In light of what has happened with the Harvard students posting memes that got their admission rescinded (but not to beat that dead horse here) - What do/did you do when you find out your child isn’t using social media responsibly? What if you discover your child has a “finsta” or has created a psuedonym FB account? Or, their FB information is completely public and contains very inappropriate language, images, etc.
Do/did you lock them down? Or monitor them with one of those stalker apps that bcc’s all their texts to you? (Which likely just made them use other apps instead…) The consequences of this stuff can be devastating and a lot of kids don’t get it at 13, or 15, and some of them even at 17.
My daughters both have Insta and “finsta.” Both are private, and the latter isn’t traceable to the former unless you’re a close friend. So, it’s fine. It’s the kids with public social media accounts that could benefit from a little education about it.
I very closely monitored my kid’s electronic use and neither had smart phones until high school. When they did get phones they went on the charger in the kitchen at 9 pm for the night. The family computer was in the living room for all to use prior to high school as well. Once they got laptops we had serious discussions about social media and I had their passwords. Yes, I checked their accounts occasionally but I could tell from their friends’ lists that they were surrounding by good kids and chose to trust their judgment from that point on (around 15).
My son wasn’t much into computers at all or social media, more about gaming. I didn’t allow a lot of the games his friend’s were playing but I’m not stupid enough to think he never played them, it just didn’t happen in my home. The military had a mandatory seminar about social media, the dos and donts and they had pretty tough consquences if they found you were not adhering to their policies.
My D didn’t open a social media account until her senior year in high school and has since closed it as well. Once she got to college she couldn’t stand how everyone was always on their phones and decided she didn’t want to be one of those people. She apparently has a real dislike of tinder? She has recently said she feels like she is left out of social events because she is in the dark without facebook. Not sure what she will do about that.
Now, me…I like my facebook and my message boards and find that I sometimes spend too much time on them, especially in the morning before work when I could be cleaning or doing something more useful. But, before computers, remember those things called “soaps” that our mothers and grandmothers were addicted to LOL ?
As for what would I do if I found out either of my kids was being dishonest about their accounts? Well, let’s assume they are 12-16. I would remove the electronic from the equation for a bit. If I found out they were being inappropriate, I’d remove the electronic for quite some time. I’d be pretty upset if they were posting anything I deemed inappropriate, more hurt then angry I think. Hopefully they were raised better than that.
When my kids were about 13ish and wanted to create a Facebook account, my rule was I had to have access to it for the first year or so, so that they could prove their responsibility on social media to my satisfaction. Having that kind of oversight and conversation early is the key IMO. I also made sure their Facebook accounts were on lockdown so only the bare minimum was visible.
I am another who made my kids wait on smart phones, well into high school. They survived fine.
I’m truly shocked how many people have so much of their social media readily available to the general public. So easy to set the settings so only “friends” can see it. Obviously, many people don’t agree based on what is freely available to any eyes.
What exactly is the point of creating a finsta anyway? What possible good comes out of it?
“The military had a mandatory seminar about social media, the dos and donts and they had pretty tough consquences if they found you were not adhering to their policies.”
I think it’s completely unrealistic for parents to say “I won’t let my kids be on social media.” That’s what my very well-meaning parents, who just wanted to protect me from all the nastiness out there, said. I made an FB profile anyway and would just check it when they weren’t around (on school computers, on home computers before they got home from work, etc.) That’s how kids made plans and interacted with each other, and I would have been kind of socially isolated and left out without it. And nowadays you can get a very cheap burner smartphone, so banning/restricting smartphones, locking down apps/texting, or keeping computers in public areas might not help; a determined kid will find a way.
I think it’s better (at least for FB) to let your kid have an account, but insist that they friend you. You’ll be able to see what they post and like, but at the same time they’ll be able to interact with their peers. Insist that their profile is set to “friends only.” Insist that they allow you to follow them on Instagram, and so on.
