Episode 68: What things to look at when checking a kid‘s phone.

The Be THAT Mom Movement Podcast: Protecting kids in a digital world

Privacy is a highly debated when it comes to a kid's phone, but if you are wanting to check your kids phone, use these suggestions on what to check!

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Full Transcription:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

So, if you ever want to get parents riled up, ask the question in a parenting group, whether or not a kid deserves privacy on their phone, have you ever done that? Have you ever looked at those conversations? Wow. It can get heated, right? Well, today we're going to just dive into a couple aspects around that topic to help you. If you are in the place where you are needing to inspect their phone and some alternatives that you can use in order to not have to go into their phone as much and worry about missing something, okay. Stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (00:38):

Welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age, inspired by a mother's love with a relatable real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the bead that mom movement with your host, Dolly Denson,

Speaker 1 (01:04):

Needing a way to stay in touch with your kiddo, but don't quite want to give them a phone yet. Check out the tick talk. Watch it is the best way to stay connected with your kid while keeping them safe and knowing exactly where they are. It includes streaming music has an activity. Tracker has parental controls. You can text, you can call between each other and you can set up a place where, you know, if they go outside of a certain perimeter, such as their school or your neighborhood, check them out today and use code, be that mom for a discount. So privacy around the use of a phone. I get it. It is definitely something that we need to honor. As our kids get older. It is like one of those things where they are trying to gain more independence and think that we don't understand them and all of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:53):

But what you have to understand when it comes to giving them digital access to the digital world, to smartphones and whatever it is, whatever it looks like for you is that the information that they have at their fingertips is like the world, like the entire world. So think of anything and everything that they may be curious about. They can find information about it and we can all agree that yes, we want them to expand their thinking, to learn more things, but some stuff is just not something they need to be exposed to at certain ages. Right? So the biggest thing is to not feel pressured into giving that first smartphone, right? Like at some point we have to put our foot down and say, it's not okay to be giving an eight and nine and 10 year old a smartphone, right? Like of course some parents do that and your kids do fine, but other ones do not.

Speaker 1 (02:43):

And they crash and burn. And so we have to recognize there is an impact for this and that when we are giving them something, I believe these things need to be earned. And then we don't have to necessarily be diving into all of their conversations once they have developed and demonstrated that responsibility around what they are doing back in the day and age, when all a phone would do is taxed. And you know, anybody and everybody didn't have access to your kid's phone number. It probably wasn't that big of a deal. My oldest kid's first phone was a flip phone. And at that time, the flip phone had no internet access, but we're living in a different day and age now. So I believe that, like I've said, in other episodes that we need to start with baby steps, put floaties on them and help guide them.

Speaker 1 (03:30):

So, but once you have given that smartphone at that point, I do believe there needs to be monitoring. Now the alternatives to taking up a phone and looking through it is to use something like that. Bark. I know you've heard me mentioned that before or choosing a different type of phone, one of the dumb smartphones. And I, I have those listed in my show notes, but those are an alternative and they take some of the work out of it. But let's say that you're in the place right now, where you do not have bark. Maybe you're thinking about it, but you haven't gotten it set up yet, or it's not available where you're at. What things can you do? What things do you look at when you go to take up their phone? I want to talk about 10 things. Some of them kind of overlap, but 10 things that you can think about and look into when you pick up that phone and then go from there.

Speaker 1 (04:18):

Once you have gotten into a routine of looking at things, and if you are in a place where you can get bark, it will take some of the legwork out of this. And any of these things are not completely full-proof. So, you know, just realize that no, that if you are spot checking it, your kid may get smart to the fact that they know you're going to spot, check it at a certain time. And so they delete things. They get rid of things, they delete apps, different things like that. So you can't see what their activity is. So that's kind of the risk that comes along with giving them a device that has so much information, so much power, so much influence in impact that you do run that risk of there being some dishonesty, as a result of most likely their innocent curiosity, to a point before they start doing it intentionally because they want to do whatever it is that they want to do.

