Privacy check up for your kids' device AND a hidden threat!

Episode 98: 

Our phones and social media are ever-changing, so sometimes a privacy check up is in order. Check out today's episode for a few tips & a hidden threat!

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Full Transcription:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

Unless you haven't been on social media at all, you probably have noticed in the past couple of weeks an explosion of concern and post going viral about privacy settings and the social media apps tracking you in your activity. So today we're going to just take that concern and open it up with some talk about privacy. And I'm just gonna give you a few tips on things to check for privacy settings in your phone and on these social media apps that you or your kids may be on. Okay, stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (00:35):

Welcome to your source for tips, tools and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age. Inspired by a mother's love with a relatable real life. Proud to be that Mom Flare. This is the Be That Mom Movement with your host Dolly Denson.

Speaker 1 (01:00):

Hey friends, did you hear there is an app that will transform the safety of your kids' smartphone and technology use. It is my favorite way to sleep, easy at night and have peace of mind because it is monitoring my kids' activity online without me being in their business. It is the Bark app and yes, bark like a dog, Bark, bark, bark. It tells you when there's something that you need to be concerned about starting at a small fee each month, you can protect your whole family across all devices. Get connected with Bar today. Use code, Be that mom for 20% off your subscription for life and get a seven day free trial to check it out. So welcome back to the Be That Mom Movement podcast. I'm so glad that you are here. Again, thank you so much for your support of this podcast and reaching out to me and telling me how much this has helped you, whatever episode it is that you're tuning into.

Speaker 1 (01:50):

So I hope today's episode will be another one that's gonna give you some peace of mind and help you have some tips and tools for you to manage the Wild Ride <laugh> that is raising kids in the digital world. But wanna give you a quick disclaimer before I start and that is that Kids on social media is always a risk. So I will give you some tips of things that I find helpful, but I give that to you as an educational place. I in no way want to make you think that by just doing these things, that you're gonna keep your kids safe. There's always a risk, it's always changing. And so therefore it is something that I believe you need to approach with a layered approach, which is something that I talk about in my course that I'm about to release and I just want you to take these tips.

Speaker 1 (02:39):

But don't take them as an end all Beall. It is always evolving and changing and there's always concern and those that are out there trying to get to our kiddos are savvy and they will find a way. So if your kids are on social media, just please be vigilant and please set up a village and a layered approach to how you're monitoring and what you're doing. So on that note, I also wanna say that as my kids have gotten older and we've gone through the major things that we have that have brought me to make this podcast and be really passionate about this topic and to always kind of, you know, be listening and being out there to bring information to you, I just wanna say how important it is now that my kids are older and I can look back on those years how important it is to be very vigilant and also to not rush the smartphone and the giving of social media in those early years.

Speaker 1 (03:39):

The years where parents are giving it unsuspecting and not realizing how much of an influence it is. And the reason I say that is because each one of our kids, if you've listened to my story, you know this, but my kids are about four years apart each and the oldest did not have the digital things emerge and be as pervasive in her life until she was up into the high school years. The next one had it younger and then the next one had it even younger. And so I had the unique perspective of seeing how pervasive and influential that could be. And I also believe that there's a difference in genders and I've got two girls and a boy so I do and did see that there was the influence was different for each one of them. And it's different on the different apps as well.

Speaker 1 (04:25):

And if I had, like I've said before, a magic time machine, I absolutely would go back and change the decisions that I made. But the influence that is there, especially now, it's so very insidious and I saw a post today that talked about if your child is doing this and believing this, take their phone and all social media and digital access away for a month and have them work on just being themself without that outside influence of all of the, you know, talks of the time right now. And see if they still believe that. And the sentiment of that post without saying the specific topic that it was talking about is that so many of these things are so pervasive in our kids' lives now that they have trouble knowing what they actually think and what they actually feel and what their passions are because they're spending their lives distracted and it's sucking them away from the normal childhood milestones and things that we may view as play and you know, as just things that they do as a kid.

Speaker 1 (05:27):

But they're truly things that are meant to be there to help them in the stepping stone that help them to form into the adult they are meant to be and find the passions and the interest and the things that they're good at, their gifts are being stunted because they are not being allowed to have those things. So one of the best decisions that we ever made with our youngest was to pull the phone and all social media away. And now that he is 17, it is amazing the respect that he has for those apps. And yes, I've allowed him to be back on Instagram and TikTok and Snapchat now, but for years he was not on those things and didn't want to be on those things. But at middle school age I did let him have those things and it was not a good influence.

