Teens are just people with very little experience dealing with their seemingly huge amounts of emotion so parents should help them process. We can't protect them from everything so trying to just hide the bad stuff is not going to work, folks will grow up without the tools to deal with it when things go wrong.
Keeping up with what's going on and jumping in when they get stuck, either because the situation is overwhelming, they don't have the proper tools, or they're just putting too much weight on their shoulders, is super valuable.
Unfortunately, with all of the pressures of daily life, combined with the struggles of folks in lower socio-economic environments, lots of people do not have enough time or surplus emotional budget to give it the proper attention, they're just trying to survive.
In normal words it means that they have a lot of freedom and I am not particularly bitchy about that. I tell them they have to go to bed but I do not care too much if they do when on vacation. One day I will get mad and force them to do that, and they know what they did wrong and that this is the"punition". They usually come, beg a bit and I let go.
So they know that there is a lot of vagueness about the "rules" within this area, which they make use of. Also the fact that they have two parents and when they get a "no" from one, they may get a "yes" from the other (and the first one would not care)
Then come the walls. The walls are rigid and extremely strong. They know that they must not try to break them, because terrible things will happen. The most terrible thing would be a loss of trust - something they do not want. They know that we trust them and that the whole flat area above is because of that.
They also know that they can come to us with questions, to which they will always receive an answer. Some of which they will agree with, some not. There are no taboo topics (though some were complicated, when the older one asked me what a whore is (or later, what cunnillingus is) at the ripe age of 10, and the younger one (8 at that time) ran with a chair from the other room to be part of the audience...).
They also know that they can talk with us about things they will do someday - and how to do them safely. Sex is an obvious one, but also alcohol. The younger one (14) told me today that he would like to try how it feels to be drunk when he is 18. I told him that they are risks and that he must be very careful. To what he said "at home of course! with you around just in case!". I hope it will be this way but I listed the risks anyway.
Now that I think of it, we do not even exactly know what the walls are. Certainly things like theft, but they are so remote from our ethics that we do not list them.
This is a terrifyingly difficult prospect. I guess almost nobody in the world is so well equipped for that. There are really hard problems that nobody can "deal" with alone, like the death of loved ones, or social ostracism from your whole peer group. No matter how "well equipped" you are, some things may be simply overwhelming.
EDIT: I learned this the hard way. I am well off economically and emotionally, always had a cushioned life, I became the father in a happy family, really felt totally invincible. But something happened at the age of 41 (sudden death of my dad, in very bad circumstances) that I was not prepared at all to deal with. I used to mock people who couldn't cope with their own problems, but as an adult I learned that some problems may be really too big to rationalize off. I guess many teenagers find themselves in such difficult situations that cannot really solve (like being a victim of overwhelming social pressure), regardless of how loving and close their parents are.
They could do try do things behind his back, they had full window to do it but trust was so ingrained that I don't recall him ever finding out huge problems.
Which doesn't mean they wouldn't plead and beg and try to cajole to get something.
At some point he would explain the rationale behind a decision but in the the end when push came to shove if a "no" was spoken it was a final "no". He isn't forced to justify his decisions and it's accepted as is and I think somehow trust plays a part here. Because his children knows that it's not the thing to get (smartphone, movie time, etc.) that is at play but trust (edit_begin) ultimately trust and the only way to get that thing would be by breaking trust (edit_end). They have to keep their parent's trust and parents know they can only get that trust by actually trusting. So, it works out. YMMV.
Having been on both sides of this, as a teenager and having saw my siblings go through it, I don't envy you either.
But I can talk about my personal experiences. I was very introverted as a kid, and tools like Facebook gave me a bit of social autonomy and confidence, and it absolutely strengthened my in-person relationships. I know others that feel the same.
Not being contactable via the internet definitely can cause social ostracism, but a reasonable middle ground for me is something like Discord or WhatsApp, which is semi private and avoids the toxicity of The Feed.
>How would you handle it if they bought their own 2nd cellphone, and only used the cellular network to escape your control.
