That’s one thing I decided already not to do is spy on them. I could easily view his entire online life and sure maybe it would protect him somehow if he was getting into some really dark porn or talking to some pedophile or something, but it’s such a massive invasion of privacy I think I could never forgive myself and the justification is bullshit.

There are no shortcuts to good parenting, spying on your kids traffic is a massive intrusion into their life.

I hope at least to get to the point where they can talk to me about weird shit going on instead of me having to detect it for them right?

I see it differently.

I watch my kid at the park now. When he is older, he will get to go further with less intervention/overwatch on my part. Eventually of course go without me.

Same for online. At first I will be beside him. I will educate what to watch for, what the motives of the actors are and how to work with them. Baby steps.

Later, he will get to go online without me watching every move. But I will review DNS logs. And I will let him know I am doing so, preferably in front of him.

Eventually, he will go without me. Although I will likely have a traffic shaping thing so I can have some bandwidth too!

Tried that for a time with eldest daughter. Afterwards she went down hill fast.

Tried looking into what she had been up to. Burned the dammed phone.

Shit you’re giving me the fear…

Edit: I mean… any tips?

No social media.

It destroys mental health of many teenage girls.

No unsupervised texting.

Let them have friends at your place.

I was that teenage girl. It doesn't have the effect you want it to. My parents weren't "preserving my innocence" or "sheltering me from the bad bad world." They were just teaching me to hide better and to perform for them. I would get cash back at "safe" stores to avoid my purchases being monitored, my boyfriend bought me a prepaid phone, I hung out at the library all the time to use social media, I stayed the night at my girlfriends' houses and they would help me sneak out.

I'm now an adult in therapy dealing with all the coping mechanisms and trust issues I developed and unsurprisingly I have a very distant relationship with my parents.

What do you think they did wrong and might they have done better?

I guess one approach would be to tell them that you will be able to see their traffic. Even show them that servers have logs etc. After a time, show them how to use computers more privately, and tell them when you stop keeping logs.

Why would you want to do this? I will warn my children (when they are old enough) about pedophiles and let them know how pedophiles might try and manipulate then, by pretending to be friends or by threatening them or even by convincing them to send naked pictures and blackmailing them. I will let my kids know that no matter how deep they go they can always, and should as soon as needed, come to me or their mother for help. I don't see the need to spy on them or see what they might be searching for or looking at.

I could see this changing if I notice bad behavior. If they're hanging out with bad influences or ordering drugs online or something I might intervene electronically. I'm still undecided about whether to enforce electronics limits (I use mine a lot). It doesn't seem like you should default to intrusive parenting though.

This. Trust is key.

Depending on how you want to influence your kids interests, a friendly cat'n'mouse game might give them a very real education.

"No wifi access until you figure out how to spoof your MAC to this."

Lock down your network so well they're forced to become a l33t hax0r.

'Popular hacker software includes "Comet Cursor", "Bonzi Buddy" and "Flash"', well, technically they were all used to hack, just in the opposite direction.

Did exactly this, and it’s so far going pretty well.

Anything questionable, I can confront, or be prepared for, they know it’s happening, I’m good with it…

And then my punk ass teenager decided to change the id on the phone to get past the controls.

I’m mad, but more proud. Way to think around the problem!

You’re grounded.

“Hacking” has real world consequences if you get caught. Try harder, padawan.