Earlier today, I served as the “young woman’s voice” in a panel of local experts at a Girl Scouts speaking event. One question for the panel was something to the effect of, “Should parents read their daughter’s texts or monitor her online activity for bad language and inappropriate content?”
I was surprised when the first panelist answered the question as if it were about cyberbullying. The adult audience nodded sagely as she spoke about the importance of protecting children online.
I reached for the microphone next. I said, “As far as reading your child’s texts or logging into their social media profiles, I would say 99.9% of the time, do not do that.”
Looks of total shock answered me. I actually saw heads jerk back in surprise. Even some of my fellow panelists blinked.
Everyone stared as I explained that going behind a child’s back in such a way severs the bond of trust with the parent. When I said, “This is the most effective way to ensure that your child never tells you anything,” it was like I’d delivered a revelation.
It’s easy to talk about the disconnect between the old and the young, but I don’t think I’d ever been so slapped in the face by the reality of it. It was clear that for most of the parents I spoke to, the idea of such actions as a violation had never occurred to them at all.
It alarms me how quickly adults forget that children are people.
Apparently people are rediscovering this post somehow and I think that’s pretty cool! Having experienced similar violations of trust in my youth, this is an important issue to me, so I want to add my personal story:
Around age 13, I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me “not to joke about things like that.” I stopped telling my mother when I felt depressed.
Around age 15, I caught my mother reading my diary. She confessed that any time she saw me write in my diary, she would sneak into my room and read it, because I only wrote when I was upset. I stopped keeping a diary.
Around age 18, I had an emotional breakdown while on vacation because I didn’t want to go to college. I ended up seeing a therapist for - surprise surprise - depression.
Around age 21, I spoke on this panel with my mother in the audience, and afterwards I mentioned the diary incident to her with respect to this particular Q&A. Her eyes welled up, and she said, “You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?”
TL;DR: When you invade your child’s privacy, you communicate three things:
- You do not respect their rights as an individual.
- You do not trust them to navigate problems or seek help on their own.
- You probably haven’t been listening to them.
Information about almost every issue that you think you have to snoop for can probably be obtained by communicating with and listening to your child.
Part of me is really excited to see that the original post got 200 notes because holy crap 200 notes, and part of me is really saddened that something so negative has resonated with so many people.
“I tried to express to my mother that I thought I might have clinical depression, and she snapped at me ”
“’You know I read those because I was worried you were depressed and going to hurt yourself, right?’”
I found these quotes particularly interesting. OP’s mother refused to listen when she tried to talk about her depression, but snooped through her things to see if she was depressed.
It’s amazing to me that parents need to be told something that I GUARANTEE they experienced themselves. This is something that predates text messaging. You search your child’s room for drugs, and they will find a better hiding place for anything they may be worried about you finding - even if it’s as innocuous as candy. You try to snoop on their phone conversations with their boyfriend, and they will 1) Find a different way to communicate with him, and 2) Never communicate with YOU about their boyfriend.
My parents doing this shit to me didn’t make me stop doing it and didn’t make me respect them any more. All it did was make me better at sneaking around.
It’s honestly true that if you snoop through your kid’s stuff, it’ll guarantee that they won’t tell you anything, because I don’t tell my mother anything now.
My mom demands that I log in to my email and allow her to look through it.
I keep a private email that I access only through incognito mode because of this.
She also demands to see my tumblr.
I have a fake account set up for that very reason.
My mom thinks she knows everything about me, accusing me of so many horrible things, but she doesn’t know I’m gay. She doesn’t know that this coming Friday is my and my girlfriend’s 6 month anniversary. She doesn’t know I self harmed (because of her). She knows nothing about me because I do not trust her, all for the very reason that she gives me no privacy and is volatile and violent when I try to refuse to let her go through my things.
my mom has ALL MY PASSWORDS EVER so i literally never talk to her about my emails or anything, mostly because im hoping she’ll forget about it and i dont have to have this constant know of anxiety in my stomach because holy shit my mom could go through all my emails and i can do nothing about it.
also i cant even talk to her about my adhd because she also has (an undiagnosed very differant kind of) adhd, and she just invalidates my feelings and makes me feel like im making it all up.
so yeah, no wonder i dont share stuff about my social life with my parents.
Flip side: from the time we were very small, my parents made it clear that everyone in the family has boundaries, and should expect a right to privacy. That’s right. Privacy was a right in our house, not a privilege.
That extended to and from the kids. We knew what closets and cabinets were off limits. And personal writings in closed books were not to be opened and flipped through, regardless of the writer. Others’ belongings were not to be moved or used without their permission.
To this day, my parents and I are close, and I know I can talk to them about anything I want to, and withhold anything I want to keep private.
So, mom, dad, you’ll never read this. But thanks. You got it right.
This is completely true and, I would add, extends beyond the immediate family. My parents were much like the above person’s: privacy was considered an inherent right in our home, I didn’t go through my parent’s things, and my parents always asked permission and explained their logic if they had concerns (my dad checked my email for viruses a few times when I was younger, etc). Any time I was uncomfortable or felt like they were invading my privacy, they stopped whatever they were doing then and there and we discussed the situation, and, if I still didn’t want them to pry, they didn’t. As a result, my parents probably still know more about my life than anyone else despite the fact that I’m now in college, because I trust that, one, they would never press if I didn’t want them to know something, and, B, they would never share information I told them in confidence with anyone else.
On the other hand, my extended family did not follow this policy. If I used my grandmother’s computer while I was at her house with my cousins, there was always someone physically watching over my shoulder and (more often than not) criticizing whatever I was doing. My cousins and aunt went through my backpack when I went over after school–not for any particular reason, just because it was there and I was too scared to stop them. Anything I wrote down was public property; anything I built (I used to be a building-stuff person) was Not Mine To Keep unless my mother intervened. My possessions were not mine–keeping toys or books for myself was selfish and rude beyond belief. Uh…in case it’s not immediately obvious, to this day I don’t get along with my extended family and I would never ever trust them with private information. I’m still pretty paranoid about my things: someone tried to take my computer away from me while I was writing once and I almost broke their wrist because I panicked so hard. I genuinely shudder to think of this sort of technology having been available to them when I lived near them and saw them frequently. Nothing will burn a bridge faster than taking away someone’s right to have their own things and their own thoughts.