I have three teenage daughters who are currently not allowed on social media. But I want to give them some ability before they become adults. My eldest gave me a PowerPoint presentation on why she should be allowed on Snapchat, lol.
She made some good points. Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.
Feels like a good opportunity for a Fediverse platform. Like a closed Mastodon/Pixelfed server and have some parental controls. Any projects out there?
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There are more and more kids who aren’t allowed on social media because of its multifarious harms. Don’t forget that 20 years ago, no kids had social media. By all accounts, kids were doing fine back then. Also, OP said that her eldest daughter, at least, has a friend group, so your concern about their social isolation is probably misplaced.
It’s pretty clear that OP’s daughter does feel like she’s missing out on things her friends are doing, that’s why she is asking. Social isolation doesn’t have to be total to be damaging to your mental health, especially if you’re an extrovert.
And bringing up “but in my time…” Yeah, no. Not a comparable situation. If everyone is on social media and you’re not, you’re going to be left out of at least some things, there’s just no way around it.
Almost every kid has felt that they were missing out on something because of parental rules at some point. The kids who had no rules were not necessarily the lucky ones, since good parenting always involves setting boundaries. i’m really not making the “in my time” argument because if we fixed the problems with social media i would have no problem letting my kids use something i didn’t have access to. to me it’s about balancing risks: make it safer, then let kids use it! after all, op is opening the door by making this post. she is directly responding to the expressed desire of her kids and trying to find a safe way to let her daughters access the tools they think they need.
Well, realistically, things have changed. Without social media you get quite left out. Easily forgotten even.
We’ve had discussions about this, with and without our kids. Yeah, they need to be in the loop with their friends, and being in that loop can mean being exposed to some bullshit.
That’s always been the case, though. The additional risk of modern social media, I think, is that it’s always with you. One of the rules we laid down was to plug your phone in outside your room before you go to bed. That was relatively strongly enforced when they were younger, just getting started in that arena. They’re all essentially adults now, so we don’t enforce it anymore, but they sometimes still do it anyway.
It’s important to be connected, and it’s okay to be disconnected when you want to be.
One of the rules we laid down was to plug your phone in outside your room before you go to bed.
Sorry, just some small note. Charging to 100% daily significantly shortens the battery lifespan. Staying between 20 - 80% is generally recommended.
But to be honest, if I still had a phone with user replaceable battery I’d just 100% it too. I mean, the battery for my Galaxy Ace is like €6.Anyway, I’ve got some USB tester from AliExpress that also has a time limit. I can usually nail that near 80%. There’s also some physical Bluetooth charge limiters, though that of course requires their app.
Irrelevant if your phone has built-in charge limiter.
But yeah, anyway, how you did it sounds fine.
Edit: Although theoretically, it probably could be done without an app. Bluetooth can share battery charge info.
There’s a hardware device with a companion app that can do charge limiting for any Android or iOS device if you’re so inclined. I haven’t used it; I use ACCA.
You are right. But if things have changed, they can change again. Many countries are in the process of banning smart phones in schools and are legislating age minimums for social media. In such environments, access to social media becomes much less important. I think a better long-term approach would be to mitigate the risks of social media, and the fediverse is already addressing some of the big problems like corporate control of information and algorithmic curation of content. I like the idea of social media, but i hate the (prevalent) implementation.
Don’t forget that 20 years ago, no kids had social media
What does the word “social media” even mean?
Because I was definitely on web forums in 2005. I was a preteen back then.
It was only for us nerds.
That is true. I remember around that time wishing the Internet were more popular among the general public and wishing that would turn everyone nerdy. The first part has happened, the second not.
For my part, i don’t consider forums social media. I may be in the minority, but im not as worried about stranger danger or cyber bullying as much as corporate control over content and privacy. i have never used snapchat, but i assume part of their revenue stream involves advertising and selling private data. maybe snapchat is very responsible about these things, but there is no oversight. take facebook, for example: a whistleblower just alleged that facebook targeted teen girls with weight loss and beauty products when it detected that the girls were feeling bad about themselves (say, when they had deleted a bunch of selfies). these exploitative and predatory decisions (to target an individual) are not approved by an ethics board. they are not subject to scrutiny. the only time we become aware of them is when some executive gets laid off and has a sudden crisis of conscience/lucrative book deal. maybe a ban on individualized ads and content feeds for young people would be enough to fix big problems. forums mostly don’t suffer from those problems.
Just a regular Mastodon server with federation disabled might be a good start.
So… with whom…
With her friends, presumably. Why would she want strangers or mere acquaintances on her group chat?
But Mastodon isn’t Matrix. It’s not just a chat server, but regular social media.
Why would her friends want to join her dad’s creepy nerd thing?
She would be alone on there.
Lol. Like corporate social media isn’t creepy.
Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.
On Android you can disable app notifications. Some apps also allow it per group/person.
