Snapchat and tiktok

[saskia80]

My 13 year old is desperate to get Snapchat and Tiktok. To the extent we have daily tears and him telling me it's making him resent him as he gets teased over not having it. He feels like the only child in the world without it... Not helped that he's noticing girls and the one he likes uses Snapchat. Today he put an app hider on so Snapchat was disguised as a calculator. Due to that I've said it will be even longer before I consider letting him get it. He says he will get it anyway and when he's 14 it will be entirely up to him anyway.
I'm worried about the kids of videos he will be exposed to on there and if I'm honest I just hate yet another social media app to drain his time when he already spends enough time in WhatsApp and YouTube. Am I being overprotective? If I was to let him have either which is the lesser of the 2 evils?!

I will let my dd have it in year 9, she will be 14 in the autumn term.

Have you decided @saskia80 ?

He says he will get it anyway and when he's 14 it will be entirely up to him anyway.

14 and on snap? Not in my house!

As PP have said, Snapchat and TikTok are teens’ primary sources of communication and topics of conversation these days. My teens are older, but had these apps at 13 as did their friends. I checked phones regularly and the conversations were had on how they manage and conduct themselves. Never had or have any problems to this day. I feel so sorry for the children who are made into outliers due to their parents (well meaning) overbearing. Everything is arranged via Snap, teens do not use text, WhatsApp etc, it’s old hat. Children without a means to communicate with their peers will invariably be left out in so many ways, plans, general chat, relationships and friendship building. Please consider this when your battles are erupting, your child isn’t being entitled and demanding, they are telling you that they feel like an outsider.

My daughter is 13 and I have asked her (after 13) if she wanted any social media but she said everything she’s seen on it is garbage and she doesn’t want any of it in her life. So it’s WhatsApp and the internet for her by choice.

But she’s autistic and pretty quirky so doesn’t care what ‘everyone’ is doing. If she did and she asked for it, id have let her at this point - she brings me stuff when she doesn’t know what to do, and tells me things about what happens at school so I would look at this in the same way.

In your situation I would have some ground rules - the child setting seems helpful, handing over his phone on request for you to see what he’s up to (not reading messages, just flicking through), an open and frank conversation about blackmail and consent and eating disorders and suicide and whatever else I’m forgetting now and then maybe for the summer so you have him around more for a couple of months.

(A friend of a friend lost their 16 year old to suicide after being blackmailed on Snapchat so I remind my kids regularly that they can come to me with any mistake or anything scary and I’ll do anything to fix it)

Can only speak from my experience, but not having Snapchat would have been very isolating socially for my DDs. Their entire social life runs on it

We gave in on allowing Snapchat at 13 but held firm on Tiktok.

He's now almost 16 and isn't bothered by not having Tiktok.

Our DD at uni doesn't have it either. I think they are both quite proud that they are not addicted to it.

I don't like Snapchat, but yeah, it was the lesser of two evils.

Agree he should be allowed Snapchat as that is how they all communicate now. I detest tiktok but my kids do have it again so they aren't left out. I limit it to an hour a day though and they aren't allowed to create their own videos. I find the stuff they get fed by the algorithm absolutely vile. My son showed me a video where a woman was describing having 'stuck a chicken drumstick in her pussy, not to masturbate or anything, just to see what is was like' and how she would 'fuck a subscriber'. I was repulsed. This is the kind of shit that's readily available and comes up on their shorts. I do think the government should ban it for under 16s to take the decision away from the parents. Lets be honest, we all agree it's trash but we don't want our child to be the weirdo that doesn’t have it.

I would give him them but time limited. My girls have them because all their friends do and they’d just be the left out weirdie kids otherwise. They remain well-balanced, intelligent and articulate.

I was the child whose dad wouldn’t let them
make calls on the family landline back in the day. It caused so much stress and resentment, I’d be left out of social arrangements and I was in my 30s before I began making social arrangements for myself because I’d never had that as an option. I know my dad was doing what he thought was best but it was totally unreasonable and really affected me.