Instantgrams ... How old is safe?

peachyprice

The thing is, there's a 13yo age limit for a reason. At 10 your daughter isn't necessarily equipped with the wherewithall cope with unwanted comments and advances and to block people she doesn't know following her, as she's clearly demonstrated.

emsywoo123

peachyprice wrote: »

The thing is, there's a 13yo age limit for a reason. At 10 your daughter isn't necessarily equipped with the wherewithall cope with unwanted comments and advances and to block people she doesn't know following her, as she's clearly demonstrated.

My personal feeling, and this is in no way a dig at the OP, is that it very much depends how au fait as a parent you are with technology and social media.

DD is 10, and has been trained (nay, drilled!) at school particularly, about social media and about 87 thousand different possible scenarios! They are very clued up, perhaps more than I would expect, but many of her friends have Instagram (and FB) and I will let her have FB when she leaves this school next year as a means of keeping in touch with friends, but I am confident I can keep her settings tight enough to be as safe as practicably possible.

peachyprice

emsywoo123 wrote: »

My personal feeling, and this is in no way a dig at the OP, is that it very much depends how au fait as a parent you are with technology and social media.

DD is 10, and has been trained (nay, drilled!) at school particularly, about social media and about 87 thousand different possible scenarios! They are very clued up, perhaps more than I would expect, but many of her friends have Instagram (and FB) and I will let her have FB when she leaves this school next year as a means of keeping in touch with friends, but I am confident I can keep her settings tight enough to be as safe as practicably possible.

I couldn't agree more. Unless I know how something works, how to make it safe, how to spot warning signs and am included in their 'friends' list my children don't have it, full stop.

They may not like the idea of mum seeing everything, but hopefully it would make them stop and think before posting something wholly inappropriate. Unlike the poor yr7 (I kid you not) girl at DD's school who sent semi-naked pics to her boyfriend, who then posted them all over the place.

tibawo

Thanks for all the comments. I am actually quite savvy with the computer but when it comes to iPods, it is not something I'm interested in. I trust dd but as friends were on she thought it was ok hence why I picked one of her friends at random and showed her how much I could find out about her just from dd following her. I think she was quite shocked. I have seen one of the other mums today and she had no idea about what I was talking about until I showed her.

daisiegg

It is not just the danger of meeting strangers. It is what they could see.

Last week, we lost a teenaged student in a horrible accident. The accident was witnessed by a number of other teenagers and the next day, it turned out they had been snapping away with their phones and posting horrific, graphic pictures of the accident scene on Instagram. This added another layer of distress and horror for the poor friends of this student, who had these explicit images popping up on their Instagram feeds. Absolutely horrid. I was indifferent to it before, but after that experience, I would ban the whole thing if I could.

kjmtidea

There is no way I would let any of my children on any social media and my eldest is 12. I actually find it quite worrying that your 10 year old has an account on something that you know absolutely nothing about. Where and when did she set it up?

kerri_dfw

After reading a Beeb article yesterday saying they're allowing videos of beheadings on FB there's no way any of my children will be allowed an account until they're adults. Then again I don't really use mine anymore and I'm 27, my OH and I are both considering deleting them.

jackieblack

emsywoo123 wrote: »

DD is 10, and has been trained (nay, drilled!) at school particularly, about social media and about 87 thousand different possible scenarios! They are very clued up, perhaps more than I would expect, but many of her friends have Instagram (and FB) and I will let her have FB when she leaves this school next year as a means of keeping in touch with friends, but I am confident I can keep her settings tight enough to be as safe as practicably possible.

Facebook's legal terms state you must be 13 to have an account.
https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms (in section 4 "You will not use Facebook if you are under 13")

Does this mean you are going to allow her to lie about her age in order to sign up?