Speaker 1 (06:26):

And same thing for the girls. So while I talk about privacy checkup and things that you can do for your kids, I do want to stress that despite the, you know, the stigma of being that mom, it eventually will be a place of strength for your kid when you stand your ground, when you be the mom and when you be that mom that is vigilant and concerned about these things with your kids, a kid you not, the moms that are not vigilant about these things probably have no clue the influence and they will likely crash and burn like I did with my family and I did things the hard way. So be that mom and be that mom that shares with your mom friends about the influences about the things that you're learning. Share this podcast if you can leave me a review on the podcast cuz that will help it to rank higher with all the podcast things you know, so that it will be pushed up as something that's recommended so that more moms can hear this and get the tools and the confidence that they need in order to stand their ground to be the parent and to be that mom that is there being vigilant and not just letting the digital pervasiveness of our society raise their child.

Speaker 1 (07:49):

Okay, so I hope I've probably overstated that a little bit, but I hope that makes sense because I do want to talk about the privacy checkup, but I also do not want to in any way make it seem like this is an end all Beall and I definitely don't want you to take your guard down and someone out there wanting to do some type of negative influence on your child to get to your child. So that being said, let's talk about a couple of different aspects that I think will be helpful for you. So the first thing is phone settings. So if you or your kid has a smartphone, you know it's always being updated by you know, Apple or Android. So when you have an update I encourage you to go into the settings, you know, go into the update and see what's actually being updated and then go into your settings and check, you know, for privacy and for tracking and for things like that I recently updated my iPhone and you go to the settings page and go to the privacy and security and there one of the big things is location services.

Speaker 1 (08:57):

So especially for your kid, click on that location services and look to see which apps are allowed to see where they are. And this is very, very huge in terms of Snapchat specifically, I would make sure that for Snapchat that is turned off and you can also do this in the Snapchat settings as well. But, so look at location services, scroll down and look at the different apps and see what they have access to. And then under, let's see, where's it at on the iPhone there's a safety check now where you can manage who has access to like your location and different things like if you shared your location and the maps, this is a place where you can remove that sharing your location type thing. So lots of different options there to be aware of. But you can go through under privacy and security and just look at all the different options.

Speaker 1 (09:55):

And you can even do an app privacy report, which basically will tell you, I just did this recently. It will record data and sensor access and then app and website network activity and the most contacted, uh, most frequently contacted domains. And then it gives you information on when your location was reported and how often it's been used, what domains have been accessed, those type of things. So lots of information there in the smartphone. Again, not an end all Beall, but one of the biggest things probably would be the location services to check. Okay, so now that you've looked at your phone or your kid's phone, the next thing is the social media. And each one of these is different and is always changing, but I'm just gonna talk about Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat because those are the most common that our kids are on. But for Instagram you can go to like when you're on your profile page or their profile page, click on the three little lines at the top and then go to settings and then go to privacy.

Speaker 1 (11:03):

And there you can make them a private account, you can limit post with certain words, cannot be seen. You can make it to where their stories cannot be remixed or made into reals or shared all of those things according to what your preferences are. And then below the privacy setting there is a supervision setting. And so this one you can actually supervise a teen that has Instagram. So you just follow the prompts and it will have you and the teen set that up to where you can supervise who they're interacting with, what they're posting, what they're doing. So that is a new option that I uh, hadn't seen before. Maybe it's been there for a little while cause I hadn't looked at that lately, but that's definitely something to check out if you do have a teen that is on Instagram. The other thing that you can do with Instagram that I did years ago was to have my teens log in as another account.

Speaker 1 (11:58):

So when you click on your name, if you don't have more than one account, you can add more than one account onto your Instagram app and then click on your name at the top and you can add an account and then you can toggle back and forth between their account and your account. So in that, with that you can see their messages and their posts and all that they're doing. You can check who their followers are, who they're following and all of that. So that is what I did when mine were younger and I was wanting to monitor what they were doing. Okay, so then the next thing that I wanna talk about is TikTok. And TikTok is, and at the end of this, I'm gonna tell you the biggest thing that is a hidden threat for all of these that I want you to be aware of if you're not already.

Speaker 1 (12:43):

But TikTok is one of those that I think is a very slippery slope and I actually don't recommend that you have a child that's younger on TikTok because of the thing that I'm gonna mention as a hidden threat in a moment. But if you do have a kiddo on TikTok, if you do choose to do that, if you go to hold on, go to profile, go to the three little lines at the top, go to settings and privacy and then you can go to security and log in. I don't think that's it. Hold on, let me see. There is a privacy section and then there is age related settings for users and it may be because I, it knows I'm an adult account, okay, privacy there. So you can make it a private account and you can turn off where your account's suggested to others, you can turn off comments, allow or not allow mentions and tags and direct messages.