It’s not part of the Fediverse, but Signal is a good for group chats. It’s got reactions and gifs and whatnot, and you can also ignore the notifications you don’t care about.
Yes, but that would only work if her group chat friends also use Signal.
Which likely isn’t going to happen unless all of their friends also use Signal.
My read of OP’s question was asking about something they could switch the friend group to. If they don’t want to switch to anything else, then they’re stuck on Snapchat because that’s what they’re already using.
yeah the group leader is not the kid without social media, they aren’t following her lead lol
First: you’ve done good, raising a kid that asks for your permission first.
Second: realize that this comes from peer pressure, them wanting a space away from parental supervision. If you truly want to make your kids savvy about the Internet, you need to assume they will eventually encounter seedy places, run into assholes, and be exposed to things like bullying.
Have a conversation: you will encounter these things. Your friends may be into them. But they can have bad effects and here is how you avoid it and how to deal if it happens to you. Talk about keeping private information private.
Be open and non-judgemental. You want them to feel safe coming to you for advice.
Be truthful and stay credible. Keep up with what’s out there, but don’t just buy into the latest Tiktok scare.
Talk to your kids about stuff they found that was cool or scary.
Embarrass them by using memes incorrectly.
Setting up a mastodon instance may be cool at first, but their friends are going to think it’s lame with the supervision. You could still do it for a number of other reasons, but it won’t prepare them for the ugly Internet.
Source: me, a parent.
Lol they wont use a parent moderated social media no chance
tbh, i don’t really understand why you’re doing this op. i mean its not like brainrot, addiction or whatever it is that you’re trying to protect your kids from is just gonna disappear when they’re gonna become adults.
just talk to them about those problems and tell them why they shouldn’t do that kinda stuff if your eldest daughter is already smart enough that she convinced you abt this shes already smart enough imo
and please don’t create a closed mastodon server or smthng like that with you as the admin thats just not gonna work. even if its just normal stuff (also idk abt your children but me and all my friends talk and joke about stuff that would prob look or feel very weird around someone even just a gen older, sooo even if they were talking abt normal stuff, it might look weird to you) they would probably feel awkward talking since you, a parent would be seeing those posts. like just imagine how you would feel if you were a kid and your parents would just be looking at you every time you were talking with your friends
I’m not a parent (and I’m glad I don’t have to think about this problem myself). However, I’ve worked at a company that specialised in filtering internet services with many parents using it to protect their kids. I’ve also talked to plenty of people whose parents used to deny them whatever app the kids were on at the time. I can tell you that many kids will install apps and create accounts eventually, whether you permit them or not. I’ve seen the ingenious workarounds kids will come up with (using the browser app built into Windows Help to get around parental controls, combining web proxies and VPNs into an unholy homebrew Tor, or just using a burner phone outside the house), and while I appreciate the hacker culture that can develop around hiding apps from your parents, I don’t think it’ll be good for the relationship between you and your kids if you’re too strict about this stuff.
Snapchat is popular because other kids are on there. It’s mostly a stupid looking chat app. Every other chat app out there has cloned its most important features. Your kids won’t be missing out on anything on there, except for the network of friends and social activities that are there. That means you won’t find a Fediverse app like that, because most teenagers aren’t on the Fediverse. The other kids aren’t going to replace Snapchat with an app just to chat with your kids, especially not if it sends a copy of their conversations to their parents. Best case scenario, they install the app and share most of the stuff your kids are missing out on on the special server you set up so your kids don’t miss too much.
As for the point your daughter made, notifications can be silenced. If your kids are worried about phone addiction or getting interrupted by notifications, help them with whatever digital wellness tools their devices come with. Every major OS, desktop and mobile, now comes with tools to limit notifications during focus time, bed time, and the ability to silence notifications for certain chats or events. I find it hard to believe that Snapchat would solve that problem and feel like it’s more likely she’s using an unrelated valid concern to help her case for your permission to use Snapchat.
I don’t know how old your daughters are and what guidance they need, but if they’re creating PowerPoints to get their desires across (bravo), I think they’d be better served with guidance than with alternatives. Instead of rejecting them, consider permitting apps like Snapchat under certain conditions (time limits, no publicly posting pictures, no strangers, etc.). It’s probably also best to make the rules are clear and consistent (which means not taking away Snapchat time as punishment for arbitrary things), because that kind of stuff can cause trust issues that will still have them go behind your back. For this to work, they need to trust that you will honour the “deal”. I’m not saying you should let 12 year olds go ham on social media, but letting 16 year olds on Snapchat an hour a day isn’t going to kill them.
The biggest risk with these things is that kids will find a way to install these apps without you noticing, something bad happens (their online friend turns out to be a grown man, a classmate starts sending weird messages), and they’re afraid of talking to you about it because they might get in trouble for having a banned app on their phone.
For real-time communication, the most suitable solutions are probably documented around https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication/ (note that email is not recommended for person-to-person conversations).
