I cannot remember when my two oldest boys, Lynden and Yosef, were allowed to be on Snapchat.
As with my most parenting decisions that come and go quickly, I can only be approximately certain that my boys were in middle school when my wife and I gave the “thumbs up” to this version of social media. Lynden seemed to covet Snapchat access more than Yosef – even pitching us on the app’s merits with a PowerPoint presentation he’d put together. Evidently, that cute presentation convinced us to open up the Snapchat gates to both boys.
That decision, though, did not go unnoticed by our (now) 14 year-old daughter, Viviana. She, in fact, has lobbied for Snapchat access since being given her first phone upon entering middle school three years ago.
So far we had put our foot down – “The answer, Vivi, is no.”
Precedent is tough to argue against over time, especially in this case in particular, where our obvious hypocrisy was on full display. Cracks have started to form on our rationale, like: (a) Vivi already has Instagram, (b) texting doesn’t have to be via Snap, and (c) I just plain do not like Snapchat’s quick delete of messages from virtual existence.
Vivi has called us out on our BS excuses for awhile now.
To her credit, on her most recent birthday, Vivi pulled out all the stops to garner our approval – having her friends help discuss the app’s merits with us, pivoting toward her good grades as a display of trustworthiness, and even proposing trading her access to Insta for Snap.
It worked.
We finally caved.
Vivi now has Snapchat.
Ugh.
So, on one hand this is a story about parenting inequities between my sons and daughters finally biting me. On the other hand, this is about an all-out scramble to educate myself about the ways my kids are using the app at all.
My boys’ have been completely unmonitored in their use of Snapchat. I think they use Snap as an alternative to texting friends and for seeing where their friends are at any time. I catch my boys watch reels and, in my opinion, simply are using the app to waste time. That’s about it.
But, now that I have a daughter on Snap, I’m hard at work gathering facts, tips, and parenting hacks to better manage the app altogether. Little do my boys know that I’ll be running through their Snapchat setting very soon.
I have run across a few issues that I am preparing to tackle :
- Should I adjust the setting that deletes Snapchat messages? The app does allow for a maximum 24 hours of holding time (versus the immediate delete default).
- I can (attempt) to control who can Snap my kids. This feature difference makes me actually like Snapchat better than the free-to-follow anyone social sites (Instagram/Twitter).
- Reading about an AI affiliated with Snapchat has been linked to a teenage suicide recently gives me a bit of pause – OMG.
The questions that swirl my head only grow as I continue to fact-find. And, while the ultimate decision to allow Vivi Snapchat access is the same as her older brothers, my route to that decision and the subsequent monitoring I plan to do is different.
An optimists would call that parenting growth.
A skeptic might say that I’m now paying for past my past parenting hypocrisies.
Both would be right.
My kids won’t care either way – they have Snap streaks to attend to.