That's what really happens. Lock your kid down? They'll get right around it by going outside of the infrastructure and devices you supply. They'll just carry two phones around, and you just won't be wiser about the second one unless you catch them with it.
It won't work with every child... but I am a big believer in fostering the means for a child to make the right decisions for themselves. Yes, the social pressures are immense. But you know, I do remember following my dad's advice to get up a few times an hour, exercise and stretch, when playing video games. Older children worry about their health, and try to make good decisions within their abilities, just like adults do. Perhaps we can't really protect them from this per se, and can only try to help the next generation save themselves, from this mess we've made for them.
I'd like to think I was pretty mature at that age, and my parents would like to think they had done a good enough job raising me that this would never be a problem, and it never was. But we can clearly see from stories of kids spending large amounts of money in FIFA or mobile games or whatever, that this is not true for every kid.
The fact that online purchases were a slow user experience in the 90s meant that I had the concept of purchases, and paying back my parents in cash reinforced the concept of spending real money. Since I had my own savings, I could also see the impact to myself if I spent more than reasonable on Pokemon cards or whatever.
If it had just been pressing a button in a video game like it is for modern kids, and wasn't trusted to mind my own money (or that money was just numbers in a bank account), would I have realized the same at age 12? Or would my parents ended up as the ones that "should have known better". How much of that is good parenting, versus a different environment? I don't know.
I don't have kids of my own, and my life situation is such that I don't consider it a practical near term possibility, but I'd like to think I could raise my own kids so I could extend that level of trust, but a lot of people would see just the fact that the kids had that kind of information irresponsible in its entirety.
It's not like the old days when you knew they'd find a Playboy magazine eventually.
Actually, would retail stores even sell a data plan to an unaccompanied minor? You could buy a SIM online I suppose, possibly via a gift card, and watch the mail carefully to ensure the package isn't seen, but it all seems like a lot of work for a small amount of web browsing.
I’d think that in the worst case scenario, the child goes through the process once, browses the internet for a couple of days on a super crappy device, uses up their data, and realizes the whole thing wasn't really worth it. Maybe they do it again in a few months when they're particularly bored; whatever, it's a few days out of the year.
CEX (UK secondhand games/electronics) will sell you a HTC Salsa* for £3 ($4.12) and Argos (generic catalogue warehouse) will sell you a SIM for £1 ($1.37) that you can then top up with £10 ($13.75) at ATMs, etc., for 7GB of data.
Total cost: £14 ($19.24) which is probably under a week's worth of lunch money these days.
* Should still work on 3G HSDPA 2100MHz.
A prepaid data plan will set you back about 25 a month here, but Canada has infamously high mobile fees. I know people in the EU who pay about $10 a month for unlimited mobile data.
And yes. They will sell one to an unaccompanied minor. Sure, maybe not a 6 year old, but if a 14 year old comes in with the money, that's a sale. There's no law against it (at least here). And unlike with a 14 year old trying to buy a giant butcher knife or spraypaint or whatever, society doesn't seem to have a "uhh, wait a minute" catch on this particular one. It's just a phone. Every kid has a phone, right? They probably just broke their last one. Again.
It's the plan I was thinking the store wouldn't sell, don't those have to be in someone's name? (But I might be wrong, I've never used a prepaid SIM.)
> I know people in the EU who pay about $10 a month for unlimited mobile data.
Perhaps, but not on a prepaid plan. I'm sure you can't buy a post-paid plan as a minor, that wouldn't make any sense!
Prepaid tends to be cheaper in Ireland. Because postpaid is theoretically subsidising your phone and even sim only plans tend to get price shopped around against phone included plans. The cheapest postpaid plan with unlimited data is €30/month without a phone or €55/month with a phone [3][4]
1: https://www.three.ie/buy/prepay.html#prepay-phone-plans
2: https://www.eir.ie/mobile/prepay/
> the whole thing wasn't really worth it
I have the impression that they would be trilled, and develop cravings for those data packet escapes. And the cravings would be much worse because of the artificial scarcity
Parents are relying too much on screens as a form of parenting/entertainment without teaching these critical skills.
