He's 10. TEN. His friends have it. He sees them making videos at lunch. I've read all the articles about screen time and algorithm addiction but also like... am I just being that dad? What are other people doing? Let them have it? Full ban? Supervised version?
I feel like I'm overthinking but also I'm not sure.
my oldest is 11 and I was that guy too. here's what actually helped: I made an account, spent like 20 minutes understanding what HE actually likes, and then we talked about it factually instead of me just saying "no screens bad." he respects the boundaries way more when he feels heard
genuinely asking: did you let him see the kind of stuff his friends are making? like is it actually problematic content or just... teenage garbage? Because sometimes the anxiety about what they're watching is worse than the actual content
You're not being that dad, the addiction stuff is real. But also your kid is 10 and his entire social world is on there now, so complete restriction is going to backfire. What if you set a hard limit (like 20 min on weekends) and stuck to it? Frame it as "yeah you can do this but we're managing it"
The FOMO is killing him though right? That's the part that's actually hard. My son kept asking about things his friends posted and it became this whole thing where he felt left out at school. We compromised with supervised TikTok for like 15 min after homework on weekends. Seems to be working
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honestly at 10 I think the move is less "no TikTok forever" and more getting ahead of it. Like sit down with him, maybe let him make ONE video with your supervision, talk about what actually happens with the algorithm and his data. He's going to find a way regardless, better he knows you're not the enemy about it