Worried about your kid’s phone use?

Hello, Happy Humans! 🙂

We're here with our weekly 3 things...

1️⃣ A question from our community

2️⃣ Our actionable tips

3️⃣ A resource from our toolkit

1. The question

“My 11-year-old is starting to connect with friends through texts. I don’t want to feel like I’m spying on her, so how can I support her independence while making sure she stays safe and makes good choices?”

2. Our answer

We totally understand the mix of excitement and concern here… it's a BIG (and scary!) step toward independence.

It’s definitely been a journey for us with our 12-year-old, and we’ll admit, we didn’t know where to start at first. 

It felt so tricky to balance giving her freedom while staying involved to support and guide her choices. We wanted to feel less like overseers and more like her mentors, but figuring out how to do that wasn’t easy.

To give you a little background, she’s using one of our old phones that only connects to Wi-Fi, so she doesn’t have her own phone number yet, but she’s already talking and texting with friends A LOT.  

We’ve set a clear boundary around social media… no access for now… but even without it, managing texts and group chats has been its own learning curve. 

We trust her, but we also know she’s still figuring out how to communicate respectfully, handle peer pressure, and recognize when something doesn’t feel right. 

It’s a lot for kids to navigate, and as parents, we realized we needed to stay involved in a way that felt supportive, not overbearing.

That’s why we started exploring digital safety tools to help our family. 

We wanted to give her space while avoiding the constant feeling of needing to read over her shoulder or ask…

“What are you texting about? What’re you looking up? What’s going on in that YouTube video?”

3. From our toolkit

This is exactly where BrightCanary, a parental control app, comes in. BrightCanary offers a way to keep an eye on her texts and group chats, without feeling like we’re spying. 

As soon as we discovered BrightCanary, we had a family conversation about it all. 

We talked with our daughter about how it works, explained what we’d be able to see, answered her questions, and made sure she felt comfortable with the plan.

We mentioned that it uses AI to monitor concerning content… think bullying, self-harm, or unsafe topics… and sends us summaries instead of showing us every single message (although this feature is an option if it aligns with your family’s needs – you can choose how much you want to monitor, adjusting as your child demonstrates more responsibility).

This means we’re able to stay informed BUT she also has the space to grow her independence.

Digital independence for our kids can be frightening, but tools like BrightCanary allow us to walk that path alongside our kids in a supportive, respectful way… helping build trust and confidence as they navigate this new stage.

To start your free trial of BrightCanary, click here to download the app today. 

You’ve got this!

❤️ Jenilee & Greg

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