ipod touch

[MarianneKarinLucia]

My 12 year daughter is desperate to have an ipod touch, and because she doesn't want to wait until Christmas wants to buy one herself.
We are concerned about access to the internet and parental controls or lack of. She says that her friends don't have any parental controls on their internet access (which I don't believe for a minute but I am going to check that with some of them), but just wondering what others do in this situation? She is generally quite mature and responsible, but I am concerned about reports in the press about girls being exposed to pornography at a young age and way before any sexual experience they have had themselves. It's not that I don't trust her, but I don't trust some of her friends or acquaintances from her school, and I can well envisage a situation where she is dared to look at pictures or films under peer pressure and the urge to belong to the group, and that she may well regret this later when the harm cannot be undone. At the moment she thinks I am being unreasonable and don't understand her at all.
Any views or advice? This is my first posting on this group so apologies if it's not the right format!

I don't know the ins and outs of the whole parental control thing with ipods, but I have an iphone, and my contract is with O2. When I got my iphone, there was a setting on it (put there by O2) that didn't allow me to see anything that it deemed to be for over 18s (I'm 40!) My sister's account is also with O2 but her iphone had no such restrictions. Apparently it was quite randomly put on mine, but I assume from that experience that the contract provider can restrict access to certain sites...might be a place to start.

Or of course, somebody more knowledgeable is sure to show up and tell you if it's possible somehow to set the relevant settings yourself!

I can see why you're worried - my dd is only 6 but I agree with your outlook on it. I would probably have sorted out some sort of restrictions on it without discussing it with her and then claimed ignorance

@Nyx ipods are not restricted in the same way that iphone contracts are as ipods do not allow 3G traffic and use wifi only.

In a nutshell there is no way you can completely filter anything and everything that any ipod will see. The 'restrictions' are based on ratings. ie. porn.com will be restricted for obvious reasons, but a link to a video on a blog that is hosted on the blogging site might not be rated as will pass the filter.

Its pretty obvious kids will lie (bend the truth) to get what they want , but if friends do not have filters, they may not as not all parents understand how these things work.

My advice would be to set the pin code yourself and trust your child to be mature enough to understand what she is doing with her device. To be honest she is more like to listen to the music too loud and rinse the device for facebook, angry birds etc.

Unfortunately, i would say, if you do not embrace this, she will buy one behind your back and you will be out of the loop. Best to keep your finger on the pulse and share the ipod experience with her.

im not so knowledgeable about these things but I got my dd an ipod touch. She has access to internet over wifi in our house and we control access via router. so we can turn it off at a certain time, presently 10pm. Plus it has parental controls on it but she can use fb etc. dd mainly uses it to access spotify.
I would say having a smart phone is worse as it enables bypass of wifi and also bypass of curfew rules and also people to call her independently. In fact, as much as possible I intend to refuse getting dd smart phone. dd complains incessantly about this. Perhaps she should call childline?

DD1 (11) never uses hers for "internet" as such; it's all silly apps, games, music and face-time with her mates. She isn't interested in anything else.