Monitoring a 19-year-old’s phone use during mental health difficulties

[bendmeoverbackwards]

Wasn’t sure whether to post here or on young adults. But anyway, dd is 19 (just turned). Having some MH problems and has been out of education for 2.5 years. She sometimes talks about killing herself which I obviously take seriously but from what I can see, it’s more an expression of her situation than an actual plan.

She has never self harmed.

My question (after reading the thread about taking the door off) - we haven’t checked her phone usage for several years and at 19 I’m not sure it’s appropriate. I want to balance giving her some privacy and trust but also keep her safe from potential harmful content.

Thoughts?

I understand your concerns but at 19 she’s an adult so to check her phone would be an insane invasion of privacy.

It would be a horrible invasion of privacy to check the phone of a grown adult woman just because she has some mental health difficulties.

Seriously, she’s an adult and her phone is none of your business. She has a right to privacy.

Absolutely not appropriate. Neither is taking her bedroom door off if that's what you mean about the other thread.

What professional help is she getting for her MH difficulties?

Thank you. So up to what age should you monitor? 16? 18? And what happens to make them safe once they turn that age?

I have an ND DS whose phone I would consider checking if I had concerns at 19. Whether that be drugs or county lines for example or MH issues, bullying or coercion, I would also check my DH's phone if I had concerns about him cheating. It's a violation of trust - but sometimes people can't be trusted, whether that's to keep themselves safe or to treat you as you deserve. At 19 I obviously wouldn't consider checking unless I had real concerns.

You have to think carefully what you will do with anything you find though. If she is on self harm/suicide sites what will you do? How are you going to bring that up without destroying the trust? Is it really going to help the situation for you to know? Can you not just assume she might be on some disturbing sites and talk about it without knowing for sure? At 19 it's impossible to just take her phone away if she's looking at bad stuff so where would you go with it?

Personally I think it's fine to be clear on purchasing that while you're paying for a phone you'll be monitoring it occasionally all through them growing up. Phones stay down stairs over night and this is when i would check every now and then.

People on MN though are obsessed with phone privacy - I've never known anything like it. DH and I use each others without a second thought. God knows what they've got on their phone to be so paranoid.

I’m not sure what checking her phone would achieve,

you know she has mental health difficulties. There are accepted routes to treating those - so if she has anorexia the nhs will offer specialist eating disorders service which usually includes working with parents, if it is OCD then CBT therapy is generally recommended.

it can be very tricky getting access to these nhs services these days do more and more people are accessing them privately.

fir many MH conditions medication can be useful and again nhs services are creaking so I avcsssrd (as many others do) a private psychiatrist who prescribed for my DS.

most MH conditions benefit from general be healthy advice - get outside at least once a day, try to keep sleep to night time, eat healthy meals etc and so most parents will try to do that.

there is a fine line on many MH conditions between supporting the teen and pushing them just a little bit further on that day if you think they can take it - eg encouraging them to go outside for a walk, enccouraging them to eat a bit more, etc.

teens of any description react very badly to attempts to control them and teens with MH issues can have particularly strong reactions. It’s not a good idea to do anything that looks like attempts to
imposr control - eg checking phone - without at least discussing it first and agreeing it with them

there’s also the issue of what will you do if you find eg she has been writing about self harm or encouraging others to self harm or emailing the Samaritans or stuff like that?

she’s 19. It’s not ok to do this.

People on MN though are obsessed with phone privacy - I've never known anything like it. DH and I use each others without a second thought. God knows what they've got on their phone to be so paranoid

Ridiculous.

There is nothing about expecting a bare minimum degree of respect and privacy that necessitates "paranoia". It's just common courtesy to respect other people's privacy, and they are not in any way being unreasonable, paranoid, or "hiding" anything by expecting other people to afford them that dignity.

Fine, if you want to share phones that's entirely up to you, but other people feeling wholly differently says nothing at all about them other than they have respect for privacy.

Would you start opening mail addressed to others when it's clearly marked "private and confidential", and then wave it away as nothing?

What support is she getting for her MH problems?

As she is open with you about the fact she has struggles, it may be worth talking to her about her phone and whether she finds it helpful or harmful. You can discuss whether she'd find it helpful to check in with you about the content she is viewing online and discuss things, if there are sites that make her feel worse does she want to discuss them with you etc? You can't monitor it without her knowledge and I'm sure she's more than capable of hiding content in any event.