But beyond that? I wouldn’t really interact with them on those online platforms too much if at all (they might get embarrassed and start to be more sneaky about it) but you’ll be able to watch out for inappropriate postings and weird behavior/warning signs. Watch, and step in if things start to get bad, but for the most part let them interact on social media as if you weren’t there. Allowing them to have the fantasy of freedom, for lack of a better phrase, might discourage a lot of kids from lying to their parents about social media usage.
I agree with @apresski’s take. It is much more helpful to acknowledge that your kid will be on social media and help them develop wise behavior around it, rather than censoring it and being completely shut out. It’s better to have the channels of communication open. We’ve been FB friends with our kids as soon as they were old enough to open accounts (and yes, we were strict about making them wait until 13).
What’s really amusing is when the grandparents also friend them. My mother has no clue that FB walls are not the way to privately message people, so she publicly excoriated my D for using bad language a couple of years ago, much to the enjoyment of her peers.
Even at the high school level,students thinking they can get away with doing things on SnapChat because the image is fleeting and the creator is notified if someone saves the image. (I’m told by my more cool DS/DD.) They don’t consider that someone can use another phone to screen-shot the SnapChat. Some inappropriate students were busted last year with this technique for bullying other students and disrespecting HS team/club sponsors .
I worry about this. Both my girls have been caught at age 13 doing things online that I’ll just call “sneaky.” Obviously they weren’t very good at being sneaky, as I caught them both, but it’s hard to rebuild trust. A friend of mine had a near miss when her now adult daughter was 13. She had met a 15yo boy who played guitar online and messaged him. A lot. Next thing you know, police are arresting the 32yo predator posing as a 15yo after he flew across the country to meet up with the girl. You would think she would have learned her lesson, but at 16 she was using a burner phone to text inappropriately with a boy. As a now adult, she looks back in horror with what she did, but like most teens, thought nothing of it at the time. And that was the era of chat rooms. Now there’s so many more options, some of which can be hard to track.
I’ll admit I did stupid stuff in my teens, it just wasn’t recorded online and I was limited to doing stupid stuff with only people I actually knew. The consequences seem more far-reaching for today’s teens.
@doschicos My kids created their finstas for a smaller group of friends than their general “real” one, so they can have more freedom to say what they want, be grumpy about teachers, etc. All their friends do the same, although truthfully, snapchat is more popular regardless.
My kids try to be as invisible as possible on social media. If you try looking up their names you end up with tons of hits, none of which are in any way connected to them.
I think it is much more difficult now than it was a decade ago. Snap chat came along while my #3 was in high school and I worried, but I figured by that point we’d make the points enough that hopefully it mostly sunk in. If I was parenting a young teen now, I’d probably use the take away the phone for something inappropriate and the same old lecturing…I don’t know what more one can do. I do like very much that our high school does not allow phones during class time, phones have to be locked in the locker or deposited at the principle’s office. I know a sibling has trouble with one kid who watches movies during the boring classes and I can’t imagine a high school in this day and age would allow kids to have phone on their person during class.
I don’t think the situation is nearly as futile as aspresski makes it out to be. To buy a burner phone and minutes, a kid without a job may need to ask you for money. A kid with a burner phone might get ratted out by siblings. You could go old school and search your kid’s room for a burner phone. If you’re tech savvy, there’s numerous ways to possibly detect whether your kid has been using a burner phone.
“I can’t imagine a high school in this day and age would allow kids to have phone on their person during class.”
My kids school absolutely did. Only on test days did they have to put it on the teachers desk ( many have grids where each kid puts their phone). The attitude in their honors and AP classes seemed to be “if you aren’t paying attention it’s your problem not mine.” This was excellent training for college.
what do you do when your kids nude photos are being sent around the entire school and than the town followed by ending up all over various internet sites? because we all know that nobody takes nude photos on their cell phone(sarcasm) and the internet is forever!
@zobroward - For your sake, I really hope that’s a hypothetical question. Because it would be extremely hard to go through that. I know in my area there have been at least 3 teens that have killed themselves over cyber bullying over the past decade and IIRC, two of them started with a “private” photo being shared. If this isn’t hypothetical, I wish you the strength to get through it and hope that the school and authorities can help.
