8 Things You Should Teach Your Pre-Teen (and Yourself) About Their Smartphone

It’s Not About the Phone, It’s About the Conversations the Phone Creates

So, your pre-teen has, or is about to have a cell phone. Good. That is a smart parenting move because now you have an opportunity to shape how your kid interacts with the cyber world rather than leaving those interactions up to chance or allowing their friends to be the authority.

It might be a little nerve wracking, the prospect of handing over a portal to all the good and bad that exists online to an impressionable young person. There is a lot of scary stuff out there, and you should be a little worried.

Keep in mind though, that the portal — the smartphone — is merely a tool for access. How your child uses this tool is up to you.

If you hand someone a shovel and they have never seen or used one before, how they put it to use will be a product of their past experience and the new interactions they experience.

At the point of receiving the new shovel as a tool, a person might be just as apt to crack their neighbor over the head with it as plant a beautiful garden. The person that hands over the tool has a unique opportunity and a lot of power in this moment. They can determine whether the tool is used for good or not-so-good and set a precedent for all its future use.

When you hand your pre-teen that sleek, shiny, sparkling doorway to new worlds and ideas, the first words out of your mouth should be, “And I am going to show you how to use it.”

Then do so.

My advice is based on two powerful precedents:

1. People have a strong innate need for autonomy (link to supporting article at Research gate by Lisa Legault).

2. People learn by example.

Your journey down the path of teenagers and cell phone use will need to use both of these concepts to their fullest if you hope to have success.

But what is success when it comes to teenagers and cell phones? I define success as the ability to have open and candid discussions with your teen about their use of the cell phone (and ideally other things as well).

You and your teen will have different goals in mind for the cell phone. They will want one to be connected with friends, have access to information and distractions, and maintain a certain level of social status.

Your primary goal for your teen having a cell phone should be that it becomes a catalyst for candid conversations about the world in which we live, and second only to that, a means to communicate with your teen.

What follows is a step-by-step method for both you and your teen to accomplish your goals. After all, they are complementary and do not need to be mutually exclusive.

The first step to this spirit of openness is a non-negotiable pre-requisite for the existence of the cell phone. The phone must be locked with a passcode that is known to you.

If, at any time, the phone is not accessible to you via the agreed-upon passcode then the phone should be taken away for some length of time that you have previously communicated to your teen. Subsequent violations of this pre-requisite should have increasing time penalties.

This is the ONLY reason your child’s phone should ever be taken away by you. Let them know this.

Don’t threaten or follow through with phone restrictions for any other cause. The reason for this is that you are about to cultivate a cell phone use environment that is positive, useful and supportive for your teen. It is going to integrate with their life in a positive way.

From this point forward frequently have your child hand over the phone and open it using the passcode. Don’t do anything else. Don’t scroll through it or look at anything. Open it, lock it, hand it back. Do this often. You are building mutual trust, it will take quite a while, but it is absolutely necessary.

You will be able to trust that [in an emergency*] you can always open your child’s phone. Your teen will begin to realize that you aren’t going to wantonly snoop. You are reinforcing their autonomy and building a foundation of trust with your child.

[* An emergency is the rarest of occasions when you realistically believe that there might be dire and life-threatening consequences if you do not intervene]

Once this vital pre-requisite is established, you are ready to teach your pre-teen how to use the phone.

This guide is designed as separate modules to work through. You could conceivably do it in one sitting, work on one per day, or maybe one per week. It is completely up to you and your child, although I advise making an agreed upon schedule, i.e. “we are going to work through these 8 steps over the next two weeks”.

This is not meant as a technical guide, but rather a conceptual overview. I am not an expert on all things cyber, by any means. Before you start this process, you should do some research about how to tackle each topic. For example, you might investigate password management software or options before beginning the steps. (This is the teaching yourself part.)

They aren’t in any particular order except step one. That should be done first, the rest should be done in the order you think most pertinent:

1. Passwords — You will need to establish a sound strategy for password management. You need to do this first, because it integrates into every other portion of internet/phone use. You should use unique and difficult-to-decipher passwords for each new account (Email, social media, purchases, memberships etc.) Take this opportunity to instill a very measured approach to password management in your child — and take the opportunity to shore up your own personal password approach as that probably needs work as well (I know mine does).

