Raising kids in the current era makes me anxious

[currentera]

The internet and social media and raising teens makes me so anxious. There is far too much information for the immature teens brain.

We have put restrictions, speak to them about keeping safe online and outside; however they do spend a lot of time on screens and you can’t control everything they watch.

How do other people manage? Before you would worry when they were outside now you don’t even know if they are completely safe n their on house and bedrooms.

No wonder people are preferring to have dogs and choose not to have children.

You literally can control everything they watch, at home at least.

personally I’m more worried about the lack of jobs / economic prospects given Brexit and now what is effectively a socialist government. my DH and I feel all our kids should seek opportunity in other countries

Not to mention perhaps even WW3

Is it just the online bit that worries you?

If so, just do what you do. Age appropriate parental controls, discuss dangers, and keep the dialogue open. Be there when it goes wrong, and how to handle those emotions - and how to navigate abusive/toxic WA groups.

Also, encourage them to get out off their phones and onto their bikes etc. Embrace the real world! And clubs/groups away from school where phones are also banned.

And yes the dog is easier!

Well you build up slowly like most parenting throughout the ages

Having conversations about things no one is comfortable with. The gamble being anal porn is less attractive once your mum has explained that to achieve it successfully for most bottoms you need to train up with slightly expanding butt plugs first!

And when you feel they are old enough and “wise” enough to handle more online freedom you give them a bit more.

Who bought them the screens?

Off course you can control what they watch and how much access they have.

I bribe them with food into board games, walks etc, helping out, doing homework and study, after that there’s a certain amount of leaving them to it, but I show them eg funny TikToks every so often so they’ll show me what they’re watching. Also we only have one tv and when they’re watching YouTube I’d be popping in every so often and the odd time commenting. Saying that there’s only so much you can do and once they turn 16 google family stops giving you the power to restrict so it’s not always easy

@Morepositivemum

you can instruct the wi-fi not to let certain devices connect after 11pm say

Banning it is pointless

Teach them how to navigate it safely.
Make sure they trust you and know they can come to you if something goes wrong
Monitor their usage
Encourage lots of other extra curricular activities like sports and Scouts

Me too, so we:

1. Have a ban on tablets. I won’t have one in the house.
2. Have a ban on mobile phones until secondary and even then it’ll be ‘dumb phone’
3. All computers to be in communal areas - no secretive bedroom screen time
4. Will keep them busy with hobbies and so on - less time to get up to no good
5. Will do our best to make sure they are where they say they are when they’re under 16

My DB does this with his 7 year old and 2 year old. Elder is desperate for a DS switch but he’s not having it. Yet. I’d buy it for him!

DB sometimes works in films tv (less so now) so knows all about the pitfalls in that arena.

You absolutely can ban them.

I grew up in the 80s. My parents were literally told that AIDS=death and public toilets were going to kill us. It was a scary time.

But kids don’t have to be on the internet or social media, and there are very good parental controls. Back in the 90s, I was online in chat rooms interacting with paedophiles when my parents didn’t even know how to use the dial up internet.

The great thing about today is that we can have a lot more control over keeping our kids safe. Most of us spent our young adult years using smartphones and social media and we generally understand how it all works. It’s not perfect. I have no bloody idea how Snapchat works or Roblox 😂 but that’s why my dc aren’t allowed either of them.

Previous eras were not the golden age lots of people think. There were lots of drugs and sexual assaults and teen pregnancy and eating disorders and self harm and EBSA and online grooming amongst my friends in the late 80s/90s. I think actually one of the great things about today is that with the internet, there is a lot more direct access to support than there was for my generation, which is actually wonderful for a lot of children who can’t or wouldn’t access help through school or other parts of the community.

Not when they are teens.

Its not, i wrote on a post yesterday so ill summarize

2 DDs 13 and 11, both train over 20 hours a week in their sport, active, bright, and have lots of friends, love school, volunteer dog walk.

