Imagine yourself in the shoes of a teen mother. One day, while checking your teen’s smartphone, you accidentally stumble upon inappropriate pictures and videos being shared on their WhatsApp. What would be your possible reaction? How would you cope with this shock?

Would you decide to confront your teen with anger and frustration and then take away their smartphone or try to make them understand the implications of sharing such content on their phone? We believe going with the second option would be the appropriate reaction.

You can prevent your teens from sharing inappropriate content through instant messaging apps by explaining to them the potential online dangers that they may come across online and then installing a monitoring or parental control app to monitor their online activity. WhatsApp spy apps for Android and iPhone can help you keep a watch on your teen’s WhatsApp chats with others.

Sharing and exchanging inappropriate stuff on instant messaging apps like WhatsApp has become widespread among teens these days. Last year, a 15-year-old teen was caught sharing child porn through WhatsApp in Italy. Apparently, his mother was the one who informed about those images to the police. Let’s discuss the story briefly.

Teens Caught Sharing Pornographic Stuff on Instant Messaging Apps

Though WhatsApp is the leading messaging app that helps users communicate with one another instantly, it also poses some serious risks to the younger generation. Teens can come across several dangers on the app including pornography, sexual predators, sexting, and cyberbullying.

In some cases, teens accidentally come across WhatsApp dangers. They receive threatening, embarrassing, and inappropriate messages from people who they do not know in real life. However, in other cases, teens are consciously involved in immoral acts on the app.

Last year, the Italian authorities reported having identified a group of teens who were involved in sharing child porn and dark web content of suicides and mutilations on their smartphones. The Italian police said that they were tipped off to the images by the mother of a teen boy when she came across them on her son’s smartphone.

While going through the contents inside the teen’s smartphone, the police reported that they had discovered an excessive number of videos being exchanged on instant messaging apps including WhatsApp and Telegram.

Along with sharing child porn images and videos, the police also expressed in a statement that the teens were also involved in exchanging violent videos from the dark web. In Italy, it is quite usual for the postal police to investigate crimes committed through email and the internet.

At the end of the investigation, it was concluded that around 20 teens aged between 13-17 were caught exchanging inappropriate stuff through instant messaging apps. The police further proceeded with the investigations to see if other people were also involved in this crime.

How to Prevent Teens from Such Immoral Acts?

Reporting about the teen’s crime to the police is one extreme thing that a parent can think of. In most cases, parents often do not report their teen’s crime to the higher authorities. Instead, they choose to handle the teens on their own.

You cannot think of becoming too hard on your teens especially when you’ve been a little easy on them all their lives. If you have chosen to hand over a smartphone to your teen, make sure you are confident about them using it safely and responsibly.

Living in the digital age can be challenging for everyone, especially teens. Adults are mature; therefore, they are equipped to face the challenges of the online world. However, we cannot say the same for the younger lot. Kids and teens are not mature and responsible enough to tackle online dangers. Similarly, they may not be able to identify the online dangers, let alone deal with them.

If you want your teen to stay away from online dangers such as cyberbullying, sexual predating, sexting, and even pornography, the best way would be to explain to them about such dangers. You need to make them understand how the online world works and what potential dangers might be lurking out there.

If your kids can recognize those dangers, then they can surely tackle them. Without knowledge of online threats, they may not be able to fight against them. Open and honest communication about the usage of social media safely and wisely would be one of the best strategies that can help you ensure your teens’ safety in the digital world.

Monitor their Social Media Activity Whenever You Can

Besides communicating with your teens, you can also consider monitoring their social media activity. Thanks to advanced technology, we are living in times where we can sit miles away from our kids and still be able to remotely manage, control, and monitor their smartphone, online, and social media activity as well as their whereabouts.

Monitoring apps like Mobistealth have come a long way in ensuring our kid’s protection in the digital age. Such monitoring and parental control apps help us control, manage, and monitor our kid’s smartphones as well as online activity. There is simply no need to hover over your kids all the time; you can remotely monitor your kid’s activity from anywhere and at any time.

Mobistealth is also the perfect example of WhatsApp spy software because it lets you monitor all incoming and outgoing messages on this instant messaging app. All pictures, audio files, and videos exchanged on this app can be frequently monitored. That way, you can stay informed of your teen’s WhatsApp activity and keep them safe from impending danger.

Even if you have found your teen committing a crime through apps like WhatsApp, you can instantly put a stop to their WhatsApp use and help them understand why they had to be stopped. You can even give them some punishment on your own instead of reporting them to the police. Once your teen is aware of all the consequences of committing crimes on social media such as exchanging child porn images as that teen boy did, they would never do such a thing.

Catherine Gomez