I have three teenage daughters who are currently not allowed on social media. But I want to give them some ability before they become adults. My eldest gave me a PowerPoint presentation on why she should be allowed on Snapchat, lol.
She made some good points. Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.
Feels like a good opportunity for a Fediverse platform. Like a closed Mastodon/Pixelfed server and have some parental controls. Any projects out there?
“I want to protect my kid from dangers of social media so I will make him the special one in class that will potentially make them a target for bullying and harassment”
Just let the kis grow up normally like rest of us did. I feel like many of us, just like me, grew up with far more extreme/unmoderated sites like liveleak and 4chan. Heavily moderated social media is very mild to what some of us grew up with, and I’m no serial killer by any means, I only kill on tuesdays
Also, preventing your kid from doing/exploring things young statistically makes them more suspecible to getting addicted to said things later in life
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There are more and more kids who aren’t allowed on social media because of its multifarious harms. Don’t forget that 20 years ago, no kids had social media. By all accounts, kids were doing fine back then. Also, OP said that her eldest daughter, at least, has a friend group, so your concern about their social isolation is probably misplaced.
It’s pretty clear that OP’s daughter does feel like she’s missing out on things her friends are doing, that’s why she is asking. Social isolation doesn’t have to be total to be damaging to your mental health, especially if you’re an extrovert.
And bringing up “but in my time…” Yeah, no. Not a comparable situation. If everyone is on social media and you’re not, you’re going to be left out of at least some things, there’s just no way around it.
Almost every kid has felt that they were missing out on something because of parental rules at some point. The kids who had no rules were not necessarily the lucky ones, since good parenting always involves setting boundaries. i’m really not making the “in my time” argument because if we fixed the problems with social media i would have no problem letting my kids use something i didn’t have access to. to me it’s about balancing risks: make it safer, then let kids use it! after all, op is opening the door by making this post. she is directly responding to the expressed desire of her kids and trying to find a safe way to let her daughters access the tools they think they need.
Well, realistically, things have changed. Without social media you get quite left out. Easily forgotten even.
You are right. But if things have changed, they can change again. Many countries are in the process of banning smart phones in schools and are legislating age minimums for social media. In such environments, access to social media becomes much less important. I think a better long-term approach would be to mitigate the risks of social media, and the fediverse is already addressing some of the big problems like corporate control of information and algorithmic curation of content. I like the idea of social media, but i hate the (prevalent) implementation.
We’ve had discussions about this, with and without our kids. Yeah, they need to be in the loop with their friends, and being in that loop can mean being exposed to some bullshit.
That’s always been the case, though. The additional risk of modern social media, I think, is that it’s always with you. One of the rules we laid down was to plug your phone in outside your room before you go to bed. That was relatively strongly enforced when they were younger, just getting started in that arena. They’re all essentially adults now, so we don’t enforce it anymore, but they sometimes still do it anyway.
It’s important to be connected, and it’s okay to be disconnected when you want to be.
One of the rules we laid down was to plug your phone in outside your room before you go to bed.
Sorry, just some small note. Charging to 100% daily significantly shortens the battery lifespan. Staying between 20 - 80% is generally recommended.
But to be honest, if I still had a phone with user replaceable battery I’d just 100% it too. I mean, the battery for my Galaxy Ace is like €6.Anyway, I’ve got some USB tester from AliExpress that also has a time limit. I can usually nail that near 80%. There’s also some physical Bluetooth charge limiters, though that of course requires their app.
Irrelevant if your phone has built-in charge limiter.
But yeah, anyway, how you did it sounds fine.
Edit: Although theoretically, it probably could be done without an app. Bluetooth can share battery charge info.
There’s a hardware device with a companion app that can do charge limiting for any Android or iOS device if you’re so inclined. I haven’t used it; I use ACCA.
Don’t forget that 20 years ago, no kids had social media
What does the word “social media” even mean?
Because I was definitely on web forums in 2005. I was a preteen back then.
It was only for us nerds.
That is true. I remember around that time wishing the Internet were more popular among the general public and wishing that would turn everyone nerdy. The first part has happened, the second not.
