this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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Why would it ever be remotely acceptable to look through your kid’s phone? One can hardly think of a more serious violation of privacy. Not just for the kid but for all the people the kid communicates with. It should not be socially acceptable to admit that you’ve done this.
If they’re causing problems, address them another way. Take the phone away if you need to, but do not turn your house into North Korea.
Because a parent should have the right to monitor their child's internet exposure just as our parents told us we couldn't watch R movies or play violent video games...imagine for two seconds she didn't have innocent pictures of a video game character, but the parent found she was in contact with a groomer and sending pics. Maybe she's the bad one getting into drugs, or bullying other kids. It's a parents job to intervene and to help their kid - you can't do that if you don't know what's going on.
How many stories have you heard about cyber-bulling, grooming, or "send me a pic" scams that led to suicide or other terrible outcomes? - way too many. In a lot of the post-interviews, the parents responses are always something like "I never knew this was happening, my 9 year old Billy was so happy the 20 minutes a day I saw him outside of his room. I never imagined that his 'online friends' on 4chanclone77 were telling him to send pics and that he should die everyday."
For a kid its protection over privacy everyday - same reason that you might want to know if your kid is spending a lot of "extracurricular time" at the teacher's house.
Once they're a teen the training wheels slowly come off until they're not needed, hopefully by 14, after they've been taught about the dark side of the world and how to protect themselves from that crap, and know that they can come to me with any problem no matter what, weather they caused it or not, and I'll help them figure it out.
is difference between monitoring and looking through kids phone
Not at all. How are you supposed to monitor without being aware of what's on the device?
app
So just let someone else monitor them for the parent and send a report?
the parent isnt the one looking in the phone
The monitoring app would look through the kid's phone in stead of the parent. It's the same thing.
A parent looking through a phone would have to see the actual content to know what's going on
Monitoring apps and network monitors check shit like "what websites are they even connecting to" and can shut down access to shit without ever being aware of the actual content at hand
Parents have no need to go through their child's phone in the modern year if they use tools given to them properly
what does the parent see
Obviously, some random creep who convinced you to let them look on your kids phone for their "safety" is. Some things should just be left up to the parent...
You got me thinking. I'm planning on having kids in the Future and thought what I would do.
Since my Kids will grow up with all this, I will start teaching them early on what is okay and what not. I guess I will trust them as long as there is no reason not to. Like If a another Parent or a Teacher confronts me about that my child might bully someone I will check their phone but not randomly with no reason. Simply because if I would do this regularly my Child would just delete or hide everything he/she doesn't want me to see. And I'm not willing to install spyware on my child's Phone. I would rather launch a "suprise attack" if necessary, not have constant surveillance. And like I said, only if I have really good reasons.
Children need spaces to talk without adults and I hope my Child will come to me when something weird is going on.
I think that's a reasonable approach. Personally, I don't want to be a helicopter parent, as that would be awful for the kid, and at the same time I don't want to be oblivious to what is happening in my children's digital life.
I think the closest thing to 'spyware' I would consider is finding a way to prevent browser history from getting deleted and put on general web filters to block porn, sketchy sites, social media, etc. As they get older, the restrictions lighten up to zero filters. all the while teaching them internet safety as they grow so they aren't cluless.
The internet, and computer itself, are a fantastic place to explore and learn and I don't want to hold that back from them.
some kids could go down a different route though
like imagine a six year old on lemmy for example
I used to make accounts on forums when I was six.
Easy, they can have a phone when they can afford it themselves. Responsibility issue solved.
Depends on the age of the child and also if the child understands that the parents have access to it and will make sure they are safe.
There is a healthy balance.