ipod touch - talk to me about setting ground rules for use- furious with dd

[whatdyouthink]

dh just bought one for dd's birthday. against his better judgement. she is 10. already she has managed to use it totally inappropriately. she violated her poor 8yo sister's privacy by making a video of the contents of her knicker drawer and sending it to her friend. i am absolutely seething. she is in her room in disgrace. still havent decided on a punishment.

please tell me about other possible problems re child safety, privacy etc. what ground rules do you have? i think the whole face time thing will be a massive invasion of privacy. i hate the bloody thing already. advice?

Porn.... It's all out there, and not sure how to restrict it

You can set a password to prevent the use of the camera, FaceTime and pretty much everything else. I'd prevent your DD from being able to use the camera at all as punishment.

My 7 year old has an iPod but I restrict everything but the games and the camera. He can't send the pics to anyone as he can't access the Internet unless I allow it.

thanks. i think dh has handled the more obvious parental controls, and i think blocked internet.

she has come down in floods of tears apologising. i am so cross, she has been so disrespectful. i am beyond cross. how do i handle this??

i dont want her filming our home.but face time was the reason for wanting this present. i think i must ban it for a while... then say in her room only... but then i cant monitor her.. gah... what to do?!!!

That's nothing to do with the iPod touch- that's about invading her sisr's privacy. Don't get hung up on the "geeky" element. Bad manners, cruelty and invasions of privacy are the same whether they are online or not.

I'm not sure about the video, but most other things can be locked down or password protected, so that she can only use it with supervision.

dd(9) got one for Christmas, mainly because her older brother (14) has one and she would constantly nag him to use it.

We have hidden Safari (internet) so she is not even aware it is there. The App Store is password protected with a password that only dh and I know, so she can only access apps if we agree with them.

You can also restrict things if you go to settings, general, restrictions. Facetime and imessage are also locked, so they are inaccessible to her.
Other things for age appropriateness. dd's is set for age 9, so it will only show her apps that are appropriate for her age.

My DD loves to make films - it is what she wants to do when she grows up. But we have always had a rule that she does not post any films on line with herself or her friends (or random people come to that). She is not supposed to film upstairs at all tho' sometimes she has 'stretched' this so that she can film our pets upstairs.

She has a web cam on her lap top but is not allowed to use it, even if her friend are (she covers it up).

She has also been banned from taking her phone in the bath room 'to listen to music' - if she wants music in there she has to take something without a camera.

She is 13, but these rules will apply at least til she is 16 - I don't see any reason for them ever to change. If she were to post a film the offending 'device' would be confiscated, temporarily or permanently, depending.

In your case I would take it away for at least a week and consider the conditions under which it was given back. Also needs to make it up to her sister(?) somehow - this is major violation of privacy IMO.

But I an a very 'MeanMom' lol

seeker, i agree, but (and sorry to drip feed) at first she just told us she had filmed just her own knicker drawer as a film 'pants from around the world and sent them to her friend. we took the geeky/ internet safety angle as it was about her realising about the whole private vs public domain thing. ie never broadcasting anything of a personal/ private nature.

later, she owned up to filming her sister's room... so there are two issues.

thanks to others for advice. x posts

As far as putting restrictions/blocks on apps, etc that's fine but kids often learn to get round these - they need to learn to resist the temptation in the first place IMHO.

As someone else said, this isn't about the iPod, this is about rules and boundaries for your dd. How did your dd manage to send a video of anything without you realizing it. Is the computer that she has access to in a public place in your home? Uploading a video takes time...enough time that if the computer were in a public place you would/should have been aware of what she was doing. In my opinion, Parental Controls are not worth the paper they're written on/computer they're installed on as kids are generally these days much more tech savvy than their parents and can just go around the controls. It's much more important to have serious/multiple discussions with your dc's about wise internet use. (As an aside, my ds hacked the parental controls at his school when he was 8 so he could "get on google and look something up"....I was glad that I had chosen internet education rather than parental controls for our home).

Both my dc's (9 and 11) each have their own emails, iTunes, Skype and Youtube accounts. I get a copy of all incoming emails so can keep an eye on things. Even though they have their own iTunes account (with their own debit card attached to it), the rule is they always ask before buying an App. There are times when they can go online for fun (i.e. not school related things) and times when they can't. Really no different than when I was a child and there were restrictions on tv and telephone times. We talk about information they have read on the internet and how credible it is. We also talk about what type of information is safe to give out on the internet. I often "consult" with ds (11) to get his input about what is appropriate (that way he feels like he has a vested interest in the decision) We had a useful talk just the other day about how much information ds should include in his profile for his google+ account and whether stating his gender on his profile was giving out too much information. I was for restricting everything to his established contacts, but he pointed out that some things should be more open, and gave me a very articulate and reasoned explanation. I learned something, and he will definitely be following the rules because he got to make them up himself!!!
Re punishing your dd....confiscate the iPod touch for the time being and tell her she can earn it back by establishing a set of reasonable restrictions herself.