A mother of a teenage daughter once confided in me that every night, she’d take her daughter’s phone, sit on the toilet, and read every single text. In one quick motion, she flipped her hair behind her right shoulder, tilted her head to the left, pointed her false-nailed index finger upward and brought her hand back down:

“And I know if she deleted texts, too—I see the gaps. I know something’s missing. That’s when I ask her, ‘Why didn’t you answer that question?’ or whatever. And if there’s no texts—that’s a red flag, too. ‘Why you not texting Sharice? Y’all still friends?’”.

Around the same time, I had a friend who utilized an app that would alert her when her teenage daughter arrived home, based on her geolocation. She shrugged her shoulders, exhaled slowly: “I always know exactly where she is, and where she’s been.”

I was startled by this level of surveillance. My oldest son was in elementary school at the time, but I knew then and there that I didn’t want to do what those parents did. I was going to trust my child.

You Can Trust Your Child and Monitor Them

I recently confessed to another parent that I, on occasion, read my teen’s messages. She looked at me with understanding, then lowered her voice to say: “My therapist told me to stop doing that.”

A quick google search supplies split opinions about the practice, from parents and mental health professionals alike. One article was titled “When You Monitor Your Child’s Phone, You’re Invading My Child’s Privacy.” She backed up this belief based on her anecdotal experience of a middle school mother who “outed” a closeted gay child to their parents and peers. Said mother would share gossip about who was dating whom, crushes, and various other middle school gossip.

Well, that’s disgusting.

Don’t read your teen’s texts if you’re not mature enough to handle what you find

Mature people don’t gossip about children. (Obviously.) They don’t fly off the handle when they see their child engaging in conversations about topics or activities that they don’t agree with. They don’t rush to punish their children for what they read.

Rather, they use the information. They take note, they stay in the know.

An emotionally mature, stable adult won’t want to read every text, every day, because they have interests, hobbies, better things to do. They prefer the complexities of adult conversations and writings.

I don’t believe in daily or weekly text reading.

When my child was in middle school, he was in conflict with one of the peers in his friend group. I knew about it. He had been telling me for weeks how he was trying to keep his distance when I got a curt and accusatory text from the other child’s mother, finishing off with the demand: “Read his texts.”

I asked for his phone, scrolled around a bit, but had little interest in skimming through a plethora of nonsense conversations from a pubescent child. As I handed it back, I told him it’d be easier if he just told me all the details before I had a phone conversation with this woman, who, I find out later, reads her child’s texts every Sunday. He ritually hands the phone over to the warden—parent—and knows that he’s being subject to a search and seizure.

Here’s the thing—she knew little about what was happening between the boys. Who said what, lies told, and why the conflict began. She was damaging the relationship with her child, treating him like a prisoner, so that she could extract information. Yet she was still coming up short compared to a parent that facilitates a connection with their kid.

Monitoring your child should elicit conversation, not inhibit it

Why would that child tell his mother anything if she’s gleaning the information on her own, making assumptions, then running and squawking at the wrong child’s parent?

Overreacting encourages lying. So does blatantly bringing up what was learned without their consent.

Making a show out of reading a teen’s texts belittles them, encouraging an unhealthy power and control dynamic.

Ritualizing stealing a child’s agency over what they share with you encourages distrust.

Will it Breach my Child’s Trust if I go Through their Phone?

It’s not the act of looking through the device [you pay for, under your name] they use to communicate that abolishes trust. It’s what you do with that information. Are you yelling at them, disallowing certain friends, or bringing up things from their personal lives that will make them feel uncomfortable? Those will be the actions that cause them to not trust you.

Trust What?

Would you rather them trust that you’ll back off so they can figure things out on their own, or would you rather them trust that you’ll be there to support them without judgement when a situation arises?

Should I Respect my Teen Child’s Privacy?

What is privacy? Privacy is the state of being free from being observed, disturbed by other people, or free from public attention. Some say privacy is the ability for someone to seclude themselves.

