Your Child’s Online World

The father has, on a Tuesday at half past nine in the evening, picked up his twelve-year-old daughter’s phone from the kitchen counter to plug it in for the night, and the screen has lit up with a notification that he has, for the half-second before it disappears, read. He has put the phone down. He has stood at the counter for a minute. He has picked it up again. The notification was, when he scrolls back, the surface of something he had not known was there.

What follows in the next hour, and then in the next several weeks, is the conversation this chapter is about. The screen-time conversation is about how long, when, and where. This one is about what the child has encountered, what has come to find her, and what the family does next.

In our work, this Tuesday comes up more often than the cultural script would suggest. The picture varies. A message from someone the child does not seem to know. A group chat in which her name is being spoken about. An image she has been sent and not been able to put down. An account that has been following her for months and that, at second glance, is not what it said it was. The configurations differ. The parent’s drop in the stomach is much the same across the range.