Social media can be challenging for parents to figure out, especially with updates and new features constantly added to various apps.
Four Detroit high school students from Chippewa High School and Dakota High School sat down with WDIV 4 reporter Nick Monacellito talk about how teens hide secrets from their parents on social media.
Students Katie Kraemer, T.J. Laryea, Katelyn Kraemer, and Muhammed Smidi explained just how easy it is to keep information from parents, getting past tracking software, sharing explicit photos, and more.
When it comes to hiding social media activity, the teens said it's easy. "On Safari, they have a private browsing mode that doesn't save your search history, so you can search whatever you want and have no record of it," Katie stated. "There's a 'my eyes only' camera roll on Snapchat where you have to put in a special code to access a secret camera roll that is nowhere else on your phone."
When asked about tracking apps, Katie shared, "There is a way to get around almost all of them, and if you can't get around them, you can just plug in your old phone and use that."
The reporter asked what kids are hiding from their parents; the teens shared things like people you are not supposed to be talking to or things you're not supposed to be doing, like buying drugs. T.J. stated, "For the drugs, I don't think it's a secret anymore. I can go on my phone right now and show you five different stories of people saying, hey, you want drugs."
When the topic of explicit photos came up, T.J. noted, "The way I see it is they think of nudes like trading cards."
Muhammed said that he has heard teens say, "they keep them as trophies." He also added that those hidden camera rolls in apps are where kids store them.
When asked about what apps parents should look out for, Katie stated, Yolo, an anonymous commenting app, and Yubo, essentially a Tinder for teenagers.
Some advice the teens gave for parents on looking out for their kids, and their social media was to educate them. "You can't stop them, but you can say okay, you need to be friends with the right people. You need to know this is not right to do," Katelyn added.
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