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Tweens and Apps (safety)

I'm not at the phone yet, so not a huge help.

My 7 year old has his own Kindle Fire though. We went with Kindle over an Android tablet because we like the parental control options, we like that it's connected to our Amazon account so we can see it all. Also, he's had a Fire since he was 2 (only child, or he would have had to share it). Originally, he had Free Time on it, and that completely limited what he was able to do. Only parental approved apps, and no way to purchase anything. When it was just too old to work anymore (literally, I now use it for my church app, and that's it.), we bought him a new Fire. For the same reasons above, plus the option of Amazon Underground apps - free full app, no in app purchases.

That being sad, we used to let him use YouTube. He liked to watch Lego builds, and a few other channels (Slow Mo Guys, physics videos, the ball of steel channel). But the parental controls on Youtube are crappy. Even with it set up for no objectionable content, a lot of stuff got through. And, he started getting up early to watch it before we were up. So, we just deleted it. And because his Kindle is locked down, he can't download any apps without the parents password.

The delete option is how we regulate most apps. Over use? We delete it, and he has to earn it back. He's working on earning Netflix back right now.
 
Funny story, I hard core set up parental controls on my son's laptop when he was 5-6th grade-ish. He's 20 now so I'm going to blame that for why I forgot. Anyway, I had everything blocked, searched his search history/etc...

It was such a pain to ever use that computer!!! Upgrading software, going to websites, constantly getting called over to type in passwords. Ugh. Then I couldn't remember how to turn it all off when I finally realized he had no real desire to do all the things I worried about. He wasn't into social media and hardly used the computer. Just for what school required. He had his Xbox, etc ... and games were always way better on those machines.

For the iPhones, I shared my Apple ID with them. (This was before they had family sharing plans like they do now.) Also, I never linked a credit card to the phone. That way any app or music purchase needs to come off a gift card. When my son was addicted to Clash of Clans, he and his friend would go to the grocery store and buy iTunes gift cards for the $20 or $30 they wanted to buy gems for a big upgrade. It came from his money and it was more deliberate. With the shared ID, any app they downloaded was automatically downloaded on my phone too. Whenever some sort of new, suspect apps popped up, I was able to immediately talk to the kids about what it was, how they were using it, etc...
 
I have the attention span of a goldfish at the moment so I apologize if this has been mentioned already.

We have to remember kids these days are extremely tech savvy!! If they want to access an app bad enough they will find a way. They'll create logins at school, the library, their friends houses etc. They're smart enough to not use their real names, create whole new email addresses etc and we're left completely in the dark. I speak from experience, as I went through this with my 20 year old.

While I love some aspects of SM, it also terrifies me what our children can encounter...and with fake name and profiles it's so easy for another child to be a keyboard warrior and forgetting the person they are tormenting is real, and has feelings.
 
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