How do you balance trust and keeping an eye on your teenager online?

[NaiceFox]

My son just turned 14 and lately he's glued to his phone. I know that's pretty normal now but I keep wondering where the line is between giving him privacy and making sure he's actually okay.
I'm not even talking about reading every message. It's more that I worry if something serious is happening and I wouldn't know until way too late. He says I'm overthinking and maybe I am lol.
How do you all handle this? Do you just trust them and hope for the best or do you keep some kind of check without making them feel like you're spying?

I trust but try to keep communication open so I could notice anything up. Would have changed if cause for concern. DC17 now. I think spying is intrusive, you wouldn’t follow them up the road and listen to conversations.

I think it depends on the kid honestly. We have rules about phones staying downstairs at night and we talk about online stuff pretty often. It's not fool proof but I feel like knowing they can tell you things is more important than checking everything.

It's really difficult. We also have a rule about no phones in the bedroom overnight, and make sure there are phone free times built into the day - no phones at the dining table and no phones when we're watching TV together of an evening. I don't regular check my kids' phones, but they know I have the passcode and I've been clear that I would check them if I was ever worried.

We tried just relying on conversations for a while but there were a few things we completely missed. In the end we started using one of those parental monitoring apps that gives activity updates instead of constantly asking questions. It made things less stressful because we weren't checking over his shoulder all the time. There are loads of them around now, like Bark, Qustodio, Xnspy, etc., if you're looking into that sort of thing. It's definitely something to talk about with your kid first though.

Absolutely agree with this.

However the UK govt doesn't, they'll soon be doing all the spying and restricting things for our kids without asking any of us!

We use Qustodio which blocks inappropriate content and notifies you about searching for potentially unsafe content.

My teen hates it but it has really helped. Previously he managed to be regularly accessing even fairly hard-core porn without us knowing (and whilst in the same room as us, as we don't have Internet use in non-shared spaces). This came as a real surprise, and we'd done lots of education around it. His behaviour has been so much better since, as some of the content was really dysregulating.

I have two older dc (now young adults) and two younger - one preteen (who has phone only at home, mainly to communicate with gp and DP’s ex) and one in y7.

DC1 & 2 both say they wish that I’d been way stricter because of online harm, bullying, addictive use and exploitation. They both told me things as teens and say we had a good, open relationship, but I only learned the extent of phone-related harm when DS1 was 21. I WISH I hadn’t bought the line ‘the genie is out of the bottle’ with my older two. I was the adult. I should have taken the phones away, reset the passcodes and gone through their phones routinely, even if it caused conflict. On the trust issue, there are loads of ways to foster trust and independence, but I no longer believe phones should be part of that - they aren’t a neutral space because of persuasive design.

This is how we do phones with the younger 2:

1. The phone isn’t theirs; it’s on loan.
2. Phone is a tool not a toy. No games, social media, YouTube, WhatsApp or Snapchat. It’s set up so we have to approve apps. They can play games on family PC or console.
3. We check it regularly. They can have private spoken conversations with friends in person or talking on the phone, but the phone itself isn’t a private space and they know we check it regularly.
4. Phone use limited to an hour a day as a default, with flexibility so they can listen to music, etc.
5. Can’t send ANY photos of themselves except to family, with permission.

I know this looks REALLY strict but I can’t tell you how much calmer life is with the younger two. DS3 can still access homework apps, etc., and uses the family computer for homework, searching, etc. They don’t always like it, but they know why we’re doing this.

Good luck. It’s really, really tough.

I don’t usually post on threads like these as I’m not a parent but my 19 year old niece was asked at the weekend what she thought about the under 16 SM ban and she said she wished there had been many more restrictions on her phone use when she was younger. She said there were things, particularly porn, that she wished she hadn’t seen. Said that she would have hated it but that it would have been better for her. Her Mum and she have a great relationship but I suspect she wishes she had been more vigilant.

I know the passcode to DD14's phone and have Google Family link set up. WhatsApp, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram are all blocked also YouTube because she kept watching videos we felt were inappropriate. She has to get my permission to download new apps (via a code texted to my phone). She watches YouTube on the TV and the laptop in the living room so we can keep a vague eye on what she's watching. She knows I check her phone, but I don't do it often or on a set / regular timetable, usually just if I notice a change in her behaviour/ she has stuff going on which has the potential to lead to issues or just because I haven't checked in a while. I do a cursory check of photos and skim read texts, looking in more detail if anything jumps out.

If she starts to push back on any of it and we think she is mature enough to handle it we may rethink things but she has mostly been ok. We have held firm on a few requests to let her get WhatsApp though so she knows where the boundaries are.

Phone and internet use is one area I am happy to be thought of as stricter than I perhaps need to be. The potential bad consequences of exposing her to the nastiness of social media and unfettered internet access before she is ready are bigger / worse than the consequences of being stricter than her friends' parents. It also gives something for her to negotiate as she gets older / wiser.

We use Google Family. Teens have a fixed number of hours of certain apps per day and their phone lock 9pm to 7am. Both have to share their passcode with us so we could look if we were concerned. We did check from time to time at first but pretty much never now. If I had concerns I certainly would and would put in more restrictions via the Google Family app.