Why is your 8 year old daughter on TikTok?

[Zorba]

Not to throw a wrench in here because I’m 100% on board with you.....

But I have a 12 year old type 1 diabetic child. He wears a Bluetooth device on his body to monitor his glucose levels. Now the machine itself uses a monitor which would be honestly fine for an adult. But he is a kid, doesn’t make the best choices all the time and hormones as he is aging affect his glucose.

If he has a cell phone, the app used can transmit his levels to us and notify us he goes too low or too high. It also tracks his meals and insulin that he takes.

Point is, it allows him to be more of a kid and gives him freedom he wouldn’t normally have, like staying at a friends house with parents that aren’t t trained With diabetic kids.

THAT....is the one reason he has a cell phone. Which we monitor and limit what he can do on it.

There's always an exception to every rule.

 

[qslim]

Let's just agree to disagree on this one, shall we? There's so much wrong here that I don't even want to bother with it...

It sounds like you aren’t currently raising any young children right now. @jodomcfrodo makes a valid point, relegating our children to the lifestyles we grew up with will most likely alienate them from their peers. It’s not what I’d prefer, but it is what it is. I wish I could go back to a time in my career when we exchanged carbon paper in triplicate instead of updating excel sheets across multiple drives in different formats In real time, but that’s where we are. 30 years from now my son probably won’t understand why the generation after him is fine with brain implanted connectivity devices.

 

[Zorba]

Like I said, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Doing something because "everybody else is" is the stupidest excuse for anything. I didn't buy it when I was 10 years old, and I certainly don't buy it now. Why would I want to associate myself, or enable my child to associate him/herself with people that shallow, self-absorbed, and narcissistic? People choose their "peers". That's all I have to say on the subject.

 

[scottgraham]

.... with people that shallow, self-absorbed, and narcissistic? People choose their "peers". That's all I have to say on the subject.

You just described 99.9% of the population.

 

[Chris]

TikTok has this incredibly creepy feature called “duets”. You make a video of yourself singing for example, and anyone else can make a video (which then does a split screen) of them singing along with you, even if you have never met them in your life.

If you browse through TikTok, you’ll see videos of young girls like her singing and middle aged men doing duets with them. This is incredibly disturbing to me. What middle aged man would be doing something like this in the first place? Someone who either has no life or is genuinely peeping young girls.

Top that with the fact that just like any other form or social media, all it takes is someone sending this child (or any other) a direct message. As we all know, on the internet you can pretend to be whoever you’d like to be.

My guess is some little girl who is posting sexually suggestive videos like this is going to be catching the attention of pedos all over.

Social media as a whole disturbs me greatly, but TikTok takes it to a whole new level entirely. Sometimes I really wish we were just Amish

 

[Rick Flair]

There's always an exception to every rule.

Just pointing out not everyone has the choice with it.

 

[Modoc Guy]

Chris, good job on being an aware and concerned parent. So many men and women today are not.

I wish more people parented their kids instead of letting public schools and the internet do their job.

And a tough job it is, but I’ve found it’s been the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.

Only advice I could give you is continue being your daughters father and not her friend. She’ll probably thank you one day.

 

[Chris]

Only advice I could give you is continue being your daughters father and not her friend. She’ll probably thank you one day.

I hear you on that. My wife's mother has always been her friend and never her mother. Having heard the stories about my wife's upbringing, I would never in a million years put my kids through that.

 

[alittleoff]

Chris, I myself and hopefully a few others are glad that you are not Amish.
Because if we were on a trail ride, we’d be looking at a horses ass all day.
It’s bad enough if we have to be behind a megatron type JK.

 

[jeepguy03]

Run, don't walk, away from that situation. Sounds like your daughter will be very "busy" in the near future and not be able to hang out. I feel bad for that little girl, but her situation sounds really screwed up and you want your kid to be far away from that.

I grew up with strict parents. When I was in middle school I remember hating them thinking how it wasn't fair that all the other kids had "cool" parents and mine held me accountable. Well guess what, all those friends with cool parents have been in and out of jail, can't hold a job, and have kids with a bunch of different women.

 

[Chris]

Yesterday our neighbor joined us at the park across the street to play with our daughter. She was telling us about a new friend she met on some app called Twitch.

We asked if her friend was a boy or a girl. She said it was a girl. We asked if she had seen pictures of this girl or video chatted with her. She said, she hadn’t seen pictures of video chatting with her, but the girl asked her to download SnapChat so they could talk more. She told us that they have been talking back-and-forth through Snapchat for several days now and that she is really nice.

I’ll be damned if this didn’t raise every single red flag in the book for me as a parent.

Oh, and she also told us CPS paid an unexpected visit a few days ago for a “wellness checkup”.

 

[jodomcfrodo]

Ain't too many young girls on Twitch...

