daughter copy mother working on laptop
It’s not anomalous to see experts and participants sit down once in a while in reminiscence of the beautiful childhood that they had—where they didn’t have to worry about anything like kids have to these days.
In 2014, USA Today published a very interesting article about how parents, trying to keep a balance between working and monitoring teens, create an adversing relationship with their kids through overreaching and breaking trust.
Two years later, parents are still striving to find that perfect balance.
The inevitable need for digital monitoring
The balance that every family try to strike is different, but one thing that doesn’t change is to acquiesce to the fact that leaving kids with uninterrupted access to social media and internet is never a good idea.
Cell phones provide kids with a massive platform to wander around and make lifelong mistakes. Predators think of teenage social media accounts as a doorway to satisfying their desires. And even a simple web browsing can expose kids to to unsolicited pornographic content and violence.
For a working mother named Melissa, the reason why she used Trackmyfone on her teenage daughter’s cell phone was simple: “to keep her safe”. As a nurse, Melissa has to work long and tiring shifts away from her daughter which leaves her with very less time and space to know about her child’s activities.
Melissa knew she was losing touch with her child’s life, friends and other important aspects, especially the ones taking place over social media, and that’s when she decided to use a cell phone parental control app.
Bad things can also happen to good kids
Melissa’s concerns weren’t unfounded.
Her 13-year-old daughter was caught drinking vodka with her friends in an abandoned house. The drinking session escalated quite quickly, with many of her daughter’s friends getting seriously ill and frightened.
“I had to keep her away from school for a day, because of the hangover and acute illness”, Melissa said.
“I could have known this earlier, if TrackmyFone was there on my daughter’s phone. I could have possibly stopped this from happening”, she added.
Once Melissa started monitoring her daughter’s iPhone, her epiphanies got a serious nudge, because there were many other red flags that she didn’t believe to have exist in the case of her daughter.
“I went back to that empty house where she and her friends had alcohol to see if there was a pattern. And surprisingly, there were a few friends in her circle who were caught again in the same weekend”, Melissa said.
It’s a battle of wills
Like many other kids who resent back after discovering any monitoring activity on their cell phone, Melissa’s daughter did the same. She refers to this time as a tough battle against the will of her daughter. The girl had presumed the parental monitoring app, an intrusion to her privacy.
Melissa had just one argument in response to her daughter’s protest. “It’s not her smartphone, she said. “We pay for it every month and its her responsibility to understand that we are monitoring her just for her own safety. If she wants to keep the smartphone, it’s our prerogative to set the rules against its use”.
Her daughter’s alcohol use was a big scare, and she was willing to stay adamant to her decision to keep her daughter safe.
It’s too much for single parents
Apps like TrackMyFone are simple parental monitoring tools that allow parents to keep a discrete check on their kids’ rapidly evolving digital world.
Without any help from parental controls, parents would be stuck forever to learn the nuances of every new social media and messaging apps like WhatsApp, Kik, Line etc. Some kids are impossible to monitor unless their phones are constantly reviewed.
“She thinks that I’m trying to micromanage everything, but I can’t do it all myself, without missing out on my important parts of my life. She didn’t allow me to have her passwords and that’s exactly what trackmyfone has provided me with. Now I can easily access my daughter’s chats, emails, social media accounts and phone logs and see if she is doing alright.
It’s a healthy balance
Its natural for teens to hate monitoring in the early stages. They think of it as an intrusion to their privacy. Communication, therefore, is collaterally important. Parents should tell their kids that it’s not them but the internet that they don’t trust.
“Kids use their cell phones for much of their schoolwork”, Melissa said. They have to visit websites and do the online exercises. They can easily get distracted with many other aspects of the internet that they may not be concerned with”
Discussing monitoring is a tough job, especially when it’s about convincing your child. Consistent communication would ensure that you are having a healthy, balanced relationship.
For Melissa, monitoring her daughter’s cell phone wasn’t’ a choice. She understand that her daughter can get easily influenced. She knows the intensity of the manipulative powers of bullies and predators, and as a parent, she can’t leave her daughter alone with gadgets.
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