It hit us out of nowhere. That sinking feeling, the realisation that we'd missed something big. We thought we had everything under control—no phones upstairs, no unsupervised screen time. And yet....
It might be better to disallow both phone and laptop (even if school laptop) in a child's bedroom - it is unfair to expect an 11 year old to resist social media temptation, especially as the tech guys have deliberately designed them to be addictive... parents need to act as parents and not as their children's best friend... also, I think it is common sense to know the 'rules of the house' before allowing a child sleepover in somebody else's home...
i think I agree. To be honest, I didnt know that TikTok was even possible in a browser let alone a school laptop. If we cant shut that down via the school we will be shutting it off a the router.
One of my young tech savvy teenage boys always managed to bypass any attempt to block access!!! In the end, his (school) laptop was only allowed in the kitchen and I would suddenly loom over his shoulder to check what he was up to😁... now that he has left school we laugh about it...
Social media at 12 is still incredibly young. Jonathan Haidt recommends 16. I cannot imagine having done the hellscape of middle school with social media.
Jonathan Haid in his Substack After Babel has been raising this alarm with kids and cell phones for quite a few years now. Really good stuff to pay attention to.
The most important safeguard is keeping the lines of communication open. Because it is likely that our children are exposed to things we don't want them to see, no matter how careful we are to restrict or oversee.
That’s such a great point. It’s easy to just ban things but they also need to know why and for parents to listen too.
It’s difficult to explain the dangers and convince children of those dangers when so many parents take a lenient view. That just makes us look like unnecessarily strict.
I understand what a difficult situation this is for parents, and I agree that the first order of business is for them to set an example for their children. Beyond that, I think screen time should be treated like any other unhealthy behavior. Why not develop age appropriate programs for kids that explains exactly what tech is doing to control their behavior and how it harms them?
I am a childless millennial who surely did things her parents didn’t know of back in the early zeroes when the internet was there and nobody understood what it was. I saw somebody’s genitals in a chatroom together with a friend and I remember feeling embarrassed. I also read arousing stories published in normal magazines (ohhh the zeroes) and when my parents found out about that I wasn’t allowed to read it anymore. The thing is, kids will see things at an age that isn’t appropriate for them. That’s how they learn about their morals, what they like and what they don’t. (Despite these experiences, or maybe because of them, I was quite late with my sexual experiences.)
What I would’ve have wanted was an adult that would take me seriously. Somebody who wouldn’t immediately restrict everything but just talked to me about it. As ‘adults’. I would have told my mum about the creepy man I saw in the chat room if the conversation had always been open and not steered towards things being my fault. So yeah, I think times have changed in terms of even more addictive apps and social media, for sure. But any teenager, in whatever era, just wants to feel seen and understood and held. Especially by her parents. So if she did do things at that sleepover party that you wouldn’t allow for, I think the best thing you can do is give her space to open up about it and guide her in how to process these things instead of creating an environment where she does things secretly.
On a more constructive note the standard advice on this is to be a safe space e.g. if they are hooked on social media then threats to take it away might make them more secretive, so sometimes it is best to take a softly-softly approach, other parents told me. But I’ve not been there yet myself as my children are still young & prefer interacting in-person anyway!
A serious conversation needs to be had with a school like this, that these devices are not being used for school work but are being taken to sleepovers and parties and actually getting in the way of sleep — the school really ought to take note as their system sets norms and culture. Parents need to stick together on it. Just my view! Thanks for your insights on this.
I agree on your second point. Schools need to do more and we will be having a serious conversation with them on the laptops.
Softly softly on social media im not so sure. The thing is, these platforms are designed to draw you in and then drip feed you more extreme stuff to keep you hooked. Then there are things like snapchat where teens are linking up and sharing photos. Thats a really scary thing to deal with when you are 11.
Snapchat was surely originally, obviously, developed for sneaky comms. The idea that you should be able to send photos and then they disappear (although they don’t, not really) in a snap? I believe that it was absolutely designed for soliciting nudes, even if a lot of users just use it for funny stickers and general chat. We don’t need these apps and children don’t either. If they want contact with their friends then they can do a group call and *actually talk*, it’s not rocket science.
My experience as a child dealing with rules against stuff (adult rated movies, video games, soda, etc.) tells me to just assume that kids outside the house are going to use tech available. Maybe I had more permissive parents or was more comfortable with dishonesty? But I don’t assume so.
To be clear I think these rules are good and appreciated the piece. And there was still a value to the expectation in that I never was unaware the thing was bad for me!
