Content note: This entry contains childhood cruelty via the internet

[conuly]

Dear Care and Feeding,

A few days ago, I was looking through my 14-year-old daughter’s phone. I do this once a week, just to check she’s not being rude or anything (there was once an issue at her school where several unnamed children were being very rude online). Everything seemed okay, but then I suddenly decided I should probably look through her messages, too. I found a WhatsApp chat called “Wonderful People Only.” On the group there was about 60-70 children, all of them about her age. I think they are all from her school, but I’m not sure.

I’d never seen this WhatsApp on her phone before, so I scrolled to the top. The chat was created in December, and she was one of the original 20 people to be added. To start with, the group seemed to revolve around those 20 people (including my daughter) saying extremely rude things about another girl, “Millie.” I wasn’t happy about this. But then, in January, Millie was added to the chat so she could see what horrible things were being said. They called her a spoiