When I was a teenager, I kept a journal. I wrote in it a lot. I sometimes worried about my parents reading it, so I hid it-in various places, to throw them off the scent. And sometimes I would do things like place it in just such a way that I would know if someone had moved it. To this day, I don’t know whether they ever read my journals.
About a year ago, when I was home visiting, I opened the cabinets of the built-ins in my old bedroom and was surprised to see them, still stacked up, leaning to one side. I pulled one out, blew off the dust, and cracked the pages.
I started with my sixth grade journal. I’ve had a (shamefully?) easy, uneventful life, so it was riotously funny to read what I had written: the drama! the misery! my parents just didn’t understand (so cliché!).
I brought the journals home. I will finish reading them some day. Maybe more than once even.
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Despite laughing about it now, I would not have liked knowing that my parents were reading them or had read them. My journal was private. It was a place for me to vent and to be (overly) dramatic-about them, about my siblings, my girlfriends, and my boyfriends-which I had quite a few of (a detail which my kids found absolutely shocking when we spent our before-bed reading time one night reading snippets from my journals).
It was not a place (from my perspective) for them to spy on me. It was not an avenue through which they could find out about my darkest secrets.
* * * * *
Now I’m a parent of one teenager and one soon-to-be-teenager. They both keep journals pretty regularly. I feel like reading their journals is off limits. I feel similarly about reading their emails, their text messages, and reading their Facebook business.
I think this viewpoint is unpopular. I’ve read numerous articles in Family Circle and been in many conversations with friends who say it’s our responsibility as parents to read this stuff. Technology and social networking has made it so that we have to keep tabs on our kids this way. We are bad parents if we don’t.
A condition of our kids getting cell phones was the understanding that we might read their texts. Same with getting a Facebook account. Same with email (although boy, those email accounts of theirs are dormant-but for piles of junk mail that passes through every day). But I have never done it. Nor do I anticipate doing it. It doesn’t feel right.
For many of my friends, reading a teenager’s journal is still up for debate; reading their texts/IMs/Facebook is not. Good parents do this.
So what’s the difference between me reading my tween’s/teen’s text messages and my parents reading my journal? What is it about the online technology that makes reading our children’s private missives necessarily the right thing to do?
What do we risk or jeopardize by not reading their journals/Facebook/text messages?
Do we risk or jeopardize anything by reading them?
We are just getting into this phase with my 11 year-old. I am going to buy him a cell phone tomorrow. His email account is now active though no facebook or anything. My parenting instinct is that my kids need to have some reasonable expectation of privacy. They need to make mistakes, have a place to vent and to work out relationships and life without me hovering over their shoulder. I do think that it is wise for us to have access to their accounts both for safety if we ever suspect something really harmful might be going on (bullying, predation, etc.) as well as to teach them that in the digital world nothing is ultimately private so they need to be mindful of that. So no I don’t think it is defacto good parenting to regularly snoop kids email and texts. All that is going to do is drive them to use the email you don’t know about.
I like the idea of teachingthem that nothing is private in the digital world–even though they (and sometimes I) might think it is. That’s a good lesson.
Great post as usual Heather. i have a couple of perspectives. For one, my journal was read when i was 14. That was the work of a stepparent. i was moody , but otherwise as straight of an arrow as you could find. She also accused me of using big words just to shame her. she told me to change my vocabulary and i had no idea how to do ghat. i felt utterly betrayed when my journal was opened, read, and then mocked.
As a parent now, i have do gooders tell me when one of my kids posts something they see as scandalous. ii don’t get riled up. i don’t care. my kid can post whatever. The one thing i have requested is to be a little more selective in what gets posted so i don’t get another phone call at work asking me why i let my son (fill in the blank) .
i can’t ontrol everything my kid does and I won’t try. i hope I’ve raised them well enough to use good judgment. i choose to pick my battles.
Oh, for the record, typing on a Kindle Fire is not a good idea. i can spell and write…i promise!
I think some distinctions should be made. Personally, i would only resort to reading a text message or fb message on journal if my child was causing me a great deal of concern in some area. I know of some parents who have sussed out their kids drug use this way, and that seems like a reasonable thing to me – if somehow by reading these things you could get ahead of a problem like that – that makes sense. I admit to reading one of my teens texts when we were having other issues with him obeying and telling us the truth about where he was, who he was hanging out with and what he was doing. But I never did read his journal. To me, texts are a little different – they are more like a note between them and their friends. If you found notes in the pockets of their clothes would you always discard before reading? I have found actual paper notes before while doing laundry. Sometimes I have read them, sometimes not.
I am a big believer in defending my kids privacy. Up to a point. And that point is some nebulous area where their safety and my ability as a parent to affect that safety is where I feel comfortable crossing a line on the privacy thing. However – 2 our of 3 of my teens I have never read their text messages. Not even once, and one of them is almost not a teen anymore – he’s been a great easy teen and I’ve seen no reason to go rummaging around in his personal business. Is it possible I would read something alarming? I suppose that’s always a possibility. But I just don’t want to go there unless I feel like there is some behavior or concern that would bring me to that decision. I do know parents who regularly read all their kids texts, regardless of the situation. I find that is too much being in their business when you don’t need to be.
There is a big difference between reading a kid’s private journal, and reading their messages to their friends, whether it be FB, texting, or emails, where there is no expectation of privacy. I have no qualms about seeing what their public interactions are with their peers, as I believe I am helping them learn to navigate a social minefield. I wouldn’t read their private diary without their permission because that feels like a violation of privacy. They know that I can see what goes on FB, as I’m their ‘friend’ there, and they know that if I’m uncomfortable with anything going on with their friends, I’m allowed by mutual agreement to see their text messages or emails. My daughter is 11, and just starting down this road, so I will be paying a lot of attention to her public messages. My 15-year-old son does not need the same level of scrutiny, and he knows that his actions earn him more privacy when all is well and we see no red flags.
Each kid is so different, and we try to take that into account. Our second daughter, now a young adult, got into some serious trouble at 16 that we could have helped her avoid had we been paying enough attention. I do not apologize for being aware and vigilant in their lives. And I would NOT describe myself as a helicopter parent. I am the parent for a reason; I’m older, hopefully wiser, hopefully more mature. And I’m less likely to share my hard-earned wisdom if I don’t know the issues they are facing. Their public interactions give me the clues I need, and I’m not afraid to use them. With their knowledge, of course.
Reading a child’s journal is absolutely an invasion of privacy. Had my parents done that and I found out about it, it would have destroyed all trust between us. The journal counts as personal space. For some, it is the only outlet for dealing with personal issues, traumas, and decisions. For some of us, writing clarifies things in a way that we can’t do when we keep things trapped in our heads. But that doesn’t mean we are ready to share it with the world.
Although I don’t really approve of parents who read every text and FB and other online messages, those are public communications. If nothing else, kids need to learn that what they place there is available for the whole world and they need to choose carefully what they share.
My parents didn’t have to read my journal. We had a very open discourse with one another. Where I couldn’t talk to one parent, I could talk to another and if that failed I had brothers and a whole slew of mutual leaders that trusted. Even if they told my parents what I was up to, it wasn’t for gossip or to get me in trouble, it was out of concern.
I desperately hope I can have the same relationship with my kids. We are working on it. The oldest is only 9 so hopefully by the time his issues get serious, the trust is firmly in place.
emails, texts and facebook. Yay, I’ll probably watch that like a crazy stalker – at least in the beginning. I want to be able to make sure my kids know what they are doing and what messages they are sending. I don’t want the internet or friends to be their first teacher on that or really anything.
Depends on the kid and the trust we’ve established. If my parents had read my private things as a teen, I would have felt very violated. I was a good kid and never once did anything to betray their trust. There was the one time I saw The Patriot (R-rated) without their permission but I told them the next day.
Whereas my sister was a wild child by age 13 and drinking and into boys and all that. She hadn’t built up trust with them. I’m sure she’d have been angry if they read her stuff- but as parents I think they would have been justified. They may have even been able to stop her from some of the bad situations she got into (alcohol poisoning is no fun).
As for the digital world, I work in digital marking and online tracking. So my kids would have to be idiots to think I couldn’t access what they do, though again, if they establish trust I will respect their privacy. I suspect my kids will get email addresses when they are 8-10, and facebook when 13. I will be their friend on facebook, though I know that doesn’t mean anything about what of their stuff I will see. Our shared computer will live in a public area of the house, not because of porn concerns, but because I want to monitor how much time they spend on it.
As for facebook, more than anything I will teach them simply not to post things online they wouldn’t want any certain someones- me, their coach, a certain friend, their future boss- to see. There is no such thing as guaranteed privacy online. More than anything, being a person of integrity means being the same person no matter who is watching. Not that you can’t have secrets- we all do- but I hope my kids will trust me enough to not have to hide who they are from me.
Of course, they are currently 4 and 2. So a lot may change between then and now.
There are way too many differences in the nature and risk of electronic communications compared to paper-based ones like a journal to make a clean comparison of the two.
Imagine this: A teen pens a racy poem, offensive joke or nasty vent into their journal, which gets latched and sits on their mantle, or under their sheets or wherever. Could that content be embarrassing or harmful if it gets out there? Yes, but there are many obstacles to that taking place, and some natural limits as to how quickly and widely it can spread. (how many kids can crowd around in a schoolyard to read from a purloined diary, then pass it on?)
Now imagine the same thing happening in an e-mail, a text to a best friend or even a secret Facebook group. In less than a minute, that story, joke, poem or picture can be made public with as little as a finger-swipe – to the entire school or community (or world at large on Google, for that matter). Far-fetched? I wish. I see news items every day about this taking place.
And that’s not even half the problem. It’s one thing to teach kids to use caution on what they put out there (Our method: Anything that requires hitting a “send” button can be public, and should be treated as such from the get-go). But electronics provide two-way communications. What’s coming in? Your daughter hopefully has the good sense not to send a naked picture of herself, but does that mean you don’t want to be aware of the one, two or ten boys pressing her constantly via text to do so? Maybe your kids will come to you when this happens, maybe they won’t, but I’m not content to be at the mercy of a teenager’s willingness to disclose. Dicey bet.
If the above sounds paranoid, sorry, but I’ve learned the hard way. It’s a brave new world out there, and most adults don’t fully understand themselves how to navigate it (I’m learning, but not fully *there* yet). Legal remedies for privacy breaches all take place after the fact, after the damage is done. I’d much rather teach my kids how to avoid tight spots beforehand, and haven’t been able to figure out how to effectively do that without some “one the ground” teaching moments that only seem to come from being part of the running conversation.
Forgive me if this was mentioned in another comment, since I skimmed those, but a while back, Mitch Mayne had a post on his blog about parents reading their son’s journal (and finding out he was gay via that). The mom said that she felt divinely inspired to read the journal — but I was thinking something considerably different…I didn’t know noseyness could be so easily reconfigured as inspiration but whatevs.
Anyway, the story ended ok, since they were cool people and all…but I was kinda put off by the violation of privacy.
Sometime in my journal writing, I started writing in code. I’m sure it’s not a great code — it’s basically one-to-one character substitution with a poor form of shorthand — but it means that anyone trying to read my journal will have to do a little more work.
That being said…
This post definitely raises some other issues…a discussion of privacy must appreciate that we are not so private as we were with digital media. While I would say that text messages and emails are at least relatively private, I would say that things change with most of the social networking sites. Many people already have very poor practices regarding Facebook privacy, but even if someone has good practices there, it’s somewhat easy to subvert even the best intended privacy. (Is it violating your kids privacy to befriend them on FB? Now, I might question the “social engineering” involved in some schools/employers’/parents’ getting around a direct friend request — for example, making a fake account that will more likely be accepted, or by working through people who are already friends — but the fact is that stuff on the internet is both more widely distributed than stuff said/mentioned/done in a pre-internet or offline era…and that same stuff is more *permanent* and *searchable* too.)
So I think that teenagers need to learn that while venting/making or sharing or appreciating questionable or charged content in a offline venue is probably harmless — with friends OFFLINE or in a personal journal OFFLINE or whatever — things are considerably different online. The answer is not to make a “more secret” FB account to say that stuff…but to learn to stop saying that stuff on FB to begin with.
Is that extreme? Is that self-censorship? Maybe…but it’s something people have to learn.
I definitely agree with others that a journal/diary is much different with online interaction. Nothing online is ever private.
To me, it’s ethically important to be transparent. “Here’s your phone kids. I’ll be reading your texts…. Yes you may have a FB account, but you have to friend both Grandma and myself, and I’ll be reading everything there.” Or not. It becomes a violation of privacy when you sneak into their space without them knowing. They need fair rules to play by and a chance at success.
Oh yes. I don’t want to sneak. I AM Facebook friends with Kennedy (Marin doesn’t have an account yet), but I have never actually gotten INto her account to look at PMs or anything. But sure, I can see what’s on her wall (umm, or what she wants me to see on her wall . . .).
AND, I don’t WANT to look at her texts. Urg. My life is full. I just don’t want it to include reading her texts.
This has been a great conversation. It’s given me a lot to think about.
I don’t have anything to add, but I really appreciate all the comments. And the OP. Great issue to bring up, Heather!
I confess. I have come across my 13 year old’s journals and notes and read them. When questioned, I lie and say I haven’t.
I have kept a journal ever since I was 12. I hid them growing up, but I leave it lying around the house now all the time. The reader beware. I have also kept journals for my three girls since before they were born. They each have their own personal journals that they write in sometimes and the youngest often dictates what she wants written. They LOVE reading what I wrote when they were babies.
I also had a much different relationship with my parents than I have with my daughters. Not that I think they tell me everything, but we talk about serious and important issues – one of our best friends being gay (he’s the dad to their best friends growing up), going through a faith transition, their father suffering from depression and how that affects our family, and the deaths of three close family members in the last three years among other things.
I work at a middle school where the assistant principal is a good friend. She tells me 90% of the girl drama starts or is perpetuated on facebook. That is the rationale I gave my 13 year old when I said no to facebook. She said she didn’t care because instagram is the new facebook and she is always showing me funny, silly or cool posts from her friends. I used to check her texts until I realized how benign, silly, and BORING they were. I don’t feel guilty about any of it.
Taken all together, I believe I have achieved a tradition sharing and writing your own stories, being open about the world we live in, and occasionally snooping. It’s a balance that keeps me sane and not overly worried about my girls.