For my part, i don’t consider forums social media. I may be in the minority, but im not as worried about stranger danger or cyber bullying as much as corporate control over content and privacy. i have never used snapchat, but i assume part of their revenue stream involves advertising and selling private data. maybe snapchat is very responsible about these things, but there is no oversight. take facebook, for example: a whistleblower just alleged that facebook targeted teen girls with weight loss and beauty products when it detected that the girls were feeling bad about themselves (say, when they had deleted a bunch of selfies). these exploitative and predatory decisions (to target an individual) are not approved by an ethics board. they are not subject to scrutiny. the only time we become aware of them is when some executive gets laid off and has a sudden crisis of conscience/lucrative book deal. maybe a ban on individualized ads and content feeds for young people would be enough to fix big problems. forums mostly don’t suffer from those problems.
Just a regular Mastodon server with federation disabled might be a good start.
So… with whom…
With her friends, presumably. Why would she want strangers or mere acquaintances on her group chat?
But Mastodon isn’t Matrix. It’s not just a chat server, but regular social media.
Why would her friends want to join her dad’s creepy nerd thing?
She would be alone on there.
Lol. Like corporate social media isn’t creepy.
When do you think you should allow a child to have an email address? A Fediverse account is basically an email account, except that the primary inbox is shared with a lot of people rather than only one person (and the same goes for any social media account). If you wouldn’t allow someone to use an email address, you probably shouldn’t allow them to use a Fediverse account either.
At least one person who seems interested in the health of children expressed that “delaying children’s access to smartphones until high school and social media platforms until 16” is a good idea. https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/ https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0MXgA2sSn8
- Dad can I have Snapchat?
- But we have Snapchat at home!
This is you rn. She wants to keep up with her friends, not participate in your ideology.
Right? How dare a parent actually care about their child’s upbringing? It’s 2025, we’re supposed to give our kids an iPad at 3 years old and let Cocomelon raise them.
Take away their access to PowerPoint
Absolutely not; I wish all kids argued their case using well-thought-out presentations
I agree. But I also believe no important piece of information has ever been delivered via PowerPoint.
We have the school to blame. I didn’t introduce it to them. Maybe I’ll start unschooling them too. lol
I think you kind of have to, this is how kids end up middle management. You let this go and soon they’ll be scheduling meetings that could have been emails.
Strict parents create sneaky kids.
It’s good that you’re protective, but be careful not to be overly protective, kids need to think for themselves, make mistakes and learn from them.
Can confirm. 38 years old still with crippling trust issues from this.
Builds into lifelong issues with trust
How old are they?
The minimum age for Snapchat is 13. The direct mesaaging part of it allows for fun and harmless messages between friends. I think allowing her to use it if she’s 13+ is reasonable.
What you could do is to ask her not to allow friend requests or messages from anyone who are not her friends, not to use the AI assistant (which can’t be disabled), and to not use it to consume content from influencers (which is in a separate tab to the right). You cannot really police this, but it’s not the end of the world if she sees the feed of some dumb influencer.
Position data must of course also be disabled. Snapchat is a bit creepy.
The fediverse is always (somewhat) public. Getting together with other parents to set up a Pixelfed instance to use in the friend group rather than to have them use Instagram is a cool idea, and allows parents to be admins and decide who can federate without taking control of the accounts of the kids. It might be a nice way for them to learn that whatever they do online is run by some person whom they decide to trust. And it could keep them off Instagram a little longer.
I don’t really know the first thing about parenting though, just my thoughts. It’s a tricky question.
I don’t know you, your daughters, or their friends so I can’t make specific recommendations. What I can say is that it’s really common for teenagers who are sheltered from the dangers of the world to make more and bigger mistakes once they’re unsupervised than those who get a gradual introduction.
The two main dangers of social media for most people are:
- Encountering assholes. For girls and women, there’s a high probability assholes will try to sexually exploit them. Since there are minimal consequences most of the time for sending “show me your tits”, they’re going to encounter that behavior eventually, and it may be easier to deal with for the first time when they have parental support.
- Algorithmic rabbit holes. These can create the perception that problematic attitudes and behaviors are common and widely accepted when they are not. Having an open dialog with parents about anything from eating laundry detergent to Jordan Peterson can be a strong stabilizing influence.
