Thread by @troyhunt

I'm curious: for folks with teenage kids, how much autonomy do they have with devices and social media? None? Supervised use? Free reign? It obviously differs by age, let's scope this as "young teens" (13-14). Just interested to hear how other people approach this problem.

https://twitter.com/gcluley/status/1447868395509063680

Load of interesting responses here, let me share my thoughts. Firstly, this is obviously *really* personal and we all have differences tolerances to everything from screen time to privacy to engagement with strangers on social media.

There are obviously also very big differences between individual kids and the level of responsibility they're ready for at different ages. On that, I feel adamant that decisions should be made based on maturity levels and readiness rather than arbitrary DoBs.

Ari has just turned 12. He's a very mature kid for his age and I like to introduce him to things when I feel he can handle them then supervise him closely. Part of that supervision means employing digital controls, for example Apple's parental controls on his iPhone.

But what's much more important than digital controls is parental supervision. Case in point: when he was 9, he could easily circumvent screen time to watch YouTube when he shouldn't:

https://twitter.com/troyhunt/status/1122037480935419904

For this reason (among others), I'd prefer him to use devices in the living room where @charlottelyng and I are present. That doesn't always make sense, for example he has a laptop for school and a proper desk and chair setup in his room which is ergonomically preferable...

...so we ask him to leave his door open when using it and regularly wander past. This isn't to "spy", rather to be constantly present. Because of that, he more willingly shares what he's doing, asks us questions and engages, rather than isolating himself.

His phone sits on a charger in my office and when he wants access to it, he asks permission. I *really* don't like the idea of a phone being constantly available outside of parental supervision, that's what leads to the sort of thing in the original tweet.

Beyond that, we have *a lot* of discussions about online content and particularly given what I do, he sees some pretty varied stuff. I show him data breaches and how personal data is spread. I show him some of the abuse I get and how nasty people can be online.

For now, I keep him off social media. Definitely no accounts (having one before 13 opens up all sorts of other issues), and he only sees Twitter / Insta / FB fleetingly in the context of something else (I show him a tweet or he follows a link from something he's been reading).

This works for us. It will change as he grows older and it will be different for his younger sister. More thoughts from last years blog post on 10 Digital Tips for Modern Day Parents: troyhunt.com/sharenting-byo…