Speaker 1 (13:38):

You can put who their, their story is shared with who can do it you, different things like that. So has all of those. And then there's also a TikTok for younger users that you can set up. However, I don't recommend that, I honestly don't. If that is something that you want to do, that is an option as well for TikTok. So both ig, TikTok and Snapchat location services is huge, huge, huge. Make sure that you check that in settings and that it's not something that they have turned on. Okay, so then the last one that I wanna talk about as far as social media goes is Snapchat. And I don't even know if I have Snapchat on my phone. Snapchat is confusing to me, I've never been able to understand it but I know it is where kids communicate, it's kind of crazy. Okay, so the things with Snapchat is when you're in the, you can go to the settings, which is the gear icon and I kid you not, I do not know how to operate Snapchat very well and usually when I, okay, if you click on the page or it looks like you're gonna take, gonna take a picture, click on the little profile on the upper left and then click on the gear icon upper right and then scroll down to the who can section.

Speaker 1 (14:51):

Okay? So if you scroll down to privacy controls, it looks like they changed some of the names on it, but go to privacy controls and you can put who can contact you, view the story, see my location, see me in quick add and then the family center. So highly, highly, highly recommend that you check that if you have a kiddo on Snapchat. There has been instances where predators have been able to actually go to kids' houses to meet up with them. Drug dealers use Snapchat to reach kids and sell them drugs. And there's a very prominent person out there and I can't remember what her name is, first name's Laura, but her son actually got drugs through Snapchat. They were laced with fentanyl or something to that effect and it actually killed him, but it was through Snapchat that he was able to get the drugs.

Speaker 1 (15:41):

So Snapchat is another one that's like a black hole and very, very important that you turn off the location services and be very much open with your kiddo and communication and all of that. Okay? They do also have something in Snapchat called the Snap Map and that's where you can share your location with others and that can be set to ghost mode. So I recommend that you make sure your kids is, is set to ghost mode on that so that they cannot be located anywhere. Okay, I was just gonna say something and now I forgot what it was. Okay, I don't remember what it was, but my biggest takeaway for all of these is private account versus public account, their location settings and then monitoring. Oh and now I remember what it was. Okay, so a lot of times what happens with parents, and I think I've mentioned this in a recent episode, but a lot of times what happens with parents when the kids are younger and you give them the phone is there, it becomes, there becomes this tug of war between you and it creates this feeling of distrust and kind of like, you know, you're snooping and trying to figure out what the kid's doing cuz they're not telling you the truth.

Speaker 1 (16:49):

And there's a period of time in there in those years, I mean I, I can talk about this to some degree now because my kids have gone, all three have gone through that and I can remember how you're like, ooh, I don't know if it's puberty in hormones that is causing this change in their demeanor or if something else is going on. But just wanna say number one, keep the lines of communication open. Number two, if you have given them some type of digital thing and suddenly their behavior changes, follow your gut instinct on that, pull that thing away and see if you can try to figure out what it is. When I look back and I see some of the most dramatic changes that happened with my kids, it almost always coincides with something digital that I gave them and that maybe I needed to pull that away or provide more boundaries around its use.

Speaker 1 (17:40):

So looking back, I realize that now, but back then in the thick of it, I didn't realize that. So that's just a tidbit that you might, a gut instinct that you might follow is if you've noticed a change in their behavior, pull away from the digital things, yes, you'll get pushed back. You'll probably be, you know, really made out to be the bad guy and you know you're mean or whatever, but just trust beyond this and follow your gut instinct. And then if you set up some type of monitoring like bark, I know there's other things out there. Bark is the one that I know of that is so passionate about helping parents and is so proactive, but also is a place where you can put their system in place and it helps you monitor without always being in their business. So it gives you a place where you don't have to be snooping and wondering what's going on and creating this push pull, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (18:37):

So it doesn't create this kind of like animosity between the parent and the child because what I have done with mine when we were really in the thick of things, I just pulled, like we tried to do the thing where you know, okay, well we're only gonna do this, this, and this. And things didn't get better, they just kept getting worse. So they'd get better for a little bit and then they'd get worse again. So when we were really in the thick of it, I just pulled the phone in digital access and social media accounts and everything, I pulled it away completely and we kept it away for like months. I'm serious, like six months or longer before I gave the phone back. Like it literally was at a point to where I was like, okay, I don't know what else to do, but we are pulling this away until we regroup and figure out what's going on.