Speaker 1 (05:06):

So let's talk about this. If you're picking up the phone, you don't yet have a parental control type thing on there, or you can't get one on there. I first off would look at their conversations, their texts, who are they talking to? What are they saying? There's no way that you probably can scroll through all the conversations, but I would set it up to where there's boundaries around, who can they talk to? And then maybe generally scroll through, like maybe if they've got a group message with other peers, it might be good to kind of scroll through that and just kind of see what the general conversation is. Okay. So the first thing would be to look at the text, who are they talking to? What are they talking about? That type of thing. The second thing would be what phone calls are they getting in?

Speaker 1 (05:48):

Who are they calling? If they're getting a bunch of random numbers might want to go through there and block some of those numbers, I've looked at my kid's phone, they were getting all kinds of spam. And so I've gone through and blocked those numbers. So they would quit calling them. The third thing would be to look and some of these things, there's where they've learned to hide things. So that's, I'm just kind of highlighting some of the places that they may be trying to slip things past you. So the third thing would be notes. Notes is a place where they can, you know, put passwords down. They can put the different things that they're trying to remember save or whatever. And so I would look through the notes and just see what they have there. The fourth thing would be emails. If they do have their email access on their phone, I would look through and just see if they they're getting emails from someone other than who y'all know, or, you know, sometimes they're spam emails that can kind of deceive them into thinking there's something real, like click this and you're going to win this.

Speaker 1 (06:40):

And then it ends up implementing a virus or, you know, something to that effect. So we'll look at the emails, see who they're emailing and who they're getting emails from, maybe unsubscribed from things that they have may have subscribed to. And now they're getting a bunch of spam emails. The fifth thing would be their pictures. And when I say pictures, I mean also look at their deleted pictures. So I would look through and see what things they're taking. Pictures of, look and see if they've deleted anything. If they know how to delete the deleted folder, then you still may miss things. But that is a place where you might pick up on something they're doing or saying that you may not think is ideal. The sixth thing is look through the files of the phone, another place where they can hide things is in the files of the phone.

Speaker 1 (07:23):

The seventh thing would be their contacts. And I personally, if you have an iPhone, I would set it up on your screen time controls to where they can not add any contacts. And you can do that in there and you could set it up to where they can add contacts or not add contacts. And then I think there's a few other things in there. Like you can set it up to where they can can't call after a certain time, or they can only call these certain numbers at, or these certain contacts at a certain time. So you can set it up to where they have like your preferred list of people that can contact them and vice versa. So I would look through the contacts, make sure there's no one knew that you don't know and that everybody that's on there as someone that they know in real life in person, the ninth thing I would look at is time spent and where it was spent.

Speaker 1 (08:10):

So their screen time controls or their Google family link, screen controls. And on an iPhone, if you haven't set up through your phone, you can look at this through your phone, what their activity is, what apps they're spending more time on, how much time they were on their phone, all of those things, I would pay attention to that and see where they're spending their time. And then the last thing to mention is, oh, I skipped one. So I did, I skipped, I think I skipped number seven, but I don't know if I said six or seven or eight. So the next one is hidden apps. So I have an episode that I talk about some common hidden apps. Let me see if I can find it. Okay. So if you go to episode 53, I talk about different apps and features of smartphones that are made for hiding things.

Speaker 1 (08:58):

Highly recommend that you check out that episode because there are apps that are made specifically to look like a calculator or different things. So that's what you think it is, but it actually has like hidden messages or hidden photos, different things like that, hidden on the phones that you can not see it. And if you ever see in an app that you have not approved, or, and that's another thing is, make sure you have it set up to where they cannot add or delete apps without your permission. And then that will save you a lot of sanity when it comes to finding something that you didn't approve of on their phone. But if you come across an app that looks different, you can go to the app store and search that app, you know? So just try to find that app in the app store and then look what at what its description is.