The one exception was drinking/drug use which prohibition worked wonders on me (until adulthood) and not at all on my sibling, so, who knows what that says.
See, the trick is to make sure you always have the most up to date gaming consoles, best soda & pizza, and easiest access to the mall. You gotta make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse, lol
Will add that as a millennial it’s interesting to me to see parents here and in other cases caught unaware that the tech itself is transferable and not specific to certain items (eg., a school laptop would be jusg as capable as going on Silk Road let alone WhatsApp).
What I’ve found myself caught unaware of is the speed at which programs grow in popularity and use. Fortnight and Roblox completely passed me by and I was taken by surprise by how important they became in conversations and research about abuse online, let alone kik.
There’s also the fact that social is just what the internet is - like, every website and game has a comment section, chat, or mail system, so it’s not as if a site can be considered “safe,” although there’s obviously more or less dangerous ones.
A big reason I am upset about the turn from social media moderation by Silicon Valley. I’m skeptical that it dissuades disinfo or fights bigotry or whatever, but it does keep those things out of the view of children with normie internet habits.
How close are you to the parents of your daughter's friends? My children are now adults, but one of the most effective stratgies I found was to ask my children which family I should call when they asserted "every body else gets to...". Does your daughter's school have a parents' group or parents' club? Would they be willing to sponsor an information night about the addictive qualities of social media and it's effects on brain development, especially of "tweens"?
Unfortunately, the situation is not going to get better as your daughter ages and technology becomes more pervasive in education. School districts across the U.S. are debating "phone-free" policies now. The question no one seems to ask is "Why should those under the age of 18 need anything more than a 'dumb' phone?"
So at 13 my son has started going down the woods, he's lighting small fires (safely?) and messing about with his friends til 9pm in the dark.
How do I feel about this? Better than sitting on devices? Probably? Is it riskier? I don't know - the risks online are many but stranger danger was drummed into us as a kid and 13 feels young to be out after dark. But then I was out and doing all those things at his age. He says he's tried vaping...urgh.
In the end we've taken a few with tech and other stuff that we just support, keep an open dialogue and, assuming they are working hard at school and things are disruptive to our relationship then we're not going to come down too hard, just try and manage them and help them make sensible decisions.
Not sure what more we can do, we've fought with our eldest over curfews for devices and it's been horrible for everyone.
I had the unique experience of becoming addicted to screens (curse of the zoomer) at a very young age, but being too anxious to engage in risky behavior. My peers would tell me of their Omegle escapades during sleepovers, and even at the age of 13 I was horrified at the fact that the girls I loved were frolicking on a website that would essentially trigger a video call with a completely random person (often creepy old man.) The thrill of doing something so dangerous brought them closer together, I would overhear them giggle about the sleepover that I wasn’t invited to, and I couldn’t even feel left out because I was too busy wrapping my head around the idea that this was happening to my friends. Lol
I would also overhear other female classmates swapping stories about unsolicited images (dick pics) sent to them through Snapchat during 8th grade history.
How about this: our child isn’t getting any non-adult-accompanied internet access at all until he is well into his teens. We have books, board games, music and real-world experiences as the mainstay of his daily life. If that is “backward,” then so be it. We’ve learned that not every technology on offer is a natural good.
90s kid experience: treating the phone as a landline used in one room only, treating the computer as if it’s physically plugged in to the Internet and having a “computer room” for it as in it’s only used in one place, and connection precedes correction but caution comes before the rest as in taking caution when granting access at all-places like discord, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook-all have private messaging and calling features, the ability to send links to other places, and the ability to be added by complete strangers regardless of the safety measures you put in place and knowing no parental control you enable is permanent or replaces active parenting while in use. Connection as in keeping lines of connection and communication open between us and the kids is next and at the forefront. Actively discussing safe and unsafe images, secrecy, where the “right” to privacy ends, all as age appropriate is imperative. And having a connection to your kid has to come before correcting the behavior otherwise they check out and the dopamine seeking part of their brain trumps any rules being set. Also having days completely disconnected from tech to normalize not being attached constantly. And of course parents modeling appropriate use/consumption.
It might be better to disallow both phone and laptop (even if school laptop) in a child's bedroom - it is unfair to expect an 11 year old to resist social media temptation, especially as the tech guys have deliberately designed them to be addictive... parents need to act as parents and not as their children's best friend... also, I think it is common sense to know the 'rules of the house' before allowing a child sleepover in somebody else's home...
i think I agree. To be honest, I didnt know that TikTok was even possible in a browser let alone a school laptop. If we cant shut that down via the school we will be shutting it off a the router.