Speaker 1 (19:25):

So when I did that and then really put my foot down on all that stuff, it took that draw that addiction away and then he had to kind of find his own interest and it was kind of like we like cleared this fog and all of a sudden the, the kid that we knew before was back again. It was like, oh my god, he's back. Like he had gone away and he was lost in this fog and he didn't know how to handle it. And so what we were seeing with behavior and decisions and all of that was him not knowing how to handle the digital influence and stimulation and addiction that was happening. And we didn't know that that's what's happening because we as parents didn't grow up with those digital things at that age. So while <laugh>, I certainly didn't, wouldn't want to choose the hard road for us, I'm so very thankful that we could get through that and that we have a medium like this, like this podcast that I can bring this out to people in the world.

Speaker 1 (20:23):

So I hope, hope, hope that this is helpful for you today to just kind of hear this and hear this from my heart. I always have to put a kind of a shade of, you know, not telling all the things for privacy of my children, but they know I do this podcast and they are very happy about the information that I share and they're all healthy and thriving and it's just amazing. But for whatever reason, the hard parts were a part of our story, but thankfully nothing tragic happened in our life. We were close, we were super really close. We were at a crossroads of, of a point where we might not have come back from it in certain aspects. So I know some people out there like that, Dr. Laura, that I mentioned, that her son got drugs on Snapchat and took them, they were laced with fentanyl and he died.

Speaker 1 (21:17):

Some are not as fortunate as we were to, you know, I followed my gut even when my husband was like, No, I don't think that's what's going on. I'm like, Oh no, something's going on. Like something is going on and I have to listen to this right now. And I was right. So thank goodness I followed my gut and for whatever reason this was our path and I absolutely love bringing this information to you. So I hope it's helpful. Now the last thing that I wanna mention is what I mentioned earlier about the hidden threat regarding all of these apps that I mentioned. And that is the popup targeted ads. I don't know how many parents I've talked to that have brought this up. And regardless of your settings, regardless of putting like their age and you know that you want this supervised option and this and that, the popup ads pop up on all the devices and they're often, or you know, a lot of times inappropriate showing pornography, showing words you may not want them to know, showing different things that they click on and it sends them down rabbit holes.

Speaker 1 (22:27):

TikTok, I for sure know, does it Snapchat? I for sure know, does it? I don't think Instagram's is bad, but I do think that they do have things that they target for kids. So like I said at the beginning, this is a way for you to do a privacy checkup if you do have kids on these apps. But do not let your guard down. Make sure that you have some type of layered approach in place. Get my Be That Mom Movement Method course as soon as it launches to give you some more tools and tips, more in depth guidance on these things. But just be aware that there's often those popup targeted ads and things that are inappropriate and that will often be the catalyst for clicking on things and going down and getting, you know, getting curious as kids do and going down rabbit holes that ends up exposing them to things that you may not have wanted them exposed to.

Speaker 1 (23:21):

So definitely be aware of that. Okay, so I hope you found this episode super, super helpful. I was gonna split it up into a couple of episodes, but decided to just give all the information now. So I hope you found it helpful. I hope that you have been using Bark. You can use my code, Be that mom for a discount. If you do not wanna go the social media and smartphone route, which I highly recommend being the way that you go until they're older, I would start with a pinwheel phone, Tru Me Phone, Gab, phone. They're younger. Use a gab, watch, you know, use a Tick Talk watch. One of those things. There's options out there. I wish I would've had them. So I think they are a gift to parents today as we're raising our kids in the digital world and trying to stay in touch.

Speaker 1 (24:09):

Okay, so thanks so much for tuning in and I hope you have a great day and a great week. Thank you. If you are needing a way to stay in touch with your kiddo, but don't quite want to give them a phone yet, check out the Tick Talk Watch. It is the best way to stay connected with your kid while keeping them safe and knowing exactly where they are. It includes streaming music, has an activity tracker has parental controls. You can text, you can call between each other and you can set up a place where you know if they go outside of a certain perimeter such as their school or your neighborhood. Check them out today and use code. Be that mom for a discount.

Speaker 2 (24:52):

Thanks for tuning in. Being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community. Till next time.

Speaker 1 (25:06):

Hey there, before you go, I want to just give you a heads up on something. When things have been hardest in my role as a mom, the thing that was so very helpful for me was having a routine to take care of myself each day. I know that this whole thing around raising kids in a digital world is so very overwhelming, but if you have a place where you are taking care of yourself every single day with a simple routine that works despite where you are or what your schedule is, you will be able to be more present for your family and handle all of the ups and downs of this most amazing role that we could ever play in this world. So connect with me and let's get you connected to fitness and nutrition tools made by experts that will help you simplify this and then connect you with my Fit Club community that will support you, guide you, and give you momentum and motivation to show up every day. Take care of yourself first so that you could be better present for our digital native kids.