Navigating your teen’s digital safety is a balancing act

Three decades ago, the sight of a television locked in a cabinet shut tight with a lohe ka taala wasn’t unusual. The message was clear — limited screen time and controlled digital exposure. The only way to earn TV time was to attend to other timely tasks, namely homework and playing outdoors, and then watch Doordarshan while being monitored by papa and dadi.

Today parents need something stronger than brahmastra to keep tech-savvy teens safe during their digital explorations. But with apps and communication growing at warp speed, how can you protect your young adults without restricting them?

At the recent Snapchat event in Mumbai, moms, policymakers and a Snap Star came together to discuss digital safety for teenagers. The fireside chat was an eclectic exchange of perspectives between different generations on how to find the right balance between private and public.

Actor and TV host, Maria Goretti shared that parents must have conversations with their teenagers about the parts of their lives that should be kept off digital platforms, “You actually want your teen to just be safe, for their location not to be revealed to anybody. You want all the madness that they do, not to be put out anywhere, so people can’t turn around and shame them [later] because they were just behaving like a teen at that point in their life.”

Vacuum of privacy

Digital platforms can expose users to lots of unsafe agents, some of which can have a lasting impact on teens. Snapchat’s latest safety features ensure that young adults have a secure experience when interacting with the platform. “From the perspective of platforms, it is absolutely imperative that they put out products that place the safety of its youngest and most vulnerable users at the absolute centre of the design process,” noted Uthara Ganesh, Head of Public Policy for India and South Asia, Snap Inc.

“Taking that long-term view of ensuring that people are private and safe over profiteering is at the centre of taking good decisions about design.”

Snapchat was the first to introduce ephemeral messaging to mirror real-life conversations that allow you to be your most authentic self. On the Snap Map, your location is turned off by default and you can control who to share it with. As an added safety feature, users will now be nudged with regular reminders to confirm whether they want to continue sharing their location with a certain group or individual.

The platform is also giving its ‘block’ feature a superhero cape to enhance safety, where a blocked account will be unable to harass teens even if they create a new account on the same device.

And to pacify all parents (read worriers), Snapchat’s family centre lets parents monitor their teens’ activities on Snapchat, like seeing who they’re befriending or talking to without giving access to the actual content of the conversation thus retaining teen privacy.

Building honest communication

Parents having an ideological clash with their teens is a law of nature. Actor and author Tisca Chopra says that the power of suggestion can help you have an open conversation without positioning yourself as a ruthless imposer of rules. It can help them reevaluate certain choices that you don’t favour: “If they feel that you’re not imposing too much, but infusing the idea into their brain and let them think it’s their own idea, then it works best,” says Chopra.

As the Gen-Z representative on the panel, actor and Snap Star Nitanshi Goel quipped in, explaining how her community of friends and followers on the platform feel like an extended family. But she ensures that she’s in a safe zone by maintaining transparency with her parents. “Whatever teens post or do out there, just inform your parents. So that in case, anything goes wrong, your parents are there for you,” she said.

The conversation served as the perfect launchpad for an honest dialogue between the mothers in the audience and the panelists, as they shared their thoughts on keeping their teens safe on digital platforms. Because the only way to match the tech-savvy teens is by evolving into tech-savvy moms.