Win Your Teen’s Consent: Talk To Your Teen About Parental Monitoring Apps

Aug 22, 2015 | Parental Controls

ft-blog09

Nothing will destroy your teen’s trust in you more than monitoring them without their consent. Being a teen parent, you would have the first experience that teens, see themselves more as adults than kids, and any breach of their “privacy” can highly offend them. If you are considering using phone monitoring apps for your peace of mind, it is significant to give your pre-teen or teen a heads-up beforehand.

Ideas To Have The Talk:

The best way to start is to tell that you will be monitoring them right up-front. The ideal time to have this talk with them is before you even buy them a phone. Conditioning monitoring software’s for getting the phone at all, is one of the fastest ways of getting your teens to agree on it.

However, if they already have a smartphone, you’ll need to approach it from the other way around and that is to treat them like the adults and explain to them that you want to monitor their phone as a way of keeping them safe. You can start this discussion by telling them the cybercrime stats i.e.

  • More than 50% of teens who go online experience cyber bullying.
  • 43% of teens have been through cyber- violence online.
  • 36% go online to access inapt content.
  • 80% of teens under 18 years old use sexting apps.
  • Every 40% a child is abducted in the US.

Share these stats along with some unfortunate incidents and tell them that you’re highly concerned about their online and real-time safety. Tell them how you can ensure always be there for them via monitoring apps. More importantly, assure them that you will not be spying on them; you just don’t want them to land in any sort of trouble so you are having an adult conversation about it.

Strengthening Trust

Your teens would do anything to give you the feel that they are now ‘adults’. So, when you give your teens the assurance that the reason you are having this conversation with them is because you think they are mature enough to understand that monitoring is only the way to know when they mess up and instead of being upset you will help them do better in future. You can make this interesting by setting rewards for every time they behave in a responsible way for a certain period of time. This will help you strengthen the trust and your bond.

Stress on the fact that this does not mean you don’t trust them again and again. Focus on their safety and protection from the consequences of their actions they don’t fully understand.

Put The Stress To Rest!

There is a high chance they will feel that you are being over protective, but after some time of using parental control apps, they will begin to understand how it helps you both. In the end you always have the ‘I am taking back your cellphone’ card in your hand and you know well they will do anything to keep it with them. So, love them unconditionally and keep them safe at all times!

FamilyTime helps families manage and protect their children’s digital lives.

More Post