Found porn use and questionable websites on DS16 phone

[TeenOnlineUse]

Need some advice, single Mom, one DS16. He’s honestly just a bloody wonderful kid, kind, funny, hardworking, exceptionally bright, engaged with lots of civic duty stuff, family life.

For clarity, DS has had a phone since he started secondary, always completely monitored and securely locked down by me on my phone with regular random checks here and there. Never any issues. Was not allowed social media of any kind, except WhatsApp, until this year, despite lots of protestations.

But tonight I got a notification that a screen time password has been used. I’ll hold my hands up and say since he turned 16 and I allowed social media on devices I’ve become lax and opened up the restrictions and screen time limits, not been checking his phone. But it was 1am and I thought he was asleep so I went digging and searched through the website history I could see on my phone.

He’s used a website called Y99.in quite a bit over the last few weeks, at most 40mins at a time. There’s a few visits to pornhub, jerkmatelive and he has a private browser called Brave installed which has a lot of screen time logged. I don’t know what he’s using that for.

Honestly I’m gutted. I guess it’s not surprising given it’s literally there at their fingertips but I should have been monitoring closer.

I turned the app restrictions to 0 for each of these sites and then I started getting Google alerts that he was trying to change the web tracking settings (I have Google family set up as well, but again, after he turned 16 I loosed the restrictions). So I knew he was awake.

I’ve just gone into his room, he pretended to be asleep. I told him to give me his phone and laptop, he handed them over along with the passcodes and I left the room with them.

I’m not really sure what to do now. Do I search both devices I full? How do I talk to him about this? I’m very forward and open with him but I want to handle this the right way. When exactly do we stop monitoring online use and trust them? Didn’t think I’d be lost in this situation, and maybe I’m just tired, but I’m not sure what to do now.

Sounds like the conversation went really well OP.

I was thinking about this today and how I’d approach it with my kids when they’re teens.

I concluded that pointing out that frequent porn use would probably make them worse in bed. As would wanting to replicate the things they see in porn or thinking that’s normal.

I rarely look at my sons phone hes just turned 17 and when he was 16 I saw he had been accessing some porn but I would never let him know I breached his privacy and went through his phone, I just brought up porn causally in a conversation and told him what I thought.
At 16 he can legally move out and have sex its hard to let go sometimes but I think rsther than telling him you've gone down his phone just bring stuff up casually.