Teen Privacy Issues | Darryl Sollerh

Whether it was by clutching their teddy bear away from others, or building private fort-sanctuaries with blankets draped over tables, children from an early age seek to define the “mine, not mine” boundaries of their world. By their High School years, the need to establish ownership and territory combines with an increasing effort to define their individual identity, often characterized by intensifying individuation, driving privacy issues to the center of many family conflicts.

Accompanying and frequently exasperating those conflicts is their newly-invigorated and essentially related need for self-assertion.

Oh lovely.

Which is why, as most moms and dads can confirm, later bedtimes are increasingly lobbied for, territorial disputes with siblings skyrocket, and heated arguments about what’s fair and what’s not descend like incoming mortar fire. Gone are the relatively cuddly days of pre-school and Kindergarten, replaced by a prickly era in which bedroom doors that once seemed superfluous are now kept resolutely shut, as expectations concerning belongings, boundaries and privacy become all important.

It can be a messy process for all concerned. That said, it is also a necessary process.

Because however exasperating their child’s efforts may be to deal with, they are driven, in essence, by a High Schooler’s emergent need to better identify and define themselves in the world—which is why they can seem so disproportionally up-in-arms over what appear to be minor details.

And which is also why the concept of sharing, which mom or dad may have been diligently urging on their child from early on, may seem to a newly minted teen decidedly beside the point, especially in light of their exhaustive efforts to carve out a small corner of the world—and themselves—that they can call their own.

For them, these years are all about trying to discover and better define who they are in a world that is constantly changing, from the school they attend to a parade of new teachers, from the new academic demands to their new classmates, from coping with their increasing responsibilities and independence to navigating the social landmines of cellphones, texting, emails and social websites.

Not a comforting or reassuring time.

And not for parents either, concerned as they are about their child’s safety in the real world, yet also seeking to protect them from online threats as well, to say nothing of the troubles texting can cause.

Given all this, how can a parent support their child’s efforts to grow and develop a healthy sense of autonomy and appropriate boundaries, yet keep them safe in an increasingly complex and precarious world?

How can mom or dad encourage their child to develop a self-aware and vigilant sense of personal space and privacy, yet also defend them from the all too prevalent perils of the world?

In our work we have found that, far from an exact science, it is really about finding a delicate and evolving balance between the responsibility and desire a parent has to protect their child—including gathering the information they need to effectively do so—and yet also finding as many ways as possible to encourage and honor the necessary growth process occurring in their child that will, in time, hopefully enable their son or daughter to one day protect themselves, as well as their own children in the years to come.

This extremely delicate balance cannot be managed by mom or dad alone. It therefore needs to be based on clear, up-front communications with a child about a parent’s concerns and responsibilities, as well defining what their child’s responsibilities and safe practices need to be in the world.

Last but not least, it also requires a readiness on a mom’s or dad’s part to act, even if in error, on the side of safety.

Making this an even more difficult balance to strike are the many alarmist news stories, media hype or “expert” articles on child safety that can make a parent suspicious and driven to actions they may not, and likely would not, take were it left to their own intuition about their own child, and his or her safety.

We want to note this factor because essential to striking the right balance relies heavily on how well you know and communicate with your own child. Or what the state of things are between you and your child.

Are they open and communicative? Or are the closed off and tinted by worry and suspicion on both sides.

Because for you to be an effective guardian—for both their necessary growing process as well as their safety—you will need as much help and cooperation from your child as possible. And they won’t offer much if they experience you as overly intrusive or prying, relentlessly and unremittingly restrictive, or causelessly suspicious and accusatory of them or their friends.

Put another way, if they see you as incapable of extending them any trust, or treating them as if they had already done something wrong, they will chafe under what they will deem your paranoid approach, and inevitably find ways to hide whatever they want to do as much as possible from you.

What’s more, for the most part, they will likely succeed at hiding much of their lives from you, driving and reducing their developmental need for privacy into an effort at secrecy.

Not good for them, and not good for you.

So fundamental to striking the right balance between keeping an eye on them, and creating opportunities for them to rightly experience more privacy and autonomy will be for a parent to learn to not act too soon, or because of something you saw on TV or read in an article that made you suddenly worry. Rely more readily on your own sense of what’s going on with your child.

Because if you do act too soon on a fear or media-driven suspicion, you will only encourage them to do a better job of hiding their activities from you in the future. The very kind of activities you need to know about to keep them safe.

