Oh dear, our third child is getting their first mobile phone!
You tend to feel your way when talking to other parents. You hold your finger in the air first and see which way the wind blows. «Yes, yes, we have clear rules,» I say when the tone seems a bit too unambiguous to me. Or: «No, no, we'd never allow that either.» After all, nobody should think that parenting is my neglected hobby.
Whether it's hanging out or going out: the topics of conversation may change, but one thing remains constant: the mobile phone. We've got clear rules on that too , mind you. It's just that enforcing them is, shall we say, a bit of a challenge.
So, six months until all that junk from the internet starts flooding straight into our son's brain.
Because I know that, I'm not looking forward to Christmas as much. Because that's when D-Day arrives: our youngest is getting a smartphone. Christmas Eve, Year 6: that was already the starting point for his sisters. For the sake of family diplomacy alone, there's no changing that. Because he knows this, he doesn't complain. Not at all, in fact, so much so that I recently asked him if he even wanted one. To quote his answer, I'd need skull emojis right now.
He can count himself lucky, though. With our eldest, we'd initially, rather ambitiously, said she'd go on to sixth form. But she complained of being teased. (That didn't stop once she got a mobile phone: «I'd rather have none at all than one like that,» she said, because she hadn't been given a new model. But that's another story.)
So, six months until all that rubbish from the internet starts flooding straight into our son's brain. No, no, I don't really mean that. A bit, at most, because of the Manosphere and all that. But we do have rules, very clear ones.
Not a secret service
We're going to limit his screen time. We'll only let him use social media under supervision, discuss difficult content with him, and make sure he still reads books from time to time. We won't fall for it when he claims he urgently needs his device late at night for school. We'll stop him from Googling workarounds or asking his friends how to get round the restrictions.
We'll polish our screens so that fingerprints don't give the codes away. We'll stop him from creating secondary accounts, sneaking the thing into his room in the evening, or leaving the Wi-Fi on at night. And what if he piggybacks on the neighbours’ connection? We'd notice that, wouldn't we!
But since we're not actually a secret service, we'll end up snatching the device from him in exasperation. And as we keep an eye on it, we'll be amazed to hear how frantically it buzzes. We won't read the messages, no, we certainly won't. But if we happen to see them pop up, we might realise that even the clearest rules don't always stop Snaps being sent after midnight.
I'll fudge the screen time figures and say, «Yes, yes, we have clear rules.»
Yeah, yeah. It's all going to happen. And then we'll be wondering whether bans might be necessary after all. What's right, what's wrong. Whether TikTok is to blame for young people's crises, or whether those crises are down to their use of TikTok. And why these platforms, with all their sugar and mountains of small print, still get away with it.
Ultimately, it will sometimes feel like giving in. Then again, we'll realise there's a silver lining, and trust that he'll get the hang of it eventually. And every now and then, I'll probably catch myself – depending on how I'm feeling – cutting back on screen time and saying, «Yes, yes, we have clear rules.» And that's not exactly wrong, either.
