Answers to Your Questions

This research is clear: Parental monitoring of youth whereabouts, activities, and associates is strongly associated with a range of positive outcomes for children and adolescents, such as better school performance, improved mental health, and avoidance of substance abuse and conduct problems. What is less clear is whether any particular strategy a caregiver might use to monitor a teen – for example, using GPS to track youth whereabouts – is good or bad. In other words, the broader parent-child relationship is everything. Here are some key research-based factors to consider when assessing whether or not your current level of monitoring is lacking, sufficient, or overkill. Effective parental monitoring…

1.      Is developmentally appropriate – “tween-agers” and younger teens (roughly, age 11-15) need more direct and active parental oversight than do older teens (late high school).

2.      Is customized to match a particular child’s maturity level, competencies, and functioning in key life domains - it’s not JUST about the teen’s age. For example, teens who have been caught skipping school multiple times need more active parental oversight of school attendance (e.g., GPS-based confirmation that they are at school; communicating regularly with school personnel about attendance); teens who are using drugs or alcohol would benefit from periodic parent-administered drug testing.

3.      Is consistent, transparent, and provided with a reasonable and loving rationale.  Remember, your judgment and needs as parents are valid and important, regardless of how teens react. Here are some examples of how to communicate your (loving and reasonable) reasons:

·       Its my job to take care of you and to protect you. That’s why I need to verify that your friend’s mom will be home during the sleepover.

·       I’m setting up an appointment with your guidance counselor, because we need to address this bullying you are experiencing. I know that you’re worried I’ll embarrass you or that it will make the situation worse, but I have to act because this is not OK.

·       Using marijuana is dangerous for someone your age and against our rules. So, in order to help you quit, I will be looking through your things periodically to make sure you are not tempted to hide it somewhere. I want to help you break this habit.

·       In order for us to feel comfortable letting you walk around the neighborhood with your friends unsupervised, your father and I are going to need to know where you are at all times. We think that the best way to do that is to use a location tracking app. Its not that we don’t trust you, we just think that this is the best way to meet your desire for freedom while also keeping you safe.

4.      Effective monitoring is a two-way street: parents need to actively stay abreast of their child’s experiences AND teens need to feel comfortable and safe enough with their parents to share the important aspects of their life with them. Because much of effective monitoring relies on teen self-disclosure, its important for parents to be very familiar with their child’s social context outside of the home, and the relationship itself needs to be warm and supportive. If it feels good to tell parents things because they know the players and are supportive, teens will tell parents what’s happening and do so honestly, and will turn to them for help if they are hurting, confused, or scared about something.

This last point is the most important. Teens learn over time whether to expect either generally supportive or generally unsupportive reactions from their parents when they disclose something, and they adjust their behavior accordingly. “Supportive” doesn’t mean that parents only ever express approval of what teens are doing. Quite the opposite: it’s essential that parents effectively communicate their concern or disapproval about negative or dangerous aspects of their teen’s activities. But, to be effective, parents need to manage their reactions and respond constructively so that the lines of communication stay open. Here are some tips:

·       Spend time with your teen and “make space” for conversations to occur naturally. More important than asking the teen probing questions is being reliably accessible, curious, and responsive when teens do share something (good or bad).

·       Listen actively to what the teen is telling you to make sure you understand their perspective. If you are getting upset, take steps to calm down, such as taking a time-out from the conversation, taking some deep breaths, or splashing cold water on your face. You don’t have to react or change your child’s behavior right away.

·       Find at least one thing to validate (affirm) about what you have discovered about your teen, even if you completely disapprove. Affirm your child’s experience before offering your guidance or, if a rule has been broken, before providing the consequence. For example: “I really appreciate you telling me honestly what happened tonight. I can relate – you were having a really good time with your friends and didn’t think it was a big deal to get into a car with an underaged driver. I like your friends and know that they were not trying to get you in trouble. However, this was a really dangerous situation and a bad decision on your part. I know you realize that. We’re going to have to think through ways to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Parental checks on teen smartphone and internet use is uniquely challenging. The internet is an unregulated space with many real dangers, the “wild west” of our modern era. Dangers include sexual coercion/predation, financial scamming, easy access to dangerous substances (think: Grubhub, Uber Eats, etc.), and content harmful to our mental health (e.g., “influencers” advocating self-harm or risk taking; exposure to hate speech relating to one’s race or culture; body-shaming, etc.). Smartphone features and social media algorithms are literally designed to hijack our good judgment and feed us material most likely to keep us engaged, which is any content that arouses strong emotions. Paradoxically, content that induces strong negative emotions – anxious or angry – is the most effective way to keep us tuned in.

Because the portion of the brain used in making good decisions and inhibiting impulses is not fully developed until our early- to mid-20s, children and teenagers are particularly vulnerable to these influences. Given that most teens and even tweens now have access to their smartphones and the internet 24/7, there’s no way that parents can effectively monitor everything that their child doing online. A likely more effective approach is for parents to set limits on their child’s technology exposure – here are some potential strategies:

·       Opt for a specialized starter phone (aka “dumb phones”) for tweens and younger teens. Several high-quality ones, such as Bark, Pinwheel, and Gabb, now exist for youth age 6 through 15. These phones are configured to only allow certain features, such as calling and text messaging, and are scalable to permit more functionality as teens mature.

·       Limit how many hours a day your child can be online while home. Handing devices in to parents when time is up can work especially for younger teens. Having separate wifi passwords for adults and children may also help– parents can “turn on” wifi for their children only at designated times, or allocate minutes to teen data plans using reloadable, rather than unlimited, options.

·       Require that youth use devices in the common areas of your home, not alone in their rooms. This allows for “soft monitoring” of what they are doing and how they are reacting, and facilitates conversations about their online experience. For example, you might say – “You look a little upset – did something happen online?” or “What’s so funny? I’d love to see! Show me.”

·       Set a rule for no phones or other devices in bed past bedtime. Lights out includes screens. Although a teenager is likely mature enough to go to sleep without an imposed bedtime, requiring devices to be “turned in” to parents by a certain time in the evening (and giving them back in the morning) can be effective in reducing exposure.

·       Connect with the parents of your child’s friends to see if they are willing to set the same rules for all of the peers’ tech use.

·       Talk with your children often about the risks of being online and how to protect themselves. Make it a rule that they tell you if certain things ever occur, such as someone they don’t know asking them for a photo or a meeting.

·       Model good online behavior. Put your own phone away as often as possible to show the value of minimizing exposure.

·       Consider a family-wide social media “fast” or 30-day phone free challenge. Talk as a family about what you are experiencing and what’s good and bad about being unplugged.

Finally, as for monitoring of text messages: if parents are diligent about knowing their teen’s friends and contacts, texting messaging is a relatively low-risk activity, and one that is now essential for effective peer functioning – surveys indicate that U.S. teens send between 60-100 texts per day. Family rules should include never responding to a message from someone you don’t know, to only ever provide your phone number to trusted people, and to tell parents immediately if any harassment occurs on any text, chat, or social media platform. With these safeguards in place it is generally not recommended to read teen’s text messages unless there is a compelling reason to do so (e.g., previous criminal or drug-related behavior), since doing so is a significant violation of teen privacy akin to listening in on a phone conversation. It can negatively impact the parent-teen relationship and runs the risk of reducing a teen’s willingness to disclose to parents when it matters most.