Start with limits and let them earn the right to have more access. When you kid starts riding a bike you don't let them ride everywhere, you let them stay on the block, and if they understand safety and are being safe, you slowly expand the range they can go.
Contra: whether they're online or not, conversations about them will take place. And if they're not online then how can they defend themselves, either as an individual or by herding their friends in their defence as well.
Is that a thing? I have plenty of friends that use Instagram but they don't look at each other's stuff or talk about what someone they know in real life posted. If they care about people they know seeing it they put it on Facebook or in the group chat.
Being prevented from using a social media platform at that age, that one's peers are all on would definitely lead to possible social issues in some groups.
I'm assuming the commenter I was responding to is not a teenager (given mention of Facebook being their peer group's primary social media platform), so their experience of their peers being able to use social media in a more healthy manner is unlikely to map to the teenage experience.
Some assumptions on my part. Not the most constructive "best possible interpretation" response, I'll admit. I'm also not expressing a strong opinion that kids should be "allowed" or "blocked" from usage of social media. It's a very tricky issue but absolutely not one to be dismissive of.
Instagram is not an essential part of any of this. If the worst thing your kid can say about you when they hit adulthood is "daddy didn't let me on Instagram," then you did a phenomenal job.
I'll wait here with bated breath for proof of your intellectual and emotional superiority.
If you want children to have valid and engaging social experiences then encourage them to do so without a screen.
In the end you don't want to be friends you want to set clear guidelines and expectations.
Venting f-bombs teaches them to vent f-bombs.. not great.
Your kids will be back for money regardless..
> This is the I better be my child's best friend or do what they want or they won't like me and will never talk to me again parenting style.
No, there's a great honking excluded middle there between the “fuck off” parenting style and the “I must be my kids best friend” style.
Social media is social interaction. It's an inextricable part, if not the centerpiece for many kids these days. This is the modern equivalent of saying "no friends allowed"/"you can only see and talk to your friends for a couple of minutes a day", as hyperbolic as that may seem. Extreme rejection and rebellion is a logical outcome from that.
Truth is they'd be better off without it, for as long as possible. Focusing on media instead of school is a great way to end up working at a gas station later in life.
Or in a ditch somewhere, when the pressure gets too much.
Here at my times kids were told they would be shoveling dirt if they had neglected school. It may be anegdotal but I know many of such school low performers who today own excavators, dumper trucks fleet, construction businesses. The point is they do much better than some of their now blue collar school peers burned out after years of studying and "career" often pushed to impress parents and social circle.
It’s a dead-end job with no fulfillment, low pay, low flexibility, and not much free time for intellectual growth.
> who today own excavators, dumper trucks fleet, construction businesses
Cool, those are great things that are explicitly not “working at a gas station”.
> Extreme rejection and rebellion is a logical outcome from that.
If that’s the result then you are failing as a parent.
Don’t get me wrong, I think the world would be a much better place if the big players in social media ceased to exist, but no single person can act as an island, and you need to understand the problem well enough to give your kids alternatives rather than just put your foot down and say “no” — even us adults have trouble staying off whichever social network our friends and family use.
This isn’t about being “socially inept” — if everyone simultaneously agreed to not use social media, we could and would all go back to what we did before[0] — but even knowing the nature of the beast, dismissing its power, its pull, its allure, is a Canute move.
[0] @iamstupidsimple was saying people not on the contact list would be more likely to be forgotten, and that’s true regardless of if the person not on the list is socially awkward or highly charismatic; before Facebook, the list was a piece of paper, but the same applies to that paper list.
When your kids’ friends send a request to all their social media contacts list, it takes extra effort for your kids’ friends to realise your kids are one of the few people who aren’t in that list and need to be contacted separately.
Is that fair? No.
Is it nice? No.
Is it fun? No.
Is it malicious? No.
Is it a lack of interest on the part of your kids’ friends? No.
Is it a reason for your kids to secretly make their own accounts without you knowing about it? Yes.