One of my young tech savvy teenage boys always managed to bypass any attempt to block access!!! In the end, his (school) laptop was only allowed in the kitchen and I would suddenly loom over his shoulder to check what he was up to😁... now that he has left school we laugh about it...
Set an example.
Buy a dumb phone.
Read books.
Can’t argue with that.
Social media at 12 is still incredibly young. Jonathan Haidt recommends 16. I cannot imagine having done the hellscape of middle school with social media.
12 is young but these children are getting access to it much younger than that.
And WhatsApp is social media too.
Jonathan Haid in his Substack After Babel has been raising this alarm with kids and cell phones for quite a few years now. Really good stuff to pay attention to.
https://www.afterbabel.com/
Wow, checked it out. Looks great. That’s my evening gone.
The most important safeguard is keeping the lines of communication open. Because it is likely that our children are exposed to things we don't want them to see, no matter how careful we are to restrict or oversee.
That’s such a great point. It’s easy to just ban things but they also need to know why and for parents to listen too.
It’s difficult to explain the dangers and convince children of those dangers when so many parents take a lenient view. That just makes us look like unnecessarily strict.
I understand what a difficult situation this is for parents, and I agree that the first order of business is for them to set an example for their children. Beyond that, I think screen time should be treated like any other unhealthy behavior. Why not develop age appropriate programs for kids that explains exactly what tech is doing to control their behavior and how it harms them?
I am a childless millennial who surely did things her parents didn’t know of back in the early zeroes when the internet was there and nobody understood what it was. I saw somebody’s genitals in a chatroom together with a friend and I remember feeling embarrassed. I also read arousing stories published in normal magazines (ohhh the zeroes) and when my parents found out about that I wasn’t allowed to read it anymore. The thing is, kids will see things at an age that isn’t appropriate for them. That’s how they learn about their morals, what they like and what they don’t. (Despite these experiences, or maybe because of them, I was quite late with my sexual experiences.)
What I would’ve have wanted was an adult that would take me seriously. Somebody who wouldn’t immediately restrict everything but just talked to me about it. As ‘adults’. I would have told my mum about the creepy man I saw in the chat room if the conversation had always been open and not steered towards things being my fault. So yeah, I think times have changed in terms of even more addictive apps and social media, for sure. But any teenager, in whatever era, just wants to feel seen and understood and held. Especially by her parents. So if she did do things at that sleepover party that you wouldn’t allow for, I think the best thing you can do is give her space to open up about it and guide her in how to process these things instead of creating an environment where she does things secretly.
On a more constructive note the standard advice on this is to be a safe space e.g. if they are hooked on social media then threats to take it away might make them more secretive, so sometimes it is best to take a softly-softly approach, other parents told me. But I’ve not been there yet myself as my children are still young & prefer interacting in-person anyway!
A serious conversation needs to be had with a school like this, that these devices are not being used for school work but are being taken to sleepovers and parties and actually getting in the way of sleep — the school really ought to take note as their system sets norms and culture. Parents need to stick together on it. Just my view! Thanks for your insights on this.
I agree on your second point. Schools need to do more and we will be having a serious conversation with them on the laptops.
Softly softly on social media im not so sure. The thing is, these platforms are designed to draw you in and then drip feed you more extreme stuff to keep you hooked. Then there are things like snapchat where teens are linking up and sharing photos. Thats a really scary thing to deal with when you are 11.
Snapchat was surely originally, obviously, developed for sneaky comms. The idea that you should be able to send photos and then they disappear (although they don’t, not really) in a snap? I believe that it was absolutely designed for soliciting nudes, even if a lot of users just use it for funny stickers and general chat. We don’t need these apps and children don’t either. If they want contact with their friends then they can do a group call and *actually talk*, it’s not rocket science.
Yes, thats the approach we have taken.
Beware disappearing messages in Whatsapp too though.
Check this out: https://youtu.be/Gz7qh_Luvjw?si=8EoEQxxtRla1WxmK. Mix 17 year olds with adventurous 13 year olds.
Thanks - will do
My experience as a child dealing with rules against stuff (adult rated movies, video games, soda, etc.) tells me to just assume that kids outside the house are going to use tech available. Maybe I had more permissive parents or was more comfortable with dishonesty? But I don’t assume so.
To be clear I think these rules are good and appreciated the piece. And there was still a value to the expectation in that I never was unaware the thing was bad for me!
The one exception was drinking/drug use which prohibition worked wonders on me (until adulthood) and not at all on my sibling, so, who knows what that says.
