Figuring out social media access for 13YO
Hello, my 13 year old daughter LOVES her phone as we all do and I have tried to manage her access in a healthy way. It's been super challenging to set limits and keep to those and to help her understand why there are limits. I use the Screentime functionality on her iPhone. We are soon moving into the Instagram world (and TikTok, YouTube, and the whole internet). Any suggestions on how continue to set limits and/or monitor her actions or teach her the good and bad about social media/overuse of screens? I need to work with her on her becoming more aware of her own usage and how she thinks she's doing managing a phone. Thanks for any ideas.
May 1, 2024
Parent Replies
I have a 13 yo daughter and she is not allowed any social media nor do we plan to allow it anytime soon. Maybe at 16. Obviously she sees it a bit, but you'd be surprised how just not having access to it helps. She doesn't have a browser on her phone; again, no plans to add it anytime soon. I think it's ridiculous to expect a young teen to "manage" their consumption of a highly addictive product all by themselves. By the way, same goes for my 15 yo son but he doesn't push the limits of texting the way the daughter does.
Same as the previous poster--no social media for our sixth grader until at least high school. It has been hugely problematic for the kids we know who have already started to use those apps, and got bad enough that our school outright banned phones and asked parents to commit to blocking the social media apps. (Some do, others don't.) We use ScreenTime to limit access to apps and to monitor and limit screen time overall; it's not perfect but most of the time it's good enough. No access to anything during the school day. After school, texting and music apps are okay, and we approve internet usage as needed for homework. On weekends, they have access to all of their apps with daily screen time time limits (and open access to phone calls and texting). For texting, we have passcodes to the devices and periodically check to try to address issues, though again--far from perfect, and more often than not I find out about problems from other parents whose kids were on the same text threads. You can set screen time limits and targets and have the reports sent to kids if you want them to monitor their own usage--though I think that is a tough lift for kids this age (and frankly for many adults, too!) The hard limit has been valuable for our family.