What do you say when she talks about killing herself? There are some good resources online about how to respond in a way that enables the other person to tell you when things are troubling them. It is obviously a scary thing to hear as a parent and that can have the effect of making you shut the conversation down. Anything that you can do to keep dialogue with her open will be valuable.

Seeing as your dd is asking for help, I would try to talk to hee about what she’s looking at online. Even talking to her about what she’s searching on social media platforms like TikTok and instagram would give you an idea of what she’s looking at. Maybe remind her this will then feed into algorithms, which lead to viewing more of the same sort of content. Maybe you can ask her to let you look?

Who pays for the phone? If you are worried re content she’s accessing then one option is not to pay for a smart phone or phone contract.
I don’t think you can ask to see her phone at 19, shes an adult.

She’s not asking for help nor is she getting support. She has always been highly resistant to therapy/counselling even just seeing the GP to explore medication.

There’s no way she’d hand over her phone or laptop in any case to look at her browsing history. I’m not even sure why I asked really. I suppose emotionally she’s younger than her actual age and I’m concerned.

We pay for her phone.

I do know she looks at a lot of fun, harmless content - she loves animals and often sends me TikTok videos of cute animals. But very occasionally she’ll send me ‘sad girl’ stuff (I think the other post about the door reminded me of this).

most MH conditions benefit from general be healthy advice - get outside at least once a day, try to keep sleep to night time, eat healthy meals etc and so most parents will try to do that.

@Octavia64 we did experiment with turning off her Wi-Fi at night time a year or two ago. But it made no difference whatsoever so it’s now on 24/7 and gave her a chance to prove she can be trusted. I don’t want to turn off the Wi-Fi overnight for the whole family because a) it would annoy me, and b) my older two dds (23 and 24) still live at home - I’m not exactly sure of their Wi-Fi use but they always get up on time for their jobs etc so don’t want to micro manage.

So what is the long term plan? She has MH problems, including voicing suicidal thoughts, is emotionally young for her age, isn't in work or education and isn't accessing any support.

I don't want to sound harsh and I'm sure you are aware but this isn't going to get better by itself and checking he phone isn't going to solve anything either.

I think even if she doesn't want to access support it might be worth you talking to some organisations about what help there is and what routes can be taken.

I think you and she need a plan.
Either she plans with you, or she needs external assistance.
Depending on how she is it could start small so for example
. get dressed by lunchtime
. go for a short walk daily
Moving on to
. screen free time daily
. activities outside the home
. volunteering somewhere eg one afternoon in a charity shop
. CV building

Unless you/she do something actively she won't improve, she is unlikely to spontaneously get better.

For my DD, she improved with a mix of medication and therapy.

Are you the mum who posted about the birthday cake? You had 40 pages of replies. Hopefully things are a bit better.
I don’t think her being in her phone/laptop in her room for hours is good for her (or anyone).
If you are giving her the phone and laptop and WiFi then you are enabling her.
If no one works from home then WiFi can go off in day. I’d not be paying for a smartphone for an adult not working or in education.
The older ones won’t be up all night if working, I’d speak to them privately and agree a cut off point.
I agree with poster above about her needing some structure and fresh air.
Do you wake her up in morning when you go to work. Door open, Blinds open, lots of noise. It’s not on she’s in bed while rest of you get up for work.
I’d set chores and expectation she does them. Everyone in this family contributes.
It’s spring. Fence painting, tidying garden. Anything rather than sitting in bed watching rubbish on tik tok.

@Hellometime yes that was me.

i can’t wake her up in the morning because she doesn’t like me coming in (or even knocking).

Chores - this is a real struggle at the moment. I ask her to unpack and put away the food shop - 3 days later the bags are still there (Dh diid the cold stuff). I have a her a list of chores she could choose from to do while I’m out at work - ignored 🙄

She gave a barrage of excuses for not doing the shopping - she forgot, she was about to shower, she didn’t feel well.

