So I have a young teen entering 7th grade and so they’re about to receive their first phone. With that, it opens a lot of doors to all the big tech social media apps and privacy invasive services.
I’m not sure how to approach this. My parents probably want tracking features so it’ll probably be Find My or a 3rd party app like life360 depending on if we choose iphone or degoogled pixel.
Social media I’m not sure if fediverse stuff is the right path especially for lemmy, since it’s just tech nerd stuff and politics which isn’t interesting really unless they go out of their way to find smaller communities. Their friends will probably force them onto Instagram or some shit and I don’t really want them doomscolling on reels, that shit algorithm, and the malicious messaging app built in to it.
It’s just kinda hard trying to blend being a functional member of society and maintain your mental well being and privacy.
My opinion generally aligns with those who are saying to talk with them so they have a better understanding and don’t try to be overly strict with parental controls and such.
What I do want to add and don’t see in other comments is that if you want tracking software, you can set up fmd locator. It uses contact whitelisting so if they get a specific text from a whitelisted contact it will automatically text back their location. It isn’t for the use case of constant tracking to see if they’re sneaking out or whatever but if you want something that’s more trust based location sharing.