How to Help Your Child Navigate Group Chats & More
Hi!
I hope everyone had a chance to relax a bit over Memorial Day Weekend. This week I share some Group Chat advice, give some dad & grad gift ideas and round up major tech news headlines from the past two weeks. Let’s dive in!
Note: This post originally appeared on BrightCanary and has been republished with permission. Read the original post here.
Kids start asking to join group chats as early as elementary school. They’re looking for a way to feel connected with their friends and avoid being left out. And, honestly, they’ve been watching us text each other their whole lives — they want to try it, too.
Group chats can seem innocent enough at first. Why not let kids chat with each other when they aren’t together in person? But so many of the parents I talk to find their children embroiled in social drama, peer pressure, FOMO, or worse: bullying and exposure to inappropriate content.
Trying to stay on top of it all can become completely overwhelming. It turns out that group chats are a lot to manage.
How smart parents can stay in the loop
If you’re on the fence about allowing group chats and texting, I would try to delay it until middle school if you can.
That said, if the horse has left the barn, the ketchup is out of the bottle, etc., I have some tips to make the experience healthier for your child and more manageable for you.
1. Communicate early and often
The best first step is to communicate openly and frequently about texting with your child. Remember that this is a new social activity that they won’t know how to do at first.
Start by explaining the basics of texting etiquette — preferably before they send their first text message. Be clear about the rules of engagement. When is group messaging allowed? On what device? Will an adult be managing or monitoring the activity? What happens if you don’t like what you see?
2. Coach, don’t just control
Depending on the age of your child, “coaching” might include:
Sitting with them while they type out messages and helping them craft respectful responses
Helping them understand the messages they receive
Reading their messages each night and talking about them the next day
Monitoring messages remotely using a third-party app that sends you alerts or summaries
In any event, kids need some real oversight when they are starting out with text messaging, particularly once group chats become part of their digital world.
Pro tip: If your time is limited, then it’s a sign that you may need to limit their screen time or consider a monitoring tool that does the heavy lifting for you.
3. Use the right technology
Once you feel confident that your child understands the rules and expectations, choose technology that will support your plan.
For many families, an iPad is the first device a child will text on. Apple does not offer text monitoring in their parental controls. BrightCanary does. In fact, BrightCanary is the only app I’ve seen that reliably monitors text messages on Apple devices. It’s been a game changer for many families.
For Android families, consider investing in the Bark or Qustodio apps. You might also consider purchasing a parent-managed phone like Pinwheel, Gabb, or the Bark Phone. These phones were literally made for kids and have additional features like the ability to disable group chats all together.
The bottom line
Managing group chats and texting takes time and effort. But with clear expectations, a coaching mindset, and the right technology, parents can make group chats a positive experience for kids — and themselves.
Worth Flagging
Need gift ideas? I made you some gift guides. Check out the one for Dads and the one for Grads. Both include tech savvy gifts. Grads gives a few ideas for each graduation milestone.
Save The Date— The next Lunchtime Tech Hotline on June 3rd at Noon! Get your burning questions answered! Register and submit questions here.
The new Nintendo Switch comes out June 5th. Read about it here. I am a little worried the new "C" button on the controllers that enables GameChat with a built-in microphone, allowing players to talk to friends online and view their game streams. I’ll take a closer look in a future post.
Tech News Headlines
Senators Blackburn and Blumenthal have reintroduced the KOSA bill. Apple, Microsoft, X and Snapchat are all in support. KOSA would require online platforms to take steps to mitigate harms like depression and eating disorders to children that use their services, and would also require certain default privacy settings for their accounts. More here.
3 new states have just passed Reasonable Child Independence laws which clarify that it is NOT neglect for parents to allow children out unattended. Florida, Georgia and Missouri are joining Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Montana, and Virginia. Bringing the total to 11 states. More here.
The Take It Down Act was signed into law on May 19th. Take It Down protects victims of online sexual abuse, including nonconsensual intimate visual deceptions and deepfakes. It requires websites to remove such content upon request from the victim and makes reasonable efforts to remove copies. More here.
There is a terrible TikTok Challenge making the rounds– the Chromebook Challenge where kids jam the ports of their Chromebooks with pencils or paperclips to try to get them to catch on fire. Its incredibly dangerous. I took to social media to talk about (see me on TikTok here or watch below). Read more about it here.