Is It Ok To Examine Your Child’s Phone?
- by WONDERMOM
- Jan. 4, 2023
The issue with phones is that they are so indispensable. Want to reduce your child’s sugar consumption? Keep sweets outside of the home. Want to prevent kids from using mobile phones? Then kids will never be able to accomplish schoolwork, check in with social groups, text or phone you, etc.
Unlike our first mobile phone, which was a flip phone that could only send and receive 100 SMS per month, today’s phones are so sophisticated that they come with an ever-changing, unique set of issues that may be stressful for parents who are already stretched thin.
Even if you read all the texts on your tween’s phone, you wouldn’t know what they’re up to if you didn’t check their WhatsApp and TikTok direct messages. And that’s presuming you even know which applications are currently popular. In addition, the act of snooping through their phone in the first place might be seen by your children as a serious violation of trust. After all, you wouldn’t demand to read someone’s private diary, so what makes a mobile phone different? What should a frightened mother do?
Should Parents Monitor the Phone of their Child?
“You must examine various issues, including the recipient’s age, whether looking through their phone was part of the family agreement when they acquired it, and if they will be there when you go through it.”
As someone who kept his middle school diary behind lock and key, I find this humiliating for children and detrimental to the parent-child connection. However, it is still necessary to monitor your children’s activities.
Is there a way to monitor your child’s phone in a courteous manner?
Occasionally, parents want to employ mobile monitoring applications to follow what their children are doing on their mobile devices. This may seem appealing, but children dislike it. A 2018 research of 736 children-written evaluations of mobile internet safety applications from Google Play revealed that 76% of children (ages 8 to 19) rated the apps as “overly restricted and intrusive of their personal privacy, severely harming their relationships with their parents.” Not exactly a method for fostering good communication and teaching your children the value of limits.
Should there be age-dependent regulations?
The developmental functioning and general maturity of your kid are more essential than their age.
“As with many other parts of development, phones need parents’ earned trust,” “Younger children will likely need more monitoring while they learn the rules and limits, but as they become older and demonstrate they can be trusted with their phones, parents may feel more comfortable with less monitoring.”