 

[Chris]

Ain't too many young girls on Twitch...

I didn't know what Twitch was, but after doing the research, my wife and I both agreed that the person she is talking to is almost certainly a pedo pretending to be a young girl her age.

 

[Zorba]

I looked it up, and I still don't really "get it". Sounds like "more of the same" social media crap to me, perhaps it really means "TWIT CH" - like a channel for twits?

 

[Chris]

I looked it up, and I still don't really "get it". Sounds like "more of the same" social media crap to me, perhaps it really means "TWIT CH" - like a channel for twits?

It sure sounds like it. I don't get any of this crap and maybe it's just because I'm not of that "target audience" age range and didn't grow up with it.

I try to be understanding as I'm sure that once upon a time my parents looked at stuff I was doing (though I grew up before social media) and thought it was stupid as hell. However, it's just really, really damn hard for me to ignore all these stupid social media apps and other bullshit that exist these days.

It seems like every other day I'm hearing about kids on SnapChat, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, etc. I'm going to lose my mind

 

[Rick Flair]

It sure sounds like it. I don't get any of this crap and maybe it's just because I'm not of that "target audience" age range and didn't grow up with it.

I try to be understanding as I'm sure that once upon a time my parents looked at stuff I was doing (though I grew up before social media) and thought it was stupid as hell. However, it's just really, really damn hard for me to ignore all these stupid social media apps and other bullshit that exist these days.

It seems like every other day I'm hearing about kids on SnapChat, TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, etc. I'm going to lose my mind

I won’t begin to tell you about the course I took on how sex offenders are using all these programs and apps (many I never heard of like kik) to lure kids out. It’s a scary thing and I hate the social media as well.

 

[Zorba]

It sure sounds like it. I don't get any of this crap and maybe it's just because I'm not of that "target audience" age range and didn't grow up with it.

Which is reason #1 I avoid it altogether. Its all created for teenagers, and that's what you get: Teenaged angst and DRAMA. Never mind everything else that we all know is wrong with the genre - the immature DRAMA and temper tantrums that come from these sites alone is enough reason for avoidance. Twit Channel? Isn't TWITter enough?

 

[Chris]

I won’t begin to tell you about the course I took on how sex offenders are using all these programs and apps (many I never heard of like kik) to lure kids out. It’s a scary thing and I hate the social media as well.

I didn't take that course, but I can guarantee you I have some pretty good ideas of what it covered only because I'm pretty savvy when it comes to this stuff.

It plays out exactly like an episode of Law and Order. He convinces her he's a girl her age that wants to be friends, they chat for a long time, eventually he asks to see pictures, then the requests get stranger (i.e. let me see a picture of you in your bathing suit), etc.

It's called grooming, and this is why parents need to be active in their kids lives and teach them about this stuff.

An 8 year old girl is completely naive to what men really want, and how sick and sadistic some men can really be. We try to talk to her about this stuff, but it's hard when her mom is reinforcing her bad habits.

For instance, we asked her, "Does your mom know you're on SnapChat?", to which she replied, "Oh yeah, my mom has a SnapChat as well and she doesn't care if I have one."

Really? You're 8 years old. What parent is okay with letting their 8 year old have a SnapChat?

 

[Chris]

Which is reason #1 I avoid it altogether. Its all created for teenagers, and that's what you get: Teenaged angst and DRAMA. Never mind everything else that we all know is wrong with the genre - the immature DRAMA and temper tantrums that come from these sites alone is enough reason for avoidance. Twit Channel? Isn't TWITter enough?

All of it really makes me wish we were Amish and just living off the grid entirely. I can't even keep up with this bullshit either. The moment one social network goes out of fashion a new one pops up in its place. It's like trying to play whack-a-mole with the terrorists in the mountains of Afghanistan. To think you'll ever win is foolish!

 

[Zorba]

The last site of this nature I had anything to do with was Tribe - and not very much even there. There was a male Belly Dancer's group there that was active for awhile. MySpace and facebook were OBVIOUSLY oriented towards teens, and the rest of it has just gone down hill from there. About the only ones that make any sense whatsoever are LinkedIn and maybe Pinterest, but I've never felt the need to join even those. I messed around a bit with geocities back in the day.

I stick to discussion forums, which are the WWW version of the old dialup BBS systems. I belong to several firearms forums (fora?), the only remaining Belly Dance forum (that's on life support), a couple of piano forums that I haven't visited in years because of their Liberal slant, a couple of really nice antique sewing machine forums, and some forum about little red vehicles that can go just about anywhere...

I've been on a few others that I just lost interest in, a brand specific motorhome forum when I was thinking about one of their motorhomes, etc. But nothing - and I mean NOTHING - beats a piano forum for flamewars!