2. Social Media Accounts — Your child will want to maintain social media accounts. Talk about the different ones and talk about their uses. There is a mountain of discussion material here to undertake with your pre-teen. You need to address cyber-bullying, privacy concepts, what to post and disclose, whom to add as contacts etc. Don’t miss this opportunity to discuss how activity on social media can come back to haunt them later. And — take this opportunity to look at your social media accounts. Are your security settings correct? What are you posting? Are you using your accounts for good?

3. Banking — If you don’t have one already, get your child a checking account attached to your account at your bank. Instruct them how to use online banking. Take the time to talk about money management and online security. You may consider imposing a guideline that they always have enough money in their account to secure a ride-share trip home from a pre-set distance from home at all times. Talk about household expectations for finances.

4. Ride Share — Set up a ride share account. Work though how to hail a ride share, riding etiquette, expectations, safety when using etc. If they are younger, you might expect that they won’t often use this, but it could be a valuable tool for escaping a situation before something turns out badly. Set your own rules but consider at a minimum making this as a must-have as an emergency maneuver if ever needed.

5. Privacy or Incognito Internet Browsers — Don’t even think for a second that if you pretend these don’t exist that you can somehow better monitor your child’s phone use. Don’t be dumb. Talk to your pre-teen about these modes and when/where to use them. Also let them know that using them doesn’t, in any way, guarantee privacy. There are keystroke loggers and other tools that allow people (if you want to silently infer that you might be one of those people, then so be it) to monitor their use and actions.

6. GPS and Location Tracking — Talk about what it means to allow apps and software to track your phone’s location. You can have your family’s own internal policy for this, but make sure you make your teen (and you) aware that GPS allows anyone to track the location of your phone at any time.

7. Informational Veracity — Yep. There is fake news out there. Teach your kids about information bias and the power of a story. Inform them how to verify things as fact before indiscriminately re-distributing information. This is also a time to talk for a second about intellectual property and re-posting another people’s work as their own. You might even work in how to use sources such as Google Scholar to find peer-reviewed articles with factual backing.

8. An Extra-Large Dose of Skepticism — Loosely related to #7, but different in that not everyone and everything is as it seems on the internet. Talk to your child about phishing and catfishing. Talk about scams in general and the danger of talking to people you don’t know, and that they may be posing as someone you think you know. Teach the concept of questioning everything twice before acting. Ultimately, you hope to have your teen come to you when they think something doesn’t smell right. But even if they don’t include you, skepticism is a must. Instill it early and reinforce by discussing ways that you have (or nearly have) been tricked yourself.

You may have noticed that these are as much discussion prompts as things to practice. However, once you have gone over these once with your child, it is time to do as you say. This is where the lead by example portion kicks in.

You need to live your words and do it in a way that is noticeable to your household. This also includes any in-house rules about cell phone etiquette (like no phones at the dinner table, or no phones after lights out).

If you expect that your child will not use their phone after bed time, then you better not either.

One way you can completely undermine credibility is to not follow household rules and good safety and internet practices yourself. Remember, you are playing a long game of building trust, allowing a reasonable amount of autonomy and, most importantly, being consistent. Consistency builds great practices — for both your kids and you!

Once you have gone through the 8 things to learn about smartphones and the internet, it is time to revisit them on a regular basis. Establish a habit of asking your kids to use their phone to research items under the 8 topics and elsewhere. Make a list of prompts. For example ask your child to:

• Show you a website that talks about the dangers of the internet for teens.
• Show you an online newspaper article about cyber-bullying.
• Show you an article on investing money wisely.
• Describe how to get to X from Y using an online mapping app.
• Research a trending rumor to see if it is false or true.
• Find a recipe for dinner.
• Older teens can research rental housing prices for your area.
• Find a good example of a resume.
• Look for a job.

Remember, your ultimate goal in your child having a cell phone is to create a conversation catalyst. Use the phone as a tool for this goal often!

Remember, just like the shovel, a phone is simply a tool. Without guidance it can be misused. With ongoing support and encouragement, you can grow beautiful gardens.

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. Now moving forward to writing and consulting. For more articles like this, join the mail list.