Navigating technology with my child

My daughter is only 8.5-years-old but I swear she is already flirting with tween-dom. Recently her obsession is having her own phone. As far as she is concerned, ALL her friends have one, and we are depriving her by not getting her one of her own.

I’ve told her many times that it will be a while before she has a phone that can be used out in the real world. And when she does get one it will be a cheapy flip phone that makes calls and simple texts, because my daughter has inherited my penchant for misplacing things and I’ll be damned if she loses a smart phone a week after we get her one. She’ll have to practice keeping track of something much cheaper before she gets the kind of phone she really wants.

Having said that, my phone crapped out on me and my plan was to turn it in to get the $150 credit towards a new one. Except then I thought maybe I’d keep it and give it to her (to use at home with WiFi only). The reality is, she can use our iPad pretty much whenever she is allowed to have a screen, so it doesn’t really feel like that big of a deal, except I know it is a big deal for her, because it would be HER phone.

{A couple of her friends have actual smart phones with actual data plans – which seems totally insane to me! – but most of her friends that “have a phone” have a relative’s hand-me-down that works only with WiFi, so this mean a lot to her.}

It was a hard choice. The $150 off my new phone was nothing to sneeze at, and I worried that the current issues would multiply making my current phone pretty much useless, but those weren’t my main concerns. Mostly I worried that we would be capitulating to her wishes, wishes she only harbors because of her friends. Do I really want to let her believe that we will get her everything her friends have? It was hard to feel good about either choice.

We did end up giving her my old phone. She was thrilled. But before we gave it to her, we sat down and had a long conversation about when and how she would use it. We wiped the phone, created a child’s icloud account for her under our Apply family share plan, and put every parental restriction on that account that was available. We also disabled the web browser. She can’t go online at all, and she can’t download even a free app without requesting permission.

All these restrictions were really important to us. We’ve struggled with apps for a while; we are very careful to research everything before letting her use it. Many of her friends are already using apps with social functions that we do NOT feel comfortable with. GachaLife is a popular game – mostly the girls just want to design characters with different hairstyles and outfits – but there is a social component that cannot be turned off and any other person in the game can contact anyone else and say whatever they want. Even if we trusted her not to respond, who knows what horrible messages she would be exposed to. Evidently this app is notorious for creepy adults trying to gain access to young kids. NO. THANK. YOU.

{I’ve been surprised how many of my very smart, involved parent-friends have done nothing to research apps before letting their child use them. Some of my daughter’s friends have absolutely no app restrictions at all.}

The other app my daughter really wanted was MessangerKids, which has more protections (parents have to approve any new contacts), but is created by Facebook and is rife with functions that can have the effect of making kids feel addicted, or creating unnecessary feelings of social isolation. Not to mention I don’t trust Facebook with my daughter’s data AT ALL. Could my daughter use it and just have fun, without getting addicted or feeling left out? Probably. But that doesn’t mean we should capitulate and let her use it. (The more I learn about Facebook, the more relieved I am that I left over three years ago and the more committed I am to never, ever go back.)

Navigating this stuff is definitely becoming increasingly more complicated.

We ended up finding an Instagram-like app for kids with lots of parental protections called Kudos :). And since it didn’t have the photo editing capabilities she wanted in MessangerKids, we let her get photo and video editing apps that have no social media functions (she just saves her creations to her phone and then uploads them to Kudos). She can also iMessage with her friends that have access to an iphone or ipad, which doesn’t happen much because none of them are on these devises very frequently.

Finally we printed copies of the Common Sense Media K-5 media contract (I highly recommend them as a resource for navigating media of all kinds with your children) and discussed it with her before asking her to sign it. It has three sections “take care,” “think first,” and “stay safe.” We also added our family’s specific screen-time restrictions (no more than an hour a day – after homework – unless extra time is earned by reading a grade-level or above novel on the weekends). We already see her choosing not to watch TV so she can have phone time, or choosing a second episode of something knowing she won’t get her phone later. So far she hasn’t fought back against any of our boundaries, and is really enjoying connecting with her friends through her phone.

I know that navigating technology with our daughter will only get more complicated as she gets older. I hope we are laying a strong foundation now for conscientious and responsible media use when it really matters.

How do you manage media in your house?