Photo: ABC
By Ruth Barber, ABC
Have you ever wanted to take a peek through your child's phone? Or maybe you've succumbed and flicked through their social accounts or text messages?
Some parents argue it's a blatant breach of privacy. Others say it's simply a necessary precaution in the modern world.
But what do the experts think?
We spoke to Marie Yap, a professor and psychologist at Monash University, to get her advice on how to navigate this moral dilemma.
The 'anxiety-provoking reality'
Professor Yap said that as most parents had no way of finding out what a child was up to on their phone, it was understandable to feel worried.
Especially since in Australia, on average, a child gets their own smartphone just after their 13th birthday.
"The fact that kids can access the world through their phones is both a wonder and an anxiety-provoking reality," Professor Yap said.
"You don't have to physically be out of the home or out of sight of the parent to be walking into danger as a child.
"The feeling that [parents] need to know what their child is being exposed to and who their child is exposed to … that is valid, of course, given the realities of the dangers."
Professor Yap said the desire to snoop highlighted the tension parents face between wanting to be across what their child is doing online while recognising their child doesn't want them to know.
She said as children grew, their sense of autonomy and privacy became more important - especially from their parents.
"Regardless of how close you are to your child, they will still choose to hide details from you. That is actually very normal and it's hard to accept, but it is important to accept."
Professor Yap said this could be a very challenging process for many parents as it was such a significant change compared to childhood.
"But snooping on your child's phone when you know the child clearly doesn't want that to happen is quite counter to the ideal [parent-child] relationship," she said.
An 'extreme' form of surveillance
Professor Yap challenged parents to consider phone snooping as akin to hiding behind a bush to spy on their child.
"Perhaps there are signs the child might be engaging in some risky behaviour, whether that's drug-taking, risky sex, or other potentially dangerous behaviours," she said.
"In most cases, it would seem quite extreme for a parent to be hiding in bushes, following their child around."
She encouraged parents to apply a similar thought process when it came to phone snooping.
"Unless it's a safety concern and it's an urgent safety concern, it really should be left as the last resort," Professor Yap said.
"[Parents] can ask, and they can probe and they can push, they can manipulate, threaten, whatever attempts they might make.
"At the end of the day, what would work best is, of course, the child actually voluntarily sharing information."
Better alternatives to snooping
Rather than snooping, Professor Yap recommended looking at other beneficial ways to build trust in the parent-child relationship.
She suggested that instead of thinking, for example, "What is my child hiding from me?" the onus should be put back on the parent.
"It's just as important, if not more important, for the parent to focus on, 'How can I maintain that close trusting relationship with my child?'"
Professor Yap said another compromise could be a child-directed run-through of what's on their phone.
"If the parent-child relationship is close enough for the child to do that, willingly more or less, I think that's a great way to do it," she said.
She said this approach would allow the child to share selective private details with their parent.
Even if it's occasional and only snippets of their online life, it'd be something to celebrate in terms of minor wins - and a good practice to keep up.
But Professor Yap said parents should be wary of their own reactions to what their child shows them, as negativity could lead to the child being unwilling to share in the future.
Preparing children for the inevitable
Psychologist and digital well-being expert Jocelyn Brewer said giving kids a "graded exposure" to different phone situations could help them become smartphone-ready and aware of the dangers.
"Kids actually want wi-fi, and they want social media," she told ABC iview's The Role Of A Lifetime.
Brewer used the analogy of swimming lessons to demonstrate how a staged approach works in dealing with a potential danger.
"We actually need to teach them how to interact, how to be safe, how to deal with different things that come up," she said.
"The toddler pool: the things that we would do there is really very strict supervision.
"We can help them understand that there are risks and dangers, then when we see skills develop, confidence be increased, we might move into a bigger pool.
"[The bigger pool would be] still quite protected compared to beyond, where there's rips and currents and all sorts of unpredictable things that can happen because we can't fence the Internet.
"I think it's really important to point out that it exists, let's not pretend there's no ocean," she said.
What to do when you feel the urge to snoop
Finally, Professor Yap said if parents were still weighing up whether to snoop through their child's phone, her question to them would be: What is your real intention?
"Is it driven by an urgent concern about their safety, like, immediate safety?" she said.
"If not, then is there a longer-term and more beneficial way of achieving that intention - besides something that will likely breach the trust between them and their child."
- ABC
