cellphone/smartphone monitoring

should I or shouldn't I?

Here's the Problem

When I suggest to parents that they need to monitor their teen's texts from time to time, I'm usually met with tremendous resistance. Some parents have made the decision to respect their teen's privacy. Their rationale? When they were teenagers and kept diaries or notes from friends, they absolutely did not want their parents to read them. In fact, they took great pains to hide them in secret and hard-to-find places, like under the mattress! (Of course, that's the first place any nosy parent would look.) Their diaries were personal—filled with fantasies and dreams. If what they wrote was taken out of context, their parents would flip out. The humiliation of having their parents read these innermost thoughts would be too hard to bear. Now, as the parent of a teen, they have chosen to give their teen the gift of privacy.

Other parents report to me that they're afraid to monitor their teen's texts because it might make their teen mad and they don't want to be accused of violating privacy. I get that incurring the wrath of an angry teen can be a deterrent! And finally for many parents, ignorance is bliss. Avoiding the problem means not having to deal with the messiness of what they might find.

Just ask this mom of a sweet, lovely, 14-year-old girl who came to me for help. One evening she walked into her daughter's room to put away clean laundry. The daughter, now in the shower, had left her cellphone on the desk, and her emails were up on the computer screen. This was a “respectful” mom who had never checked her daughter's phone or computer. But there they were, emails in plain sight, oh, the temptation. It wasn't like she was sneaking anything. Let the reading begin! Mom was shocked, reading a discussion between her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend regarding their recent foray into new sexual territory. They were having intercourse! Mom was horrified. She thought this relationship was just cute puppy love and had often allowed them to be in the house alone and unsupervised. So much for puppy love, and so much for privacy! Mom goes for the cellphone, and to her dismay begins reading months of texts between the two lovers that were filled with such explicit sexual language that it literally nauseated her.

Why It's a Problem

Comparing diaries of the past to today's communication tools is like comparing horse-drawn buggies to electric cars! Diaries were not two-way conversations between impulsive, suggestible, attention-seeking, sex-starved teenagers. Teens of today are completely desensitized to what they're writing and sending to one another. They don't feel the shame of being sexually provocative because they are removed from experiencing their “audience's” reactions. I highly doubt that your teen daughter would do a striptease in front of a group of boys at a party. That would be “slutty.” But she might not think twice about sending a sexually suggestive photo from her phone. I also doubt that your son or daughter would use words so coarse that they are unprintable here when having an in-person conversation with a member of the opposite sex. But in a text, how fun!

Teens, especially the younger ones, have no clue what they are doing when they send raunchy photos and racy texts peppered with promises of sexual favors. They see it all as a joke, until something bad happens.

Perhaps intercourse was never really on the table for this 14-year-old girl, but after months of sexting there are going to be expectations. Enough already with the written words of titillation, let's do the real thing. When a girl offers up oral sex, or a boy requests it in a text, that boy has expectations about what the girl will do for him. Because teens are impulsive and don't think before they act, they can get themselves in the kind of trouble that can have lifelong implications and consequences.

Many teens don't like sexting, but they do it anyway, worried that if they don't respond in a way that's expected of them, they'll be judged as losers. Teens are extremely conscious about what other people think of them. This can be a powerful motivator in your teen. Here is an example: A 12-year-old boy is watching TV with his mom. He is also texting away on his phone. Mom was OK with that since her son is quite shy, and she was happy to see him texting and being social. He goes to take a shower and leaves his phone on the coffee table. (Note to teens: Showers can be hazardous to your health.) Mom picks up the phone, curious to see with whom he's been texting. It's with a girl from his class. Girl: “What's up?” Son: “I'm jacking off!” WHAAAAT! The mom is beyond shocked. When confronted about this text, the young teen starts to cry. Here's my explanation to the mom: This boy is new to the party of texting. He's heard that if you want girls to like you, you're supposed to talk dirty. He wants girls to like him, so he'll talk dirty. And jacking off is the dirtiest thing he can think of.

Additionally, boys, buoyed by watching extremely explicit porn on their computers, iPads, and smartphones, have become more brazen than ever about pressuring girls for racy pictures and sexual favors. Girls, wanting to please the boys, get a boyfriend, feel sexually powerful, or to be “popular,” either offer or are pressured into providing these photos and “talking dirty.”

Here's the Solution

Monitoring your teen's phone is a necessary evil. It's uncomfortable and can make you feel like a nosy parent. But understanding that harmless conversations can turn into harmful consequences should be motivation. Thank God both of these parents are now clued into their teens’ worlds and can help them navigate. You can say, “From time to time you and I together will check the texts and photos on your phone. I get that this feels like an invasion of privacy, but I need to know that the conversations you're having and the photos you're getting and receiving are safe. I get that kids like to talk dirty and send sexy photos, but that's not acceptable on your phone. I don't want to see conversations about oral sex or penises or boobs.”

It is important to be blunt and honest with your kids. They need to hear the words out loud. It will make them sick to hear you say them, and that's exactly what you want. It takes all the fun out of it if your parents say those words! It's possible that your teen will take to deleting all his texts to stop your prying. In that case you can say that you know that he texts and it makes you very suspicious when there are no texts. Is your teen hiding something?

Again, not all kids want to talk dirty and send provocative pictures, like that 12-year-old boy. Let them know that if they're getting hassled by other kids to respond to sexy texts, they can say something like, “My stupid parents check my phone every day, and both of us will get in trouble, so don't send them anymore.” This lets you take the blame and lets them off the hook. That's a good thing.

A cellphone, a computer, or any other device is a privilege, not an entitlement. As the grown-ups in the house, it's your job to make sure your teens are using them safely. You can't help if you don't know!