It’s a tricky balance of wanting to give the kids the freedom to make friends and the gut feel of holding them tight.
We’re contemplating having a basket for phones when they all come around here.
But would that just mean they go to someone else’s house?!
See, the trick is to make sure you always have the most up to date gaming consoles, best soda & pizza, and easiest access to the mall. You gotta make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse, lol
All this, but the Wi-Fi goes off! Ha
Will add that as a millennial it’s interesting to me to see parents here and in other cases caught unaware that the tech itself is transferable and not specific to certain items (eg., a school laptop would be jusg as capable as going on Silk Road let alone WhatsApp).
What I’ve found myself caught unaware of is the speed at which programs grow in popularity and use. Fortnight and Roblox completely passed me by and I was taken by surprise by how important they became in conversations and research about abuse online, let alone kik.
There’s also the fact that social is just what the internet is - like, every website and game has a comment section, chat, or mail system, so it’s not as if a site can be considered “safe,” although there’s obviously more or less dangerous ones.
A big reason I am upset about the turn from social media moderation by Silicon Valley. I’m skeptical that it dissuades disinfo or fights bigotry or whatever, but it does keep those things out of the view of children with normie internet habits.
Put the phone and iPad on airplane mode or turn it off. I wonder…?
How close are you to the parents of your daughter's friends? My children are now adults, but one of the most effective stratgies I found was to ask my children which family I should call when they asserted "every body else gets to...". Does your daughter's school have a parents' group or parents' club? Would they be willing to sponsor an information night about the addictive qualities of social media and it's effects on brain development, especially of "tweens"?
Unfortunately, the situation is not going to get better as your daughter ages and technology becomes more pervasive in education. School districts across the U.S. are debating "phone-free" policies now. The question no one seems to ask is "Why should those under the age of 18 need anything more than a 'dumb' phone?"
So at 13 my son has started going down the woods, he's lighting small fires (safely?) and messing about with his friends til 9pm in the dark.
How do I feel about this? Better than sitting on devices? Probably? Is it riskier? I don't know - the risks online are many but stranger danger was drummed into us as a kid and 13 feels young to be out after dark. But then I was out and doing all those things at his age. He says he's tried vaping...urgh.
In the end we've taken a few with tech and other stuff that we just support, keep an open dialogue and, assuming they are working hard at school and things are disruptive to our relationship then we're not going to come down too hard, just try and manage them and help them make sensible decisions.
Not sure what more we can do, we've fought with our eldest over curfews for devices and it's been horrible for everyone.
We have to tow a fine line between either side. Communication is key - with the children and with the other parents.
I had the unique experience of becoming addicted to screens (curse of the zoomer) at a very young age, but being too anxious to engage in risky behavior. My peers would tell me of their Omegle escapades during sleepovers, and even at the age of 13 I was horrified at the fact that the girls I loved were frolicking on a website that would essentially trigger a video call with a completely random person (often creepy old man.) The thrill of doing something so dangerous brought them closer together, I would overhear them giggle about the sleepover that I wasn’t invited to, and I couldn’t even feel left out because I was too busy wrapping my head around the idea that this was happening to my friends. Lol
I would also overhear other female classmates swapping stories about unsolicited images (dick pics) sent to them through Snapchat during 8th grade history.
Snap chat is really dangerous. The disappearing messages just scare the life out of any parent.
How about this: our child isn’t getting any non-adult-accompanied internet access at all until he is well into his teens. We have books, board games, music and real-world experiences as the mainstay of his daily life. If that is “backward,” then so be it. We’ve learned that not every technology on offer is a natural good.
And no, we aren’t religious nut-cases.
90s kid experience: treating the phone as a landline used in one room only, treating the computer as if it’s physically plugged in to the Internet and having a “computer room” for it as in it’s only used in one place, and connection precedes correction but caution comes before the rest as in taking caution when granting access at all-places like discord, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook-all have private messaging and calling features, the ability to send links to other places, and the ability to be added by complete strangers regardless of the safety measures you put in place and knowing no parental control you enable is permanent or replaces active parenting while in use. Connection as in keeping lines of connection and communication open between us and the kids is next and at the forefront. Actively discussing safe and unsafe images, secrecy, where the “right” to privacy ends, all as age appropriate is imperative. And having a connection to your kid has to come before correcting the behavior otherwise they check out and the dopamine seeking part of their brain trumps any rules being set. Also having days completely disconnected from tech to normalize not being attached constantly. And of course parents modeling appropriate use/consumption.