. This is why bans do not work.

I think it’s really important to teach teens about predators online, how these people behave and approach kids and adults, how to spot red flags and to have the openness with between kids and parents to talk about it all. There’s nothing wrong up to age 16 with an agreement for spot checks on phone chats so a parent can identify problematic conversations or bullies etc - it allows for honest conversation.

Mollycoddled kids are more likely to fall victim because they do all the chatting and apps in secret. Keeping an open relationship with your kids who are well versed in appropriate and inappropriate online behaviours is far safer than an outright ban that they’re likely to be able to circumvent with their pals anyway.

We teach them how to spot and deal with these problems not naively assume
we’re keeping them safe by hiding this away. Predators online exist for all age groups, they don’t magically disappear when your child hits 18, you just end up having a kid not capable of detecting them or coping with it if it does happen.

They won’t. Plus parents need to trust their children. There are vulnerable kids and there are those who know enough to have a smart phone and not be drawn into the dark side of the web.

Children are safe as long as parents spend that time making it safe. My children have managed from a young age with smart phones and yet to come across a sexual predator.

I think you need to teach your child how to navigate the dangers of social media. Avoid it for as long as you can if you want to, but realistically, if you are banning it without giving proper reasoning, they are going to not understand at all. Also I feel like there are ways to restrict the apps to make it safer.

I think it needs to be an opportunity to help them learn about social media, safety etc rather than Banning it

I don't have a daughter. But my point is, it's better to discuss dangers etc. rather than ban things as you don't have a way of knowing what a young person has accessed online, even if you think you do.

Plus parents need to trust their children.

What? They are children. Why can't parents actually parent?

In my day, you were mocked for being shit at rugby or football, not for not having a girl's mobile phone app.

Anyone old enough to say "in my day" didn't have a mobile phone app (girls or otherwise) in their day so this is an utterly redundant point.

I understand your concerns around use of SC and TT. The parental controls on them are useless. What I find interesting is that we tell our children don’t speak to strangers but by allowing them access to social media apps that’s exactly what we open them up to not to mention the algorithms that serve questionable content to them. Kids are getting groomed on social media. My best friends daughter was groomed on Instagram at 13 and it all starts innocently enough.

100% behind this.

Not on Snapchat. You need to really look into how unsuitable SC chat is for young teens. The safety features are non existent

It’s a hard one OP. To be honest, if more parents were like you, then the peer pressure to have social media from a young age wouldn’t exist which I think would be a good thing. My DS is way too young for me to even need to think about this stuff yet. My gut feeling would be no, kids are too young and there is so much shit on social media and a very dark side to it. But, the difficulty is that so many parents allow it and therefore not to have it does lead to kids being teased and then missing out on communicating with peers so I’d probably reluctantly give my DS when older access to social media with lots of parental control

It is ultimately up to you - regardless of all the comments you will get from people saying you are being unreasonable. If it is a no from you, there will be some drawbacks for your DS. Don’t know if it is worth you researching how to keep kids safe online to see if you can strike a balance between giving him some social media but keeping a certain level of control over it and educating him on how to stay safe?

Surely your child can just add the people they personally know. You need to teach them not to add strangers. Them texting the people they know on there isn't going to harm them. I completely understand wanting to ban it for your child but I also don't think it is always the right thing.

Stick to your guns OP. I won’t let me 12yo boy have Snapchat or TikTok either. Like you I will only allow WhatsApp so he can chat with friends. He’s tried a few times saying things like “but my mates chat on Snapchat” and I said well they’ll have to chat to you on WhatsApp instead then. Lo and behold his mate added him on WhatsApp.

@pinkroses79 I get that, but how are you teaching them how to be safe without knowing how the app works?