I don’t think a closed Fediverse server is likely to serve as a first step in a gentle introduction because it has neither danger and presumably no strangers to talk to. The full Fediverse might work better, as it does offer interaction with strangers. Encounters with assholes will be less frequent than on corporate social media, and any rabbit holes will be much more self-directed.
That said, when one of them is likely within a year or two of leaving home or at least having full control of her digital life, if she wants to use some corporate social media, she’s probably better off doing that with some parental supervision and support than jumping in completely unprepared when you’re no longer in a position to prevent it.
Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.
This seems like a good opportunity to learn how the notification settings on her phone work.
Not the most related, but if Instagram becomes an issue, there is an Instagram patched app which is DMs only
Also you protect them from online bullying by putting them in a situation that definitely could get them bullied irl? Like ha your parents dont even let you have snapchat they see your daughter as immature compared to them
“Ha your parents don’t even let you do underage drinking, drugs and other shady activities?”
Same argument. You don’t relinquish your authority and protection as a parent because a few losers want to make fun of your kid for being raised with a mom and dad who actually give a crap about their upbringing.
Weird argument since most parents dont allow that and is something everyone hides
Not a weird argument, that’s the same logic you used. Just because some kids might not agree with your decisions as a parent, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make that decision. Caring what others think about your parenting style is exactly why we have so many messed up kids in the first place.
btw I have/had ultra strict parents still at 25 when I cone home lmao, still not allowed to drink ever, like not just in their own house, ofc I do but they’ll never know and that led to very unsafe situations when I was younger and I was scared to goto the hospital, luckily I was fine but yeah couldve been bad, hit my head while blacked out and passed out, woke up when the ambulance came, still probably should get my head checked just in case but its been 8 years lol. I’ll still never tell them about that because of how they are/were
It’s interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.
For some clarifying points: my kids are allowed on some social media, BeReal, Youtube, Pinterest. They log into our accounts for FB Marketplace.
There is a growing acknowledgement amongst kids that smartphones and social media create mental health issues. All of my kids have asked us to limit their screen time.
I’m not an overly restrictive parent but I tend to ease my kids into things as opposed to one day it’s banned, one day it’s permitted. Collectively, parental controls suck on most technology platforms and at the end of the day, the corporate SM is still trying to addict you and turn you into the product.
I think what my dream is is for a simple set up of a family server with roles. So you can start with just sharing pictures with grandma and grandpa and then expand into sharing more broadly. But starting the online experience outside off of the corporate algorithms.
It’s interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.
Was this unexpected? It has been my experience online that people are more likely to tell you what they think you need to hear than what you asked for.
Well because your original post was kinda misleading.
There are multiple things you talk about:
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“Ding-ding” notifications - well you can adjust notifications, to help with not developing an addiction
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her group chat - do they want to move their friend group chat to a fedi platform? Or were you just clumsily wording?
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family fedi server - that is what you are talking about now, and it’s a completely different thing. You could set up a closed-registration mastodon or vernissage instance for that, but tbh I wouldnt recommend using any ActivityPub software for the purpose of sharing private photos and messages with your family. Because there is always the danger of that data federating to all kinds of servers…
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They want to have private conversations with their friends, they will never feel comfortable if you force your way into their social lives or not let them have them, teens dont communicate how they used to, if they arent in the groupchats its basically like missing school that year or being nobody
You never know whats happening, anything that seems pointless or stupid to you but important to them always out of the loop
They will encounter the awful sides of the internet in their lives. It is a fact of the internet.
What are you doing/going to do to prepare them for that eventuality?
You can’t protect children from life—you can only prepare them to handle it as best they can.
Honestly, nowadays a part of the “birds and bees” talk should include an explanation of privacy settings and common Internet scams.
This isn’t a real thing is it? I never knew anyone who ever had such a talk, it was always something we’d hear about in American movies/shows, but it doesn’t actually happen does it?
I don’t have kids so I dunno if it’s still happening, but my dad had a brief and very awkward conversation with me to tell me that if I had sex to make sure to use a condom but if I ever did get a girl pregnant I could always tell him and it’d be OK, we’d figure it out, etc. Nothing fancy or anything; just the essentials to make sure I wasn’t a dumbass about sex.
If their friends are on Snapchat I’ll suggest that you try to bring Signal into that friend group.