I’ve name changed since but did respond several times to your last thread.
She isn’t ruler of the roost.
She doesn’t like it well tough luck. It’s your house. Door open, blinds up, loud good morning dd. Time to get up I’m not going to work and you lazing in bed.
If you live here you participate in family life and help out. Keep going in her room and saying you need to put shopping away. She tries to talk to you, I can’t hear you until it’s done. Chores - you are doing nothing today I’m working 7 hours, I expect you to do x and y. Excuses I wouldn’t entertain say you’ve had 8 hours and done nothing. We don’t always feel well but crack on.
You were providing an allowance, nice toiletries, phone contract. I’d stop the lot and the WiFi overnight and when you are out.
I honestly think if you impose expectations and stop pussyfooting around she’ll thank you in long run. Lying in bed all day, up all night doing nothing and watching god knows what on tik tok/instagram does no one any good.
Stopping her phone and internet is such an easy start. She’ll get bored and have to start doing things.

@Hellometime it’s not as simple
as that. Dd is also ASD/PDA. It’s not that she ‘doesn’t like it’, some things cause a huge emotional response in her. As I’ve said we tried restricting the WiFi and it had no effect at all.

This approach might work for a NT teen/young adult but there are complicating factors here and I don’t want to make things even worse.

Im not the type of parent who wants to be their child’s friend and I have no qualms about putting in boundaries where needed (as my older two dds will agree). But conversely if I go in too hard, it won’t help. There must be a happy medium and I’m trying to work out what it is.

Your posts come across as you don’t know what to do for best so do nothing. You also seem scared to upset her.
If you are genuinely worried she’s at risk of self harm or suicidal thoughts then get professional input.
I personally think some structure like a normal sleep schedule, fresh air and less time on own in room on phone would be a start.
If she won’t engage with therapy maybe look for some for you to support you.

My dd is suspected neurodivergent and has quite a lot of demand avoidance so I suspect PDA. I get where you’re coming from. It sounds as if your dd is very anxious and indeed all out bootcamp won’t work. If you want her to do stuff, it is looks as if it’s going to be necessary to build things slowly for her so that she’s scaffolded. My dd is tasked with predictable things like emptying her bin, sorting the dishwasher / tidying the kitchen the days that she’s here / changing her bed (I help with this) and she’s just moved to a bigger bedroom in the house with an en-suite and I’ve just added cleaning that. She’s 17. She’s resisting, hasn’t done the bathroom yet.

My dd has anorexia. Back in January, I said a couple of things, which pushed her too far. What I said was nowhere near as hard as the sort of thing Hellometime is proposing and would have been a mild bollocking to someone, who is NT and not anxious. Dd declared all out war because of it. Decided she was an adult and she didn’t need me to make her food, wouldn’t be following the food plan anymore and she was going to do it herself. As a result, she halved her intake overnight and relapsed. There was no point fighting that because she would have just shut down completely. I am working with a very experienced mental health nurse turned ED coach and she supported me and got me to gently get dd back to eating at a good rate again. Dd is at the end of the relapse but things aren’t entirely fixed 2 months on and I’m absolutely traumatised by it. My nerves are shot.

I understand you need to tread very carefully. And I also think you should get some professional help if you can. Something for you and if possible someone, who can guide you to help your dd.

Is she on AD's, see a a counsellor, has she been to GP?

No, she won’t see anyone.

Then perhaps you do need to set some more boundaries, if you feel like it the situation cannot carry on as it is, is it affecting you MH too? As a parent in a similar situation, we found it difficult to like know whether to place boundaries or not, with DD2 who has ADHD/ASD PDA & had quit education.

Without going into all the details we reached a crisis point last year & got advice from a local charity that gives mental health and addiction support to people and their families. Basically they just gave a listening ear & said how they support people in those situations that come to live in supported living- that is by providing quite strict routines, rules and boundaries. So we decided that we would follow similar and kind of said this is how it's going to be, we love you but we cant carry on like this, you need to get help & these are the 'house rules' cos although she's over 18 she still lives in our home. We blocked most SM websites, wifi off during late night hours and that she had do at least two days volunteer work to get her out the house, she also went a group offered by the charity that do things like craft, walks and stuff, she was a bit hit and miss with that but things definitely improved from that point. A couple of months later she started on AD's, she then got a part time job and has been so much better. A year on & I look back and feel so thankful for where we are, just had a lovely Mother's day card from her too last week. Obviously everyone has to do what they feel is right for them & only parent's know their child & we parented our other DD quite differently too. Hope this helps.