About 6 months ago their tiktok got darker, self harming videos, negative videos all of thet type of things.
These vidoes are camaflaged showing a pretty girl staring into the sunset with a caption simialr to " the feeling of blood tricking down your arm" "i smile on the outside but cry on the inside" "know next time when i do it it will work"

These messages are all in the posts not the captions, we put the restricted filter on, linked their tiktok to my own account so i could see what they were watching and reposting, we blocked every single keyword imaginable, reset their feed and liked positve posts, and vidoes of dogs to change the algoritham, we limited screen time.

It didnt work, DD1 started self harming, DD2 was slowly getting sucked in.

We had to completly delete tiktok ( no other social media) limited screen time to 1 hour a day outwith phoning and messaging.

The improvement has been wild.

These are girls who when i told people they were shocked to the core.

Edited to add - they have been told they wont be allowed tiktok/social media until at least 15/16, is that reasonable, i dont know and quite frankly i dont care. Their mental health is worth more.

yes, we have that

wifi goes off at 11pm and DD15 mobile goes off at 9pm. 15min TikTok. There were other restrictions but it was becoming unmanageable

How do you control everything they watch? For people who said they manage to do this, are you always with them.

That's awfully specific

It's a concern but there is always something for parents to worry about. Honestly, I'd rather worry about screens than famine and disease like many of our ancestors did.

Mine are little at the minute but my plan is no screens upstairs and super tight parental controls. Do they have hobbies? If not a sport or activity would naturally limit the amount of time they have to spend online.

I am sorry to read this.

DD2 is 15, 16 at the end of the year so I don’t think I can’t stop the mobile and access to the internet.

She has had issues with self harm since end of year 9; seeing a therapist. She assures me she is not watching anything that encourages it and it seems related to the academic pressure at school; but I can’t never be sure. First time it happened we put lots of restrictions but they started to become unmanageable and have given a bit more freedom; still got restrictions.

I don’t think I can’t ever be in peace or be sure what they access online is safe.

It causes me do much worry

I do encourage hobbies and exercise, try to spend time with them, but still feel screens dominate their lifes.

Yes, there is always something for parents to worry about it.

I am going to have one more chat with DD about online safety.

Exactly. DD is 15 I don’t think I can’t completely ban screens and isolate her.

I hope she feels she is loved, respected and supported at home and learns to navigate all the dangers online and outside,

This is another perspective. Thank you

I am guessing you meant 7 year old and 12 year old, not 2 year old?

It was a memorable conversation, largely because of their "oh my god mum" expressions, that was a tangent about not to expect in reality what they might see on online porn! We had covered choking and this came about because I was telling them about how there had been an increase of young women presenting at A&E with anal prolapse directly from anal sex being expected, particularly in areas with known larger gang membership.

In comparison our two really are pussy cats, but they are growing up in a world and to think that they won't come in contact with peers influenced by this poison I think would be naive. So as parents we think we need to talk about things like this. In our usual, fun, loving, open sarcastic, factual family way.

Ours have a great dad role model, their dad is one of the seemingly rare (unfortunately) men who will call other men out for behaviour or comments when out and about. So we are a quite open and factual, as in "look you are likely to see porn online that is well basically dangerously unreal for both boys and girls" and go from there.

It was just an example to illustrate that you can talk about these things and they don't want to leave home!

Just to add, we didn't start with online porn/anal sex, this was a build up, we talk about mental health, relationships, values in friends and as a boy, when to step in/up, when not to, if anyone sends you a naked photo and they are under 16 you bring it to us straight-away, type thing. Once you build up trust that you are on their side, all the time, and they trust you more on a young adult-adult rather than parent-child basis it's gets easier.

I call it the "right here now just need a small mummy lecture about something I heard this week.........." - the sighs of "it's easier to get this over with brother" are predictable!

You can't control everything they watch
Just how they react to it.

We banned TikTok. So I can't help with that, we told them it would waste their time and make them sad. We don't use Instagram or Tiktok so it's not like we were saying do as we say not as we do.