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I've worked in tech for 20+ years and I have 4 young kids. We allow our teenager use of a locked down smartphone, with a clearly explained zero expectation of p

I've worked in tech for 20+ years and I have 4 young kids. We allow our teenager use of a locked down smartphone, with a clearly explained zero expectation of privacy. We don't allow any social media on the phone itself. YouTube and other sites can be used under supervision for agreed on lengths of time. Once or twice a week my wife or I will go through their text messages with them and ask questions about anything that seems off. It is a LOT of work. But so far, it has paid off. The more responsible the usage, the more freedom we give. When bad patterns start surfacing, we rein it in. IMO parents are reluctant to intervene because they either don't know where to start, or struggle with how much work it is.

zachturn 3y ago
> Once or twice a week my wife or I will go through their text messages with them and ask questions about anything that seems off. > IMO parents are reluctant to intervene because they either don't know where to start, or struggle with how much work it is. There are also parents who disagree with this ideology and would find this an invasion of their child's privacy. I'd caution against the thinking "we find this valuable and if people don't do it it's because they aren't willing to put as much work in as we do"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- citizenkeen 3y ago
  The mantra we use with our kids is "We will try and respect your privacy but we aren't bound by it." As I often tell my son, "It's your room but it's my house." And we make it extra clear that the moment they go online, they have no expectation of privacy. Better they learn that someone's snooping now than be surprised when it's Google/Facebook/NSA.
  - greatwave1 3y ago
    I think most children find it significantly more invasive for their parents to be snooping through their messages, than to have that information being collected in some government database.
    - swader999 3y ago
      For sure, and you are also reading messages and seeing pics from their friends when you snoop and monitor. There's no great solution to this.
- dundercoder 3y ago
  That's a fair point, and I don't mean to insist that my way is the best way. It works for us, it surely won't work for all. But I am certain that with some effort on the part of the parents to be intentional, a good system can be reached. Our system continues to evolve, and with time and additional responsibility/freedom, will evolve eventually to us as parents handing complete control over.
  - pxoe 3y ago
    that imposition of a lack of privacy just seems like a sure way to not only make them seek actual privacy elsewhere - moving their communications to other devices, and just doing stuff outside of "surveilled" devices or any devices at all, but to make it so that they won't ever share their actual private matters. they will have their problems - just, outside of your reach, and they will not talk about them with you. (why? any reason, ranging from 'you don't get to surveil me - i'm going to have my privacy', to 'there's a looming possibility of blowback - I don't want to deal with that (or just, being afraid of that), so i'm just gonna keep my appearances neat (while doing real stuff elsewhere - and keeping that to myself')
iamacyborg 3y ago
I can understand being this careful with young children's usage of a device but giving teenagers zero privacy (to the extent of going through their personal messages) seems wild to me.
- foobarian 3y ago
  This is how you raise a generation that thinks intrusive monitoring and zero privacy is perfectly normal, or even worse craves it.
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    Maybe it's how you raise a generation that understands you shouldn't post a single thing online that you don't want the whole world to know about. Prior generations have entirely failed to understand that, certainly (cf. Zuckerberg's infamous "dumb fucks" comment—which, go figure, we know about because he sent it as an instant message)
    - foobarian 3y ago
      Funny thing is (IIRC) he sent it over IRC, which as far as these things go is relatively ephemeral :-)
      - yamtaddle 3y ago
        Ha, yeah, reinforces the idea that if you don't have crazy-good opsec you better not post anything online—including in places as relatively-safe as IRC or direct messages—that you don't want in the newspaper, with your name next to it.
        foobarian 3y ago
        I still cringe at the immature garbage we did in college over telnet and unsecured NIS/Ethernet Unix boxes not questioning whether anyone was recording packet traces for posterity. Luckily disk space was super expensive back then. :-)
grvdrm 3y ago
I'm not going to comment on the specifics of your process. There isn't always a right or wrong to handle this stuff. Your comment and the parent point to the theme that matters to me most: do you care to understand/show interest in what your kids are doing. Forget about social media - just think about TV. You can park your kid in front of the TV and forget about them, converse with them as they watch, or something in between. Your kids also need quiet/down time as well. Again, not to say I'm right, but I try not to litigate what is happening so much, and instead I try to just be an active participant in whatever my kids are doing. The counter where you restrict or limit or challenge doesn't always work out better in the end.
