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?
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.
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?
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.
But Mastodon isn’t Matrix. It’s not just a chat server, but regular social media.
True, using a defederated mastodon server as a group chat is “off label”, but i think it could work. I am not a fediverse expert, though.
Oh boy, this has been fun… I never said I had banned my kids from all SM for all time. I was just pointing out the opportunity for a fediverse project.
Some of you are clearly not parents. You can be on the permissive side of parenting style but that doesn’t mean you open the entire internet wide open when they hit 13.
She laughed through the entire powerpoint presentation. She thought it was a funny way to bring it up. We never said “no.” We told her she had valid points and lets keep discussing. She just turned 15 and this is the first time she asked for access.
And if anyone is wondering, we Ok’d IG because friend group was there too and moving off of Snap because of the number of creeps.
I’m definitely banning them from Lemmy though, lol
allowing Instagram is like rolling out the red carpet for the vampire as a method of inviting it in, and then maybe having the kids lie down so their bare necks are on a silver platter.
I’ve come to find that people with their hearts in the right place (such as yourself) are often attacked or ostracized on the Fediverse, especially Lemmy.
How DARE a person express traditional values??? How DARE a parent not want to be an iPad parent and let their kids do whatever they want???
It’s mind blowing and it drives me further and further away from Lemmy on the regular. Keep up the good parenting and if I could offer my advice? Find a better place to ask for things like this, because all you’ll get are moronic replies like half the replies here.
I much as I want to introduce my family to the fediverse, I will not. Except for Mastodon maybe. Way to many creeps. Tech-savy, free-tech supporter creeps but creeps anyway. My parents did the same to me at a time when all my peers were into mobile phone and not like today’s kids realising how bad it can be. I turned out fine and more knowledgable about the technolgies I did choose to use than average. I wish my parenst have keep supervising me for one or two more years more.
Keep parenting.Thank you!
I had a computer in my bedroom with a dedicated landline for dialup before most of my friends had a home computer. I turned out ok but agree, should have had a little more supervision in that area.
Fortunately, the current teenagers are much more aware of the danger than past generations. In my time, many teens thought parents just did not understand modernity and were panicking over nothing. The cyber-bulling and addiction to social media kept growing but at least the young generation has awareness.
If you were my parent, I would have actively resented for the rest of my life from you for destroying my social life like that. Communicating with peers and engaging with them in their 3rd spaces is essential life learning.
And the next step would be finding ways to circumvent your ridiculous rules.
You’re not going to create a perfect adult free from social media use. You’re going to create an adult who doesn’t want to know you because you’re a control freak.
You’re the equivalent of those Christian nuts removing Harry Potter books from their kids for promoting devil worship.
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.
On Android you can disable app notifications. Some apps also allow it per group/person.
you can disable group notifications easily its in the settings for each group
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.
It’s not part of the Fediverse, but Signal is a good for group chats. It’s got reactions and gifs and whatnot, and you can also ignore the notifications you don’t care about.
Yes, but that would only work if her group chat friends also use Signal.
Which likely isn’t going to happen unless all of their friends also use Signal.
My read of OP’s question was asking about something they could switch the friend group to. If they don’t want to switch to anything else, then they’re stuck on Snapchat because that’s what they’re already using.
yeah the group leader is not the kid without social media, they aren’t following her lead lol
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
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.
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
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.
If their friends are on Snapchat I’ll suggest that you try to bring Signal into that friend group.
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.
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
Not the most related, but if Instagram becomes an issue, there is an Instagram patched app which is DMs only
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. Maybe while she’s home you can show interest and use it together with her.
Position data must of course also be disabled. Snapchat is a bit creepy.
The fediverse is always (somewhat) public, making it not inherently child friendly. 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.