When do you think you should allow a child to have an email address? A Fediverse account is basically an email account, except that the primary inbox is shared with a lot of people rather than only one person (and the same goes for any social media account). If you wouldn’t allow someone to use an email address, you probably shouldn’t allow them to use a Fediverse account either.
At least one person who seems interested in the health of children expressed that “delaying children’s access to smartphones until high school and social media platforms until 16” is a good idea. https://www.anxiousgeneration.com/ https://jonathanhaidt.com/social-media/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0MXgA2sSn8
- Dad can I have Snapchat?
- But we have Snapchat at home!
This is you rn. She wants to keep up with her friends, not participate in your ideology.
Right? How dare a parent actually care about their child’s upbringing? It’s 2025, we’re supposed to give our kids an iPad at 3 years old and let Cocomelon raise them.
Strict parents create sneaky kids.
It’s good that you’re protective, but be careful not to be overly protective, kids need to think for themselves, make mistakes and learn from them.
Builds into lifelong issues with trust
Can confirm. 38 years old still with crippling trust issues from this.
How old are they?
The minimum age for Snapchat is 13. The direct mesaaging part of it allows for fun and harmless messages between friends. I think allowing her to use it if she’s 13+ is reasonable.
What you could do is to ask her not to allow friend requests or messages from anyone who are not her friends, not to use the AI assistant (which can’t be disabled), and to not use it to consume content from influencers (which is in a separate tab to the right). You cannot really police this, but it’s not the end of the world if she sees the feed of some dumb influencer.
Position data must of course also be disabled. Snapchat is a bit creepy.
The fediverse is always (somewhat) public. Getting together with other parents to set up a Pixelfed instance to use in the friend group rather than to have them use Instagram is a cool idea, and allows parents to be admins and decide who can federate without taking control of the accounts of the kids. It might be a nice way for them to learn that whatever they do online is run by some person whom they decide to trust. And it could keep them off Instagram a little longer.
I don’t really know the first thing about parenting though, just my thoughts. It’s a tricky question.
I don’t know you, your daughters, or their friends so I can’t make specific recommendations. What I can say is that it’s really common for teenagers who are sheltered from the dangers of the world to make more and bigger mistakes once they’re unsupervised than those who get a gradual introduction.
The two main dangers of social media for most people are:
- Encountering assholes. For girls and women, there’s a high probability assholes will try to sexually exploit them. Since there are minimal consequences most of the time for sending “show me your tits”, they’re going to encounter that behavior eventually, and it may be easier to deal with for the first time when they have parental support.
- Algorithmic rabbit holes. These can create the perception that problematic attitudes and behaviors are common and widely accepted when they are not. Having an open dialog with parents about anything from eating laundry detergent to Jordan Peterson can be a strong stabilizing influence.
I don’t think a closed Fediverse server is likely to serve as a first step in a gentle introduction because it has neither danger and presumably no strangers to talk to. The full Fediverse might work better, as it does offer interaction with strangers. Encounters with assholes will be less frequent than on corporate social media, and any rabbit holes will be much more self-directed.
That said, when one of them is likely within a year or two of leaving home or at least having full control of her digital life, if she wants to use some corporate social media, she’s probably better off doing that with some parental supervision and support than jumping in completely unprepared when you’re no longer in a position to prevent it.
Her friend group has a group text and she wants to keep up with everyone but doesn’t want to get the ding notifications constantly.
This seems like a good opportunity to learn how the notification settings on her phone work.
Not the most related, but if Instagram becomes an issue, there is an Instagram patched app which is DMs only
It’s interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.
For some clarifying points: my kids are allowed on some social media, BeReal, Youtube, Pinterest. They log into our accounts for FB Marketplace.
There is a growing acknowledgement amongst kids that smartphones and social media create mental health issues. All of my kids have asked us to limit their screen time.
I’m not an overly restrictive parent but I tend to ease my kids into things as opposed to one day it’s banned, one day it’s permitted. Collectively, parental controls suck on most technology platforms and at the end of the day, the corporate SM is still trying to addict you and turn you into the product.
I think what my dream is is for a simple set up of a family server with roles. So you can start with just sharing pictures with grandma and grandpa and then expand into sharing more broadly. But starting the online experience outside off of the corporate algorithms.
It’s interesting the number of comments about parenting advice as opposed to technology suggestion.
Was this unexpected? It has been my experience online that people are more likely to tell you what they think you need to hear than what you asked for.
Well because your original post was kinda misleading.
There are multiple things you talk about:
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“Ding-ding” notifications - well you can adjust notifications, to help with not developing an addiction
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her group chat - do they want to move their friend group chat to a fedi platform? Or were you just clumsily wording?
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family fedi server - that is what you are talking about now, and it’s a completely different thing. You could set up a closed-registration mastodon or vernissage instance for that, but tbh I wouldnt recommend using any ActivityPub software for the purpose of sharing private photos and messages with your family. Because there is always the danger of that data federating to all kinds of servers…
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