Speaker 1 (09:41):

That's one way to figure out if it's one of those apps. I mean, you know, there's always new apps, there's always new things going on. So it may not be something that's listed in my episode because there's always something new to skirt around what parents want our kids to do. So be sure to check out the app store for that. And then the last thing is just to check out if you are allowing any social media, Snapchat, Tech-Talk Pinterest, Instagram, any of those always be aware that those are algorithm based. So if you open up their app and it suddenly is showing them something, that's like, you know, risque something that you didn't want them to see. No, that it is showing things according to either something that they are browsing or searching for or talking about, that's how the apps work, unless you have it set up to block those things.

Speaker 1 (10:27):

But on most of them, it's hard to block it. So, you know, you, you search a certain thing and then suddenly it shows up on your Facebook feed, right? We've probably all experienced that. Or you talk about something and suddenly there's an ad for it. So when you go into their social media apps, one thing you can do, if you're kind of spot-checking this, if it allows you to, you can have a log in on your phone for certain apps. Instagram is one that you can do this. And so you can log out of yours and log into theirs and see what their activity has been. You can also kind of interact on theirs and interact with some things that you know, that they'll be interested in. So those are the things that it's shown in the app. If that makes sense, you know, so it's algorithm based.

Speaker 1 (11:07):

So you could go in, even if you can't do it on your phone, you could go in on their phone, click around on some things that you know, that they'll like on Snapchat, subscribe to certain things that channels that, you know, that is educational things for them, that type of thing. And then what they're shown is those things versus pornography or whatever. Now I'm not seeing or suggesting that it's okay to put your kid on a social media platform. I think that's an individual decision and there is responsibility that goes with that. Us understanding that there are dangers there that even with our best efforts, a predator that is savvy and knows how to work a kid or to work around parental controls can very much very quickly get into our kids' lives. Somehow one way to block that one thing that is very common, that they do is to kind of be friend the child, claiming that they're the same age or they somehow relate, you know, somehow gain their trust.

Speaker 1 (12:04):

And then they have them, they get them off of that platform. So they may like have them add them to their contacts. And then they're just another contact in the phone. So the parent won't notice that type of thing. So that's another reason why it's important to set up their contacts with where they can't add or delete contacts without your permission. Okay. So the social media thing is a big, huge thing that requires multiple episodes to help you navigate. So don't take that lightly and do supervise closely with that. Okay. So those are the tips that I have as far as things to just spot check. If you're going to spot check your kid's phone, I do still recommend that if bark is available in your area, it is absolutely top of the line, the best thing out there. They have a heart of gold.

Speaker 1 (12:49):

It is made by parents that like me have gone through the early days of having our kids on the digital things. And they have your kids and your best interest at heart. They will, if they detect something on your kid's phone, they will follow up with you. Once they send a message to make sure you and your kid are doing okay, they help you to navigate these things. And it's not just like a bot that detects things and sends it to you. There's different ways to control it to where you can make it more sensitive or less sensitive. You can bot check certain things. There's just so much to it. It's such a gift. Other than that, you know, there's the dumb smartphones. The pinwheel phone is top of the line gives you most control. It kind of takes a lot of these things that I'm mentioning and makes them to where they're not possible on a pinwheel phone because there's no internet access, the apps that are on there, you have to approve, you can set up modes for when the phone is functional, what things are functional when all of those things.

Speaker 1 (13:44):

So for a pinwheel phone use code, be that mom dash 10 T E N. And that will get you a discount on that phone for bark. It's be that mom is my code, and that will get you 20% off for the life of your subscription in a seven day free trial. The other things out there like the Tik TOK watch that will help you stay connected for a younger kid, but not necessarily access to the whole world with the phone. So there are things out there to help you, but use these tips to help you in the case that you are not able to get ahold of those things right now, or you're just kind of wanting to get a gauge on what your kid is doing and what's going on. Maybe you don't feel like those things are necessary yet. Okay. Or, you know, you just decide that you're not going to do those things, which is totally your call. Okay. Hopefully this was helpful for you and was, um, relatively short and sweet. I intended on it being a little bit shorter, but talked a little fast this time, I think. But hopefully you are doing well and having a great summer so far or whatever season it is, where you live and I'll chat with you next time.

Speaker 2 (14:46):

Thanks for tuning in being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community till next time.