- dundercoder 3y ago
  >do you care to understand/show interest in what your kids are doing. This I think precisely embodies what works and what doesn't. If this is your goal, you'll figure out something that works.
  - grvdrm 3y ago
    Absolutely. It is the thing that actually matters.
Tade0 3y ago
Personally I wouldn't implement such a policy purely because it's against my values. People generally value their privacy. How are children supposed to learn the same if their's is not respected?
- Filligree 3y ago
  Do children learn the value of privacy by having it, or because theirs isn't respected? In my experience, there's a lot of the second.
  - Tade0 3y ago
    I can't help but think it's in significant part survivorship bias. I mean, I've seen this sort of controlling behaviour carry over for three generations(that I know of) among my relatives - the person to (hopefully - the jury is out on that) break the chain moved countries.
- throwbadubadu 3y ago
  Someone also needs to raise the future people who do the nice work at the NSA, FBI and the likes..
trillic 3y ago
As a young adult who was recently a teenager, I can't help but feel concerned about the potential dangers of having no expectation of privacy from our parents, especially when it comes to reading through our text messages. While I understand the intention behind it, this practice can easily lead to conflicts and strained relationships. Teenagers are at a stage in their lives where they are trying to establish their independence and develop a sense of self. By invading their privacy, parents risk undermining their trust and creating an atmosphere of constant surveillance. This not only hampers the natural process of growing up but also sends a message that their thoughts and personal space are not respected.
- rthomas6 3y ago
  You don't know how old exactly OP's kids are. There is a big difference between 13 and 19.
  - slothtrop 3y ago
    Younger teenagers also want some level of privacy.
    - rthomas6 3y ago
      Agreed, but only with people they actually know in person.
      - HaZeust 3y ago
        ... Yeah, like their parents.
- slothtrop 3y ago
  Yes this seems trivially true, even just looking back at my own teenage years on the family computer. I don't think the remedy is more helicopter parenting. It suffices to limit screen time across the board and empower kids with knowledge surrounding the risks of over use.
- 3y ago
system16 3y ago
This is just anecdotal but I remember when I was growing up there were always a few kids in school who had extremely restrictive parents like this (strictly controlled their TV, phone, time with friends, searched their rooms, etc.) On the surface, it seemed like it was effective and they had model kids. But in every case I can remember it resulted in the kids just becoming much better at finding ways to rebel (in increasingly escalating ways) that the parents couldn't catch, until they got a knock at the door from the police, or their kid was pregnant, or overdosed, etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- quickcheque 3y ago
  How about the ones that were allowed to do whatever they wanted? Where are they now?
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    That'd be me. With adults out of the way, I learned to be self-sufficient and I learned how to navigate complex social situations on my own. In short, I learned how to think. Whatever stuff in my life worked out well - I can trace it all to that. My 5 kids had always-present parenting (because independent growth became effectively illegal+impossible). Being it's such a counterproductive situation, it required strictness to pull it off. They're adults now and all live with me.
    - listenallyall 3y ago
      You're a parent of 5 adult children who all live under the same roof as you? Honestly I don't know whether to congratulate you (my kids all love me so much and all get along) or commiserate (none of my kids are independent).
      - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
        We all get on really well but they are better people than can be attributed to my parenting. FWIW there's a rule in play that success is kids'; failure is parents'. I can't do their hard work of growing up but I could surely sabotage it.
pgwhalen 3y ago
> Once or twice a week my wife or I will go through their text messages with them and ask questions about anything that seems off. > When bad patterns start surfacing, we rein it in. Can you elaborate on what sorts of things you'd ask about, or what bad patterns are? I'm not a parent but if I were I think I'd have a hard time drawing the line in the right place.
norir 3y ago