Let that settle for a moment. Should a child whose safety you’re responsible for be free from being observed? Are you protecting a child from harm by affording them opportunities for seclusion when we’re in an epidemic of loneliness, a state which has countless negative effects on physical and mental health?

Is Privacy Relevant?

If someone you don’t know is having an affair, do they have the right to privacy? Would you try and find their partner and alert them to their infidelities? Probably not. You’d likely mind your own business. But what if that person is your brother-in-law? Spouse? Would you feel the same?

Privacy should be granted to those whose actions do not affect a self-governed group.

You, the parent, are the governor.

Life360 and Location Sharing

I don’t use Life360 or location sharing with my teenage son. Would it give me peace of mind? Yes. Have there been instances when I couldn’t get in touch right away and I was concerned with his whereabouts? Also yes.

I don’t use these apps because it’s my child’s responsibility to communicate where he’s going, when he’ll get back, and when plans change. The goal for adolescence is to transition into adulthood, and we aren’t planning on him being a parolee or having an ankle monitor his future partner will track him with. Communication is cornerstone to adulthood. We don’t take shortcuts around it.

Tips for Monitoring Your Teen’s Phone

• Snapchat. If your child has Snapchat, you won’t be able to keep track of anything. It’s a parent’s decision to allow social media, of course, but every major study shows no benefits and devastating mental health costs. Do what you will with that.
• Teaching them what not to do won’t stop them from inappropriate messages. I told my child repeatedly not to text anything they wouldn’t want the other child’s parents to read since he got a phone. Kids, especially kids now, lack discretion. They can’t help but put it all out there.
• A phone isn’t private. Anything sent could be screenshot and sent to another peer. Not monitoring what could potentially be broadcasted is negligence disguised as virtuousness.
• Make it easy. I take my child’s phone at night. He can’t regulate his tech urges enough to go to sleep. We have blockers on it and our WiFi so it would turn itself off, but we couldn’t keep him off the neighbor’s WiFi. Because I’m not taking it to read his messages, he can ignore the possibility.
• Be subtle. If you emphasize or talk about monitoring your child’s phone, they’ll be more apt to be sneaky and it will make the tool less useful. Don’t talk about it.
• Catch them off guard. Before I took my child’s phone regularly, I still had my ways. One day, we were in the rush of getting out door when I casually asked, “did you leave last night?” I didn’t seem angry, so he didn’t feel defensive. It was completely out of pocket, so he couldn’t help but react with obvious surprise. How could he lie at that point?
• Allude to psychic powers. Long before I read my child’s messages, I knew to never reveal my sources. “I know a guy” “We’re just so connected, I just knew” They can’t adjust their technique if they don’t know where they slipped up.
• Use it as a tool. If I find something of concern, I start very indirect conversations about it or the friend. Or I’ll bring up something I “read on NPR/The New York Times/my latest book” (This is frequently sprinkled in to many conversations with him anyway, ha!). He might tell me about the concerning issue himself. He might not.
• It benefits the child. Imagine a time when you wanted to ask or tell someone something, but you don’t know how to bring it up. The awkwardness was heavy, your heartbeat quickened, you were unable to carry on a conversation as you usually would because you were focused on what you wanted to ask. You might’ve even let the moment pass and regretted it. Imagine if, instead, the topic was brought up by them. It felt organic and easy, and you end up with a solution you couldn’t have pushed yourself to ask for. It would feel like magic.
• Ask questions. Even if my teen won’t speak directly to the concern, I can use the above-mentioned conversation technique—“I read XYZ…” I can ask him what his opinion on the topic is. We can have respectful back-and-forth discussion about it, presenting reasoning behind our opinions. He feels as if he is competent at intellectual conversation, has agency over his opinions, and that he belongs as a valuable member of our family. I tell him my beliefs without telling him what to think. Then I let it simmer.