13-year-old steals mom’s phone to bypass parental controls and sneakily use Instagram and Snapchat, she considers taking his phone until high school: ‘He resents us for not allowing him to have social media’

There comes a point in every parent's life where they realize that their kids are actually getting sneakier. On one hand, you're kind of proud of their new and improved problem solving skills; on the other hand, you worry you've raised a small criminal. Gone are the days where hiding broccoli under the mashed potatoes was the worst of their offenses; now they're pulling off cyber crimes from the family iPad just to outsmart parental controls.

My friends and I were pulling the same stunts a decade ago in high school! My best friend figured out how to reset her Chromebook's firewall and spent most of her Senior year watching K-dramas in the back of every class. She actually became the go-to "jailbreaker" at our school and was eventually caught by the faculty. Her mom was pretty disappointed in her until she pointed out how much she learned about computers in her efforts to undermine The Man.

That's sort of the situation in which we find ourselves today. A mom wakes up to find her phone mysteriously tampered with, parental control apps deleted, and her teenage son acting like it's no biggie. When he finally relents and admits that he was trying to sneak onto Snapchat and Instagram behind her back, mom takes to social media herself for validation. The result is a complex convo about honesty, rules, and whether or not taking away a kid's phone until high school is the only way to navigate this uber-connected world we inhabit.

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My 13 y/o stole my phone and uninstalled parenting app

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I certainly don't condone sneaky behavior, but as a former sneaky teenager, I agree that this was messy work!
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It's such a difficult time for parents navigating social media use. The reality is that it's a huge part of kids' lives. There has to be some compromise that the narrator can come to with his son or else he will be missing out on a big part of his social life.
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