I feel pretty strongly based on my own (distant past) experiences as a young person that children need spaces where they have privacy from their parents. I think of the child who for whatever reason doesn't entirely feel like they fit in with their family and the internet is an outlet where they can explore the side of themselves that they don't feel comfortable sharing. When you strip someone's privacy and autonomy, you inhibit their ability to authentically be themselves. Now of course there is a balance and any parent does have the right to set boundaries, but I think it's important to consider the cost. My mother set some arbitrary boundaries not entirely unlike the ones you've described, but in a different era. While I respect that she was well intentioned, she caused more harm and resentment and, as others have pointed out, probably pushed me towards worse behavior out of her watchful eyes. In other words, she couldn't actually shelter me but she was able to engender resentment and acting out in response to her well-intentioned desire to protect me that ultimately hurt our relationship. I'm not at all saying that that dynamic exists in your family and I'm sure there is lots of nuance that a HN comment can't express, but I have concerns with people blindly applying these types of rules and boundaries on their children.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nvarsj 3y ago
I know you mean well. But I strongly urge you to reconsider your parenting here. You should not be going through your teenager's text messages... that is absolutely insane. My parents were kind of similar and I had a very negative experience growing up as a result. I still remember my mom throwing out all my NiN CDs I had bought after she read the lyrics. And all my DnD material because Satan was controlling my brain through it. As a parent you should be teaching your child to be independent and learn how to make the right choices themselves. Micro managing every aspect of their lives is the absolute wrong approach.
- zamnos 3y ago
  how do you teach them what the right choices are if you don't actually see their choices? if your teenager is texting on TikTok with a 40 year old man who's asking them to send them underwear pictures, how do you find out about that except by reading their text messages? we don't know from the singular fact that they're reading through teenagers text messages how heavy handed that monitoring is. Maybe there's a recurrence of satanic panic, but we don't actually know that. That you had that experience with your parents is awful but it sounds like parents are more likely to be their kids DnD DM than anything else these days.
  - appletrotter 3y ago
    > how do you teach them what the right choices are if you don't actually see their choices? if your teenager is texting on TikTok with a 40 year old man who's asking them to send them underwear pictures, how do you find out about that except by reading their text messages? you establish trust
  - nvarsj 3y ago
    Every generation of parents seems to have some moral panic. It's a way for those people to feel like they're in control (because losing control is scary and uncomfortable). But, well, news flash, teenagers are all about rebelling against their parents and it's perfectly natural for parents to lose most, if not all, control of their teenagers. So do you leash your kids and monitor every single one of their actions? Do you really think that is the solution? Parents have tried this for millennia and it never works. Some go completely overboard and shelter their kids, who have mental breakdowns when they enter the real world. I've seen it happen first hand with home-schooled/overly protected friends. You throw out an extreme anecdote. Remember the war on drugs? It was the same thing. Oh, your kids are gonna do crack at their friends house if you are not careful. Drugs are everywhere and kids are melting their brains. Yes, extreme things can happen to anyone, you can get hit by a car and die, that doesn't mean you ban your kids from crossing a road. How do you teach them the right choice? Well, this is the art of parenting, and is hard. There are many approaches here. My approach is to treat my teens with respect, have frank conversations with them, and set some clear boundaries and expectations (you must do your schoolwork). I also try to set myself as a role model for them by living my life to the same morale standards I'd want them to. I don't do drugs, I don't smoke, I don't drink lots, I don't go on random hookups (all things which I see common in men my age). I work hard but also try to remember to have fun and laugh. It's worked so far. They are confident and happy and will confide in me things they are struggling with. I know they will do things that I wouldn't be happy with and will be unaware of, but that is the risk inherent in life and they will learn from it. All I can do is try to set them up for success best I can, and impart my limited wisdom.
s5300 3y ago
>> Once or twice a week my wife or I will go through their text messages with them and ask questions about anything that seems off. Holy crap. Maybe you’re aware, but things like this are commonly cited reasons by young adults as to why they’ve never again spoken to their parents after they were able to escape them, sometimes even voluntarily becoming homeless to get away.
thegreenswede 3y ago
You're either going to have your kids resent you or stunt the maturation of their independence (the whole point of the teenage phase). You think you're doing the right thing but you're going to most likely create hyper dependent young adults.
- dundercoder 3y ago
  I disagree, but I have the advantage of knowing the whole story of how they are raised, while you are extrapolating the entire experience from a couple paragraphs about reading text messages with my child.

