Snapchat

[JennyBee12]

My daughter recently turned 11 and is starting secondary school in September. She has a phone and I let her have snapchat a few days ago as her whole class has it and use it to keep in touch. After reading some other mumsnet posts I'm not wondering if I should've done more research first! She is very sensible generally with her phone, she knows to only be friends with people she knows and I've only given her a 30 minute limit on it a day(managed by family link app) but now I'm worried that I can't monitor her messages. She did say when she installed it that it was the limited app like her tik tok for under 13s and I trusted her in this and I don't think she lied because that's not like her but think she may be confused because they didn't ask for her date of birth. I feel torn because if I tell her she can't have it anymore she will think I don't trust her and she'll be the only one of her friend group who doesn't have it. Any advice? And as this is something I'm already worrying about I could really do without any unnecessary and unhelpful judgement please.

Snap chat is the devil tbh. It's hard to monitor as the messages disappear and the security on it is useless imo. I hate it and wish it didn't exist!
That said it's so hard because everyone has it and if she doesn't she will probably feel left out. As with everyone moderation is key, but it's bloody hard to do effectively with snap.

Thanks for the response. I've now decided she only gets to use the phone I common areas downstairs at home so that things can be monitored as much as possible. She is not happy about this 🙈 but tbh it's something I really should've implemented from the get go with her phone. She's constantly checking her messages so that's why I made the 30 minute limit and she feels this is unfair but to me it's social media and she's only 11 so it's a necessary limit. She just thinks I'm so unfair on her 😭

Secondary DSL here (plus Mum if four, inc 3 teens).

Snap chat and tiktok both have 13+ recommended age limits. Just left Y6 and just turned 11 is very young for both. I would not allow either and would uninstall both.

You sound a bit un-tech-savvy op. It might be good to look on thr NSPCC page to understand online safety for teens a bit more. You seem to be focusing more on how long your child is online, rather than giving equal (poss more) considerations to what your child is doing when online.

Realistically speaking, it's likely that throughout Y7 a large proportion of the year group will start using both, although not all the year group. It would be a minority using these apps when they arrive in Y7. The sorts of children using age-inappropriate apps before even going on roll in secondary school are not the sort of children I would want my children to be friends with.

As Polik knows, I've learnt the hard way...
My DS (also 11) was also very sensible, yet we are now in the middle of a really bad situation. And this was only whatsup!
I really wish I would have been more alert from the beginning. Please, keep a really close eye.

Polik is spot on with everything they say.

You've made an mistake op your dd should not be on Snapchat or tic tok.
You are her parent not her friend you do not have to give in to her demands because she might be left out. Your job is to protect her and keep her safe, at her age the online world is not safe and needs constant monitoring, having her in the same room as you will not change the behavior that is so unhealthy for young people.

All you need is a good parental control with an essential function, screenshots of her phone😎. I had similar problem with my daughters and that was the only effectively working solution.
I use Ourpact on their Android phones that has this function, a few years ago I used Safelagoon with the same feature added (a little more expensive). Basically they take screenshots of your daughter's phone screen every few seconds while she opens an app and use it, while she touches or scroll the screen, these screenshots are saved online and you can see them by your phone at anytime. So it works on every app, no matter which one, snapchat included, including all the pictures, photos, websites, texts and messages. Magically you will see her messages, received and sent, even if they were quickly deleted.
I don't judge at all and I think nobody shoud do that, every situation is different and the effects of parents relly too much permissive about phones and socials are totally obvious nowadays. I used the same time limit of half an hour a day until 12yo, than 1hour a day (for all the apps except the ones for homework) until the late teen, 18 for my older one (with frequent exceptions on request), and yes, with the screen mirroring option enabled too. I'm not ashamed of that, call me control freak, I don't care, but it has never been like I was controlling her screenshots and messages everyday all the time, in the late teen it happened rarely and occasionally when I suspected something was wrong, when my daughters were younger it was a quick look everyday or every other day. I believe that knowing you can see what they are doing online is in itself a great effective deterrent to doing the wrong thing.
About trust, well she should trust you that it's all in her best interest and she should trust you wont check everything all the time, not more than what's necessary. Don't believe to the tale "all my peers don't have parental control", it's totally false and manipulative. They are minor, their phones monitored by the parents is always been an unavoidable condition for my daughters to have a phone.
I don't know if recently some cheaper alternative to Ourpact was released, with the same screenshots feature, that's not cheap but to me it's worth it. Please let me know if you find something cheaper equally valid.