Remember, the most important key in keeping them safe is to develop, as much as possible, a bond of trust with your child. Should that break, your job will become astronomically more difficult, and far less effective, not to mention their next stop is College.

So having established, hopefully, a degree of trust and communication with your teenager, you must continue to bear in mind that if their safety is the key and the goal, you may have to overlook some of what you learn about their lives in the interests of maintaining reasonable access to them.

In specific, let’s say they want to create their own page on a social media site, such as a Facebook, or its like. Or establish their own email account. Or carry their own cellphone. After discussing with them HOW they should conduct themselves on the phone or on line, or in their texts or email exchanges, part of having that privilege means you will have access to those accounts.

Be up front and open about this. Make sure you are designated as a “friend”, for example, on their Facebook account, so that whatever is posted to their “wall”, to whatever comment they make about another’s, is copied to you. That way, should there be any repeated patterns of cruel teasing or bullying, you will see it. Again, if you jump the gun and over-react to what may be a one-off comment about your child, or watch your child send a sharp-edged message to someone else, by all means point out how their comment may hurt or offend its recipient, then wait to see if it’s a repeated pattern before you considering any further interventions. To your child, their prickly messages may be little more than a forgettable quip, so try not to over-react. You must only use what you learn from access to their accounts in the most thoughtful way possible, and most always only when their safety, or the safety of others, may be in check.

Again, since experimentation and curiosity may be driving their mouse clicks, should they be visiting a few sites that offend you, or you’d rather they not, wait to see if it repeated to the point it becomes a pattern of behavior. Should websites promoting explicit material, sexual or otherwise, be your concern, you can employ various parental blocking software that can block their access to most such sites.

Again, do not over-react to what you may learn about their online interest, communications and curiosities. Because if you intercede too quickly, or pounce at the first sign of anything that concerns you, your son or daughter may quickly decide you are not interested in safety, but in control, and then they will pour their efforts into ways to circumvent your surveillance.

With that caveat in mind, should there emerge a repeated pattern of your child either receiving or sending harshly teasing messages, or of course is there are any suspicious communications from someone unknown online—particularly any invitations to meet your child in person—then it is time for you to intervene. Similarly, should you discover your own child is participating in cruelly commenting about another child online, or engaging in any form of cyber intimidation, then it’s very much a parent’s place to stop it, as well as to administer to consequences for such behavior.

What’s more, it’s a sobering reminder to us all that whatever we text or write online remains forever “on the record”, quickly retrievable despite what the “delete” button seems to indicate.

So unless they, or for that matter you, want to be held accountable for anything you’ve ever texted or posted online, caution and restraint are essential.

So how did a Chapter on privacy end up focusing so much on safety? Because that is the delicate balance every parent does well to try to strike, all the more so in an age when media and technology seem hell-bent on robbing children of a childhood.

We must also note something we have seen over the years, and that is the teenager who leaves something out where a parent can find it, such as their journal or any sort of alcohol or paraphernalia. Their mom or dad may have entered their child’s room to collect up the laundry, only to find the very evidence that can shock a parent, especially if they were not snooping, or were unaware of their teen’s activities. In such instances, we have frequently found it to be an unconscious wish on the part of the child to be discovered—to have revealed whatever they would otherwise want to hide—so that they can unburden themselves of a secret grown too difficult to bear, and seek help from their mom or dad in changing or ending a heretofore hidden part of their lives. For as parent, it is an extremely delicate moment, as deserves much thought and consideration as to how to respond, especially if they are alarmed by what they have found. It may be wise and helpful for a mom or dad to speak with someone with expertise before charting a course of action. Being honest with yourself and with your teenager is essential, and does not require that you have it all figured out for a conversation to take place. Remember, in such circumstances, however worrisome their revealed behavior has been to that point, a teen’s intent, fundamentally, is to change or end it, despite their protests.

In that spirit, then, with a calm, gentle and forward-looking approach, mom or dad can find ways to help and support the change their teen is seeking, even if they don’t fully recognize it themselves yet.

In the main, though, whenever possible and safe, honor a teenager’s desire for a certain privacy and autonomy in as much as you can. They will need to develop a healthy sense of their privacy and boundaries to be protect themselves one day, so they need to practice it as much as they can under your watchful, if subtle and non-intrusive presence.

Besides, remember how it felt if you were fortunate enough to have a parent or teacher show trust in you? It helped you trust yourself, did it not? And learning to trust ourselves in life is what the need for privacy is all about.  ~ Darryl Sollerh with Leslie King, LCSW