zachturn 3y ago

> Once or twice a week my wife or I will go through their text messages with them and ask questions about anything that seems off. > IMO parents are reluctant to intervene because they either don't know where to start, or struggle with how much work it is. There are also parents who disagree with this ideology and would find this an invasion of their child's privacy. I'd caution against the thinking "we find this valuable and if people don't do it it's because they aren't willing to put as much work in as we do"

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
citizenkeen 3y ago
The mantra we use with our kids is "We will try and respect your privacy but we aren't bound by it." As I often tell my son, "It's your room but it's my house." And we make it extra clear that the moment they go online, they have no expectation of privacy. Better they learn that someone's snooping now than be surprised when it's Google/Facebook/NSA.
- greatwave1 3y ago
  I think most children find it significantly more invasive for their parents to be snooping through their messages, than to have that information being collected in some government database.
  - swader999 3y ago
    For sure, and you are also reading messages and seeing pics from their friends when you snoop and monitor. There's no great solution to this.
dundercoder 3y ago
That's a fair point, and I don't mean to insist that my way is the best way. It works for us, it surely won't work for all. But I am certain that with some effort on the part of the parents to be intentional, a good system can be reached. Our system continues to evolve, and with time and additional responsibility/freedom, will evolve eventually to us as parents handing complete control over.
- pxoe 3y ago
  that imposition of a lack of privacy just seems like a sure way to not only make them seek actual privacy elsewhere - moving their communications to other devices, and just doing stuff outside of "surveilled" devices or any devices at all, but to make it so that they won't ever share their actual private matters. they will have their problems - just, outside of your reach, and they will not talk about them with you. (why? any reason, ranging from 'you don't get to surveil me - i'm going to have my privacy', to 'there's a looming possibility of blowback - I don't want to deal with that (or just, being afraid of that), so i'm just gonna keep my appearances neat (while doing real stuff elsewhere - and keeping that to myself')

iamacyborg 3y ago

I can understand being this careful with young children's usage of a device but giving teenagers zero privacy (to the extent of going through their personal messages) seems wild to me.

foobarian 3y ago
This is how you raise a generation that thinks intrusive monitoring and zero privacy is perfectly normal, or even worse craves it.
- yamtaddle 3y ago
  Maybe it's how you raise a generation that understands you shouldn't post a single thing online that you don't want the whole world to know about. Prior generations have entirely failed to understand that, certainly (cf. Zuckerberg's infamous "dumb fucks" comment—which, go figure, we know about because he sent it as an instant message)
  - foobarian 3y ago
    Funny thing is (IIRC) he sent it over IRC, which as far as these things go is relatively ephemeral :-)
    - yamtaddle 3y ago
      Ha, yeah, reinforces the idea that if you don't have crazy-good opsec you better not post anything online—including in places as relatively-safe as IRC or direct messages—that you don't want in the newspaper, with your name next to it.
      - foobarian 3y ago
        I still cringe at the immature garbage we did in college over telnet and unsecured NIS/Ethernet Unix boxes not questioning whether anyone was recording packet traces for posterity. Luckily disk space was super expensive back then. :-)

grvdrm 3y ago

I'm not going to comment on the specifics of your process. There isn't always a right or wrong to handle this stuff. Your comment and the parent point to the theme that matters to me most: do you care to understand/show interest in what your kids are doing. Forget about social media - just think about TV. You can park your kid in front of the TV and forget about them, converse with them as they watch, or something in between. Your kids also need quiet/down time as well. Again, not to say I'm right, but I try not to litigate what is happening so much, and instead I try to just be an active participant in whatever my kids are doing. The counter where you restrict or limit or challenge doesn't always work out better in the end.

dundercoder 3y ago
>do you care to understand/show interest in what your kids are doing. This I think precisely embodies what works and what doesn't. If this is your goal, you'll figure out something that works.
- grvdrm 3y ago
  Absolutely. It is the thing that actually matters.

