Eimear Hutchinson: Staying ahead of your kids when it comes to technology

I HAVE written about internet safety and children before but it is a topic that is constantly evolving both inside and outside of our home. We have an11-year-old, though in reality she is more akin to a 12-year-old (that year can make a big difference at that age!) so we are being thrust into a world of social media and phones sooner than we would have expected. With technology and children you cannot afford to sit back and pretend it goes over your head. To keep children safe online you need to stay one step ahead!

Not many of her friends have phones with sim cards in them but every one of them has access to phones or tablets at home. For this age group it is somewhat of a hangover of Covid as they were the right age to use devices to stay in contact with friends during periods of isolation so it’s been a hard habit to break ever since.

If you have met me lately in real life you will probably have heard me talking about Google Family Link. 

A very informative chat on the sidelines of the pitch lately with a friend sent me racing home to download the app and it has been an absolute game changer. 

Previously I kept my daughters phone and I would give it to her to use and expected it back once her time was up. I’m the first to admit though that this is a busy household. I would often tell her to get off the phone but it would stay hidden out my sight in the playroom and when I thought she was reading she’d sometimes be on it behind my back. Google Family Link has put an end to that level of trickery.

Family Link basically allows me to control the phone. The app is installed on both phones, mine is IOS, her’s an android, and on the phone she uses the app is hidden so she can’t try to break into it! I can see what apps she uses and for how long, I can see her location and most importantly I can set the amount of time that the phone is useable for. The phone shuts off between 9pm and 9am so during that time the screen is locked and the phone completely unusable. During the day I give her 30 minutes of screen time and once that time is up the phone locks.

On Snapchat I have set up Family Centre so her account is linked to my account (it’s against my wishes to a certain degree that she even has that app but all her friends do so that’s been a tricky road to navigate). In the Family Centre I can see the list of people she has chatted to, it’s not a huge amount of information but it helps eliminate conversations with people she doesn’t know. I also get emails whenever anyone requests to be her friend because her account is linked to my email.

On TikTok (an even bigger battle ensued for that one!) I have Family Pairing set up between our accounts so I can restrict who sees her content and who can comment, I can turn off push notifications, I can make her account private and I can make sure content with certain keywords never shows up on her feed.

Some of the other ground rules we have put in place include writing her pin code on the chalkboard downstairs, the phone she currently has access to is my phone so she is well aware that I am allowed to access it at any point in time.

Phones are never allowed upstairs either, that is a ground rule I’m trying to keep in place when friends come over too so as to avoid them using phones late into the night on sleepovers.

My daughter was attending a party recently and before the party the host mum sent out a message to the mothers requesting that none of the girls bring devices to the party which I thought was a fantastic precedence to set.

We constantly have chats about what is and isn’t appropriate to post online and what kind of communication is acceptable.

Whatever accounts she has are all private and her username is nothing resembling her actual name. I ask her not to post her face online yet nor that of her friends and have chatted lots about not sharing other people without their consent.

We also chat a lot about the importance of headspace away from the phone so that she gives herself the time to develop her own likes and dislikes and that she has the space to be creative and inspired by herself. I feel like so much of what we see online on apps like TikTok and Instagram is trend led – everyone buys the same clothes, does the same dances and tries the same recipes. I can only hope she leads a creative life and not the life of a sheep!