I have a dirty little secret…..I love the technology available today! The plethora of information available at your fingertips. Whether it be social media, news articles, game scores or just games, I love it! I love all of it!
If I love it at the age of 51, what do you think a 15-year old thinks? In some cases, younger child have phones now, children that are 8, 9 and 10 years old. I understand why you want them to have phones. You want to be able to communicate with them when they are away from home.
However, when a young person has a phone it opens a world that they don’t specifically need to be exposed to yet. I have seen a lot of parents accept the fact that their children know more about the phones and social media more than them.
This will probably hit some hot buttons, but if you are going to give your child a phone shouldn’t it be our job as parents, to know more than they do and have some parent controls established on their phones. This is a very serious issue and debate across the nation. However, from one mom to another….it is your job to protect your child. They can find anything on the internet and I mean anything. For an example, my son was doing a project on the Clock “Big Ben” in London, he was maybe 12 years old. He got my phone, typed in “Big Ben” and you know what came up? Naked photos of women and their full bottoms exposed. Who would have ever thought, I was standing beside him and we were both mortified. (Which, if you don’t have parent controls look at their browser history, you just never know.) Trust me; there are predators out there, so protect your children!
There are very suitable parent controls on the phone that you can manage by a passcode. Go to an apple store and they will help you. YouTube has videos to help you as well. Don’t be that lazy parent or naïve parent, it will come back and bite you in the butt.
All my children were given phones in 7th or 8th grade with parent controls on them. I had rules assigned to them, I knew their passcode to get in the phone (they didn’t know mine that is separate for a parent control) and at 9pm every night it was placed in the kitchen. They slept upstairs, we were downstairs by the kitchen.
Whatever rules you make, stick to them and don’t be naïve about social media. Kids are kids and they will be curious. Let’s let them be kids as long as they can!