Tade0 3y ago

Personally I wouldn't implement such a policy purely because it's against my values. People generally value their privacy. How are children supposed to learn the same if their's is not respected?

Filligree 3y ago
Do children learn the value of privacy by having it, or because theirs isn't respected? In my experience, there's a lot of the second.
- Tade0 3y ago
  I can't help but think it's in significant part survivorship bias. I mean, I've seen this sort of controlling behaviour carry over for three generations(that I know of) among my relatives - the person to (hopefully - the jury is out on that) break the chain moved countries.
throwbadubadu 3y ago
Someone also needs to raise the future people who do the nice work at the NSA, FBI and the likes..

trillic 3y ago

As a young adult who was recently a teenager, I can't help but feel concerned about the potential dangers of having no expectation of privacy from our parents, especially when it comes to reading through our text messages. While I understand the intention behind it, this practice can easily lead to conflicts and strained relationships. Teenagers are at a stage in their lives where they are trying to establish their independence and develop a sense of self. By invading their privacy, parents risk undermining their trust and creating an atmosphere of constant surveillance. This not only hampers the natural process of growing up but also sends a message that their thoughts and personal space are not respected.

rthomas6 3y ago
You don't know how old exactly OP's kids are. There is a big difference between 13 and 19.
- slothtrop 3y ago
  Younger teenagers also want some level of privacy.
  - rthomas6 3y ago
    Agreed, but only with people they actually know in person.
    - HaZeust 3y ago
      ... Yeah, like their parents.
slothtrop 3y ago
Yes this seems trivially true, even just looking back at my own teenage years on the family computer. I don't think the remedy is more helicopter parenting. It suffices to limit screen time across the board and empower kids with knowledge surrounding the risks of over use.
3y ago

system16 3y ago

This is just anecdotal but I remember when I was growing up there were always a few kids in school who had extremely restrictive parents like this (strictly controlled their TV, phone, time with friends, searched their rooms, etc.) On the surface, it seemed like it was effective and they had model kids. But in every case I can remember it resulted in the kids just becoming much better at finding ways to rebel (in increasingly escalating ways) that the parents couldn't catch, until they got a knock at the door from the police, or their kid was pregnant, or overdosed, etc.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
quickcheque 3y ago
How about the ones that were allowed to do whatever they wanted? Where are they now?
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  That'd be me. With adults out of the way, I learned to be self-sufficient and I learned how to navigate complex social situations on my own. In short, I learned how to think. Whatever stuff in my life worked out well - I can trace it all to that. My 5 kids had always-present parenting (because independent growth became effectively illegal+impossible). Being it's such a counterproductive situation, it required strictness to pull it off. They're adults now and all live with me.
  - listenallyall 3y ago
    You're a parent of 5 adult children who all live under the same roof as you? Honestly I don't know whether to congratulate you (my kids all love me so much and all get along) or commiserate (none of my kids are independent).
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      We all get on really well but they are better people than can be attributed to my parenting. FWIW there's a rule in play that success is kids'; failure is parents'. I can't do their hard work of growing up but I could surely sabotage it.

pgwhalen 3y ago

> Once or twice a week my wife or I will go through their text messages with them and ask questions about anything that seems off. > When bad patterns start surfacing, we rein it in. Can you elaborate on what sorts of things you'd ask about, or what bad patterns are? I'm not a parent but if I were I think I'd have a hard time drawing the line in the right place.

