Should You Monitor Your Teenager’s Phone? How Not to Do It

Monitoring your teenager’s phone depends on the relationship you have with them, why you want to do it, and how well they follow your instructions.

Parents are usually concerned about their teenagers’ physical whereabouts more than their online movements. Yet, online activities can be more harmful and leave a negative impression on your teenager’s life.

When your teenager goes online, which platforms do they visit? What do they do? Who are their friends? What are these friends sharing with them? The internet is a place where:

Anyone can say and share anything
The difference between fact and fiction is barely recognizable
Anything graphic can be sent and received within seconds
Significant mental and emotional distress occur to insecure teenagers

The internet is also an excellent place where your teenager can learn helpful lifelong skills and meet wonderful people from around the world. How does a parent ensure their teenager safely reaps these benefits? How far is too far when monitoring a teenager’s phone? Keep reading to learn the answers to these questions.

Teenagers Need their Privacy

Teenagers naturally crave privacy as they go through the adolescent stage. This new desire, which results from teenage brain development, is partly because they experience changes such as:

Figuring out their identity and where they fit in society
Finding out what they want to do in life and which values to hold
Gaining new skills and thought patterns
Experiencing new social interests and how they want people to view them

Teenagers at this point need privacy to process these new experiences and choose their path. Parents sometimes misinterpret this change as their teenagers hiding something from them. They panic and implement extreme measures to control a natural process.

For teenagers, the phone is their most prized possession where they record the experiences they have and keep records of what they treasure. Wanting to gain access to it is like entering their inner space.

Understanding your teenager’s need for privacy will help you approach monitoring their phones with respect and limiting how far you go.

While teenagers crave their privacy, you need to inform them they aren’t ready to handle the online world independently. They still need your guidance on healthy ways to use popular social media apps and noticing signs of internet predators trying to groom them.

Help your teenager understand the level of privacy you will allow them to have and your need as a parent to ensure their online safety and security.

When to Monitor Your Teenager’s Phone

Pew Research Center surveyed parents of 13 to 17-year-olds to find out how they monitor their teenagers’ phones. They found out that over 60% of parents monitored their teenagers’ phone use on several platforms. The chart below gives a breakdown of the various platforms they check.

Source: Pew Research Center

Monitoring your teenager’s phone needs to be done with care to prevent damaging your relationship. Your teenager may not like your plan, but preparing them for it and explaining why you want to monitor their phone will reduce the friction it may cause.

Overly monitoring your teen’s phone and blowing up over simple matters such as a minor disagreement with a friend on a social media message will cause them to resent you. Save your time and energy for serious issues such as your teenager:

Withdrawing from you and their friends: This could be a sign of cyberbullying or a predator on the net trying to separate them from other people to control them.
Crying or becoming upset after being online: It may signify being rejected online or cyberbullying.
Hiding their phone: They could be engaging in suspicious activities and may delete afterward. You can do a spot check.
Struggling with sleep during the day: They may be spending too much time online at night, and you need to monitor their screen time using parental phone monitoring apps.
Becoming obsessed with weight and looks: They could be on apps and popular social media pages where people shame others or glorify extreme body appearances. Here is a video showing how TikTok can lead your teenager to an eating disorder.

A teenager taught by their parents or in a teen’s workshop on what to allow in their space and avoid online will notice suspicious activity, and they will keep off. The goal is not to always monitor their phone but to teach them how to be responsible and protect themselves from negative influences.

How Not to Monitor Your Teenager’s Phone

Have you used a statement like “I bought this phone, so I can look through it anytime I want!” How did your teenager take it? Did it come across as a concerned parent looking out for their best interest? I doubt. Chances are high they thought you were trying to control their life and make them miserable.

A teenager going through an identity crisis desires respect, and part of it comes from how you handle their possessions even though you bought them. The same statement can be said and taken positively if you:

Have an ongoing loving relationship
Have calm conversations about the reasons you want to monitor their phone
Frequently do an online safety check by asking them the challenges they have with their phone use
Teach them the good, bad, and ugly of social media
Openly invite them to come to you with online challenges

Using forceful language and “because I said so” statements don’t work well with teenagers. It leads to rebellion just to affirm they have authority over their life, if not their phone.

Secondly, do you check more than is necessary on your teenager’s phone out of curiosity? Sometimes parents read their teenagers’ phone diary or their text messages, yet there wasn’t any suspicious activity.

Your teenager will know you snooped more than you should have with the conversations you have or comments you’ll make. You’ll be trying to manage every aspect of what you encountered on the phone. You’ll lose their trust as Nancy Darling from Psychology Today puts it:

“When parents respect their children’s judgment and privacy boundaries, kids are more likely to ask for help when they need it. They don’t need to defend their privacy, it’s being respected. We also know that when parents invade privacy, kids increase barriers and defend their privacy by lying. Parents invade more. Kids lie more. It’s a downward spiral.” Nancy Darling, Psychology Today

How to Monitor Your Teenager’s Phone

If you want to monitor your teen’s phone without appearing intrusive, be honest about why you want to do it. Discuss it with them beforehand and tell them you plan on frequently checking their online activity.

Give the reasons behind your decision and offer examples of how unhealthy phone use and online habits can compromise a teenager’s life. Clarify that the ultimate responsibility lies with them, and you’ll reduce the frequency of monitoring when they model responsible phone usage.

Let them also know you will tighten their phone accessibility if you find suspicious activities and unhealthy phone usage such as:

Posting revealing images
Bullying other people
Frequently conversing with questionable people
Following pages and people with extreme religious beliefs, body shaming tendencies, uses abusive language, and promotes drug use and promiscuity
Spending more than the agreed hours on the phone
Postponing school and home responsibilities due to phone usage

Offering these guidelines will reduce the conflict you may encounter with your teenager when you ask for their phone or when installing parental phone monitoring apps.

Assess Your Teenager and Decide How to Monitor

Every parent knows their teenager, whether they are responsible, honest, and how well they follow instructions. If you have a responsible and trustworthy teenager, you don’t have to implement strict phone monitoring measures as they have earned your trust. Allow them to enjoy relative freedom on their phone and let them know it’s the reward for their good behavior.

If you know your teenager disobeys you often, always tries to trick you, and lies often, you need to implement strict phone monitoring measures to ensure their safety. You can lighten the measures when they show improvement.

Ultimately, every parent’s goal is to raise a young adult who can make independent decisions and understands healthy phone usage and balanced online interactions. A fair share of the work goes to having frequent discussions with your teenager more than monitoring their phone. Keep the discussion going with every opportunity you get.

Image Source: Unsplash

Jane Kariuki

Jane Kariuki is a devout Christian, Clinician, Psychologist, and founder of ParenTeen Kenya. She authored an exceptional training manual used in her teens’ workshop and an instructional guidebook for her parenting classes. If she is not training, blogging, or counseling, Jane loves to spend time with her sweet husband and three children.