This includes explaining cyberbullying, porn, sexting, hateful content and fake news, as well as how addictive the internet can be and how unrealistically life can be presented (making them feel inadequate and anxious etc). When we give children and teenagers access to the internet, we have to be prepared to talk through all the challenges it brings. As he becomes older, you also want to help him critically evaluate the internet for himself and learn to make his own best decisions. Of course, only supervising your son’s access is not to going to protect him in the long term.
Continue to talk through the issues with your son Both parents and schools have a role to play in establishing new safer norms. This would require a cultural shift and is perhaps a wider societal conversation that we all need to be having. This might be a better way to protect them when they are young. Given the risks of unsupervised access, it is perfectly possible to give young teenagers phones that aren’t smartphones which allow them to text and make calls but have limited access to the internet. While it has become the norm to give children and teenagers smartphones at young ages perhaps this does not have to be the case. If all the parents of the children in his peer group agree to supervise access to the internet, then this will keep them all safer and delay them from coming across unsuitable material until they are older and more able to deal with it. To a certain extent your son’s safety depends on his peer group. You might want to ring the other parents and talk to them in person to explain this. It is understandable that your son is nervous about telling in case he is identified as the “person who told”, so it is a delicate conversation to get right. Would you want to know if your 12 year old was showing porn to other children on his phone? They may not know this is happening and if they find out they can take steps to better supervise or restrict their child’s access, and talk through all the safety issues. I would think it is important to tell the other parents.
But even then it is hard to protect your children from coming across material from the unsupervised access of their peers.
DADDY TWINK GAY PORN XVIDEOS TAGS INSTALL
You did well to delay smartphone use and to install safety software on other devices in order to supervise his access. Your email highlights how, even when parents take steps to protect their children, they can never fully supervise. As children start puberty they may be very drawn to and excited by watching such material, yet they do not have the maturity to critically evaluate what they are watching. This is, indeed, a tragedy as witnessing such material at young ages can interfere with their normal sex education and development. In surveys many children report coming across this material before their 12th birthday. ‘Our teenage daughter often lashes out at us with bad language’Īnswer: With the widespread use of smartphones children are now witnessing pornography and violent material at younger and younger ages.‘I’m worried my daughter is developing an eating disorder’.‘I foresaw Covid and war in Europe, but doctors said I was paranoid and having a breakdown’.What message should I give my son about this? I told him that porn is not real, loving sex (he knows the facts of life) and he should not look at these things until he is 18. My son was hysterical when I told him I might have to do this. I don’t know whether to raise it with their parents. I am a bit shocked by it all, as they are so young. When I asked him about it he was mortified – it seems some of his classmates were looking at porn and showing it to others at a party. Last week I got an alert on the software that he was looking up “sex ” and “porn ” and it makes me worried. He has supervised access to a computer at home where he plays games and watches You Tube and we have parent monitoring software on it. It seems a lot of his schoolmates and friends have phones already and that is where the pressure is coming from. He has been asking us for a smartphone and we have said no, at least not until he has started secondary school next September.
Question: My 12-year-old son has always been a well-behaved mannerly boy.