norir 3y ago

I feel pretty strongly based on my own (distant past) experiences as a young person that children need spaces where they have privacy from their parents. I think of the child who for whatever reason doesn't entirely feel like they fit in with their family and the internet is an outlet where they can explore the side of themselves that they don't feel comfortable sharing. When you strip someone's privacy and autonomy, you inhibit their ability to authentically be themselves. Now of course there is a balance and any parent does have the right to set boundaries, but I think it's important to consider the cost. My mother set some arbitrary boundaries not entirely unlike the ones you've described, but in a different era. While I respect that she was well intentioned, she caused more harm and resentment and, as others have pointed out, probably pushed me towards worse behavior out of her watchful eyes. In other words, she couldn't actually shelter me but she was able to engender resentment and acting out in response to her well-intentioned desire to protect me that ultimately hurt our relationship. I'm not at all saying that that dynamic exists in your family and I'm sure there is lots of nuance that a HN comment can't express, but I have concerns with people blindly applying these types of rules and boundaries on their children.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nvarsj 3y ago

I know you mean well. But I strongly urge you to reconsider your parenting here. You should not be going through your teenager's text messages... that is absolutely insane. My parents were kind of similar and I had a very negative experience growing up as a result. I still remember my mom throwing out all my NiN CDs I had bought after she read the lyrics. And all my DnD material because Satan was controlling my brain through it. As a parent you should be teaching your child to be independent and learn how to make the right choices themselves. Micro managing every aspect of their lives is the absolute wrong approach.

zamnos 3y ago
how do you teach them what the right choices are if you don't actually see their choices? if your teenager is texting on TikTok with a 40 year old man who's asking them to send them underwear pictures, how do you find out about that except by reading their text messages? we don't know from the singular fact that they're reading through teenagers text messages how heavy handed that monitoring is. Maybe there's a recurrence of satanic panic, but we don't actually know that. That you had that experience with your parents is awful but it sounds like parents are more likely to be their kids DnD DM than anything else these days.
- appletrotter 3y ago
  > how do you teach them what the right choices are if you don't actually see their choices? if your teenager is texting on TikTok with a 40 year old man who's asking them to send them underwear pictures, how do you find out about that except by reading their text messages? you establish trust
- nvarsj 3y ago
  Every generation of parents seems to have some moral panic. It's a way for those people to feel like they're in control (because losing control is scary and uncomfortable). But, well, news flash, teenagers are all about rebelling against their parents and it's perfectly natural for parents to lose most, if not all, control of their teenagers. So do you leash your kids and monitor every single one of their actions? Do you really think that is the solution? Parents have tried this for millennia and it never works. Some go completely overboard and shelter their kids, who have mental breakdowns when they enter the real world. I've seen it happen first hand with home-schooled/overly protected friends. You throw out an extreme anecdote. Remember the war on drugs? It was the same thing. Oh, your kids are gonna do crack at their friends house if you are not careful. Drugs are everywhere and kids are melting their brains. Yes, extreme things can happen to anyone, you can get hit by a car and die, that doesn't mean you ban your kids from crossing a road. How do you teach them the right choice? Well, this is the art of parenting, and is hard. There are many approaches here. My approach is to treat my teens with respect, have frank conversations with them, and set some clear boundaries and expectations (you must do your schoolwork). I also try to set myself as a role model for them by living my life to the same morale standards I'd want them to. I don't do drugs, I don't smoke, I don't drink lots, I don't go on random hookups (all things which I see common in men my age). I work hard but also try to remember to have fun and laugh. It's worked so far. They are confident and happy and will confide in me things they are struggling with. I know they will do things that I wouldn't be happy with and will be unaware of, but that is the risk inherent in life and they will learn from it. All I can do is try to set them up for success best I can, and impart my limited wisdom.

s5300 3y ago

>> Once or twice a week my wife or I will go through their text messages with them and ask questions about anything that seems off. Holy crap. Maybe you’re aware, but things like this are commonly cited reasons by young adults as to why they’ve never again spoken to their parents after they were able to escape them, sometimes even voluntarily becoming homeless to get away.

thegreenswede 3y ago

You're either going to have your kids resent you or stunt the maturation of their independence (the whole point of the teenage phase). You think you're doing the right thing but you're going to most likely create hyper dependent young adults.

dundercoder 3y ago
I disagree, but I have the advantage of knowing the whole story of how they are raised, while you are extrapolating the entire experience from a couple paragraphs about reading text messages with my child.