Of course, this is all judging just by the tone of your posts, so it might not be (and I hope it isn't) a true reflection of reality. Kids are smart, they just lack experience. But they still deserve respect from day 1, and if they have it then most of the usual parenting problems never surface.
> Of course, this is all judging just by the tone of your posts
That is quite the assumption. Perhaps I communicate less delicately than you are accustomed.
An enterprising teenager may earn money in undesirable ways.
I’m a parent and I’m thinking I’ll handle this as a clear you can have it or you can’t to avoid the grey and black market incentives.
What do you do when they mow some lawns and do just that?
What you're describing sounds like it would hold back your child's social development. I wouldn't recommend it.
But surveilling on them will. You're using your own active involvement as a crutch to compensate for the fact that you can't leave them to their own devices and know they'll do the right thing.
But how can they do that if you don't teach them and you don't give them the right chance to show they can do it? You're not teaching them to independently use the technology responsibly (or not at all), but rather you're forcing a behavior into place.
It's a very short-term solution that will backfire when they're put out there on their own and you're not there to push them in the right direction. Sooner or later they'll need to figure out how to do things independently. Maybe some active handling is okay for a while, but eventually, you've got to take off the training wheels, no?
They engage socially in the real world. They don’t need social media to fail and learn from failure. They have every opportunity to fail for real among real people.
When they get out on their own hopefully they learned they don’t need social media to be happy or drugs or alcohol. At that point they are free to make their own decisions and face all the consequences without the help of a parent.
Ah, but how would they have learned that? After all, they're not doing it because they "learned" it, they're doing it because you're forcing them to do it. You're never actually "unit testing" their ability to come to the right independent judgment on their own, because you don't trust them to. But because you don't trust them to, they may not develop the experience to independently come to probably the same conclusion you came to. And if they do, you certainly aren't helping them.
Rather, what they're learning is that they'll have to go and buy their own prepaid cell phone on their own and get better and better at hiding it because "Dad is an uptight Boomer so what he doesn't know about this prepaid cell phone won't hurt him" which is probably not the lesson you're trying to teach them. If that mentality gets to drugs, alcohol, and sex, you may be in for more than you bargained for -- whether you pick up on it or not.
Kids are very, very smart. They have much more time than you, the vigor of youth, the ability to see everything with fresh eyes and work things out from first principles -- and not just that, they have a whole network of /friends/ who have the exact same resources and who they can work with as a team.
You're not going to stop them from experimenting. You'll just stop them from being open about it with you.
NetNanny, which was basically a very visible firewall, automatically incentivized a search for more network access, and treating that access like a fat kid in a candy store for much longer than I’m happy with today.
The early “find my iPhone” tech that cell providers rolled out probably worked well until it sent me, a 16 y/o with angst issues, a text saying my cell phone was now enrolled and being tracked. Fairly enraging at the time.
The counter though is with some knowledge of silent firewalls and IAM, I could see considering something similar But significantly More silent, as a parent.
There is fairly shocking discussion around kids<>porn access<>serious issues with healthy sexuality. Screen time is turning young kids into zombies; there is just no planet where unrestricted tech access is good for the growing brain. The current Gen pop attitudes towards tech don’t offer much form of support - their kids are buried in an iPhone, my personal parenting policy will be a inherent critique of their parenting. PTAs see no issue with default Facebook use, thus enrolling my children in an data logging system I specifically work to avoid.
Add in disinfo campaigns and the young mind…
All this to say: invisible training wheels, or rather invisible walls and some tracking, seem to be the only way to raise a kid who must know tech, but won’t learn how to handle full exposure to it until well after 18 (bc adults are struggling too). Conversely, if that surveillance is discovered, it’s hell to pay as a parent. Tricky.
I'm not a parent yet but I dread this situation. I'm good at denying urges personally, so I'd tell them desire is a constant part of life, we can't always get what we crave. Further, I'd state actual facts about girls mental health, they will see and be exposed to unhealthy mindsets on this app.
Some good that'll do. When I have kids, it'll be "dad, why can't we join the VR orgy party? It's not real sex!"