Do you check your child's phone at 10?

[KateERxx]

As in, do you check the messages/whatsapp of your child between friends to make sure they're safe and not being bullied/or are being mean to other kids? As well as monitoring the rest of their general phone like internet usage & photos?

I do to my DD who's finishing year 6 this year. I didn't want her to have a phone but all her peer group do at school and didn't want her to feel left out. She has strict hours she's allowed to be on it though, mainly weekends only at this age.

Only reason I ask as after speaking to a few different Mum's they think this is an invasion of her privacy and my DD will start to resent me for it as she's get's older?

It's negligent to let 10 year olds have smart phones and social media in the first place in my opinion.

Hugely neglectful to let them have uncontrolled access to the internet and not even bother checking what they're seeing and doing.

DS is almost 15 and I check his phone regularly, including WhatsApp. He knows this and agrees with it. I've also made it clear he can come to me anytime to talk about anything people have said / shared, and to remember nothing needs an immediate reply.

Only reason I ask as after speaking to a few different Mum's they think this is an invasion of her privacy
Are these mums particularly stupid? Or careless of their children's health - mental and emotional?

Don’t have a child old enough for a phone but do they not just delete anything they don’t want you seeing? Easy to clear certain messages, a couple of browsing history pages etc.

Any parent that’s told me it’s just how they communicate, it’s a private space etc. are the ones whose kids get themselves in trouble for not knowing how to interact safely or responsibly online/on social media like WhatsApp.

Give a young child unfiltered access to the internet you are giving everyone on the internet access to them. They will find some really dark and disturbing content/individuals. It’s inevitable. Not a question of if, but when. Id rather keep my child safe. Keep doing what you’re doing OP.

Yes I did. My kids are all adults now, and perfectly normal, functioning members of society. But if I had my time again, no way would they have had smart phones when they did (12).

We had ours on shared apple ID’s so we could see everything, messages, photos etc until they were about 14ish I think. Some of the other kids were obviously very very unsupervised - it was quite an eye opener but helpful to be able to guide them with the grown up world a smart phone enables.
We also wouldn't have given them a phone before secondary school - they had them in the last term of primary school as they wanted to keep in touch with friends going to different schools and by then were going out on their own a bit.
They are young adults now, but we still all have life360 - we all find it a very helpful app, they mostly like to know how far away their “taxi” is, if they’ve persuaded DH to turn out at some ungodly hour to pick them up!

I wouldn’t be allowing a ten year old to have a smartphone or social media apps in the first place…

Having seen some of the messages that 10 yr olds can and do send each other PLEASE check your childrens phones. Just in the last year my local y6 children have had to have the police involved on several occasions as the messages/photos were that inappropriate!

Absolutely.

She doesn't have a phone.

She will be going into year 7 in September and I'm getting her a dumb phone.

And will be checking her messages.

Yes I did. Until 15/16 with her knowledge and consent. Although towards the end of that it was definitely just a quick look every few months.

We had a lot of age-appropriate chats about why this was needed, only had a little kick back in the year she started high school but we got through that!

She had no social media or group chats either til high school and although that didn't go down very well, there were a few incidents towards the end of primary/start of high school that hit home as to why I hadn't allowed it.

Pay no attention to people telling you not to invade your child's privacy. It isn't if you work with them and help them to navigate well.

At 10 yes. Not all messages but spot checks.
My eldest is 14 now and haven’t checked her messages for a couple of years, but she does still have parental controls on her devices

I wouldn’t give a 10 year old a smart phone. They are simply not old enough to handle the downsides. Even if it is “just weekends” that is an awful lot of a time for your child to spend being influenced by people who are not her parents.

Seriously, consider taking it away and letting her give your number to her friends . They can whatsapp her on that and you can keep an eye and keep her safe, as well as properly limiting her exposure. She might feel a bit uncool but no one ever really suffered from that. The same cannot be said about the nasty stuff that kids get up to on the internet.

I interviewed the parent of a teenage boy who walked infront of a train in front of his entire cohort due to their cyber bullying of him via his phone. She hadn’t known about it. She very much regrets not monitoring his phone.

Privacy is important. But not as important as being alive.

I recently worked on some major online safety legislation. Please, for the love of God, check your child’s phone. Have proper monitoring software installed so you can see what they’re looking at. Know who they’re talking to online. Trust me when I say that the horror stories don’t bear repeating.

The time for unmonitored smartphone and internet use should be - at minimum - 16. This should be the law, and hopefully it’s going that way.

Yes, definitely!

My dd didn't even have a phone at 10, and when she did get one before secondary school, I carried on checking it well into her teen years.

Yes, older teens should be allowed some privacy in my opinion, if they have demonstrated that they are mature enough to handle it, but at 10? No way!!!

Also, DS didn't have WhatsApp until he was 13. When he started secondary we went to a session at school, and they strongly asked parents not to let them have WhatsApp in year 7 as it was the cause of so many issues outside school

As a 13 year old who had clueless parents and unrestricted access to the internet during the early 2000s, yes. Check her phone.

WhatsApp themselves say the lower age limit is 13, but then they do nothing to reinforce it so it’s all a bit hollow…

Think of it this way.

While those parents are respecting the privacy of their DCs, the entire resot of the world could be messaging them, and seeing what they're posting

Parents can enforce it. I did. No whatsapp till 13, no insta or snapchat till 15. I‘m not outsourcing my parenting to a bunch of tech bros in California.

13 is simply to do with data laws in the US, nothing to do with the age appropriateness of the app itself.

DS never had a phone till secondary school, others in his class did and there was a whatsapp group with all sorts on it that I wouldn't have wanted him involved in. One of his friends mums showed me - she had bowed to peer pressure too. A couple of years later one of the boys involved was sat behind me on the bus talking about dick pics at 12 years old.

What sort of parents think their children need privacy on SM at 10?? It's absolutely terrifying IMO.

DD got a phone for her 11th birthday. You're damn right I check it every single day!

She has strict parental controls and no social media bar a locked down WhatsApp profile. She gets given the phone in the morning after she has got washed, dressed and eaten breakfast and has to hand it to her teacher at the classroom door at the start of each school day. It is taken away from her at 8pm every night (when I check it) and I never fail to be amazed to see that some of her classmates are sending messages to each other at 11pm or later.

I have no intention of stopping checking the phone for many years yet.

Of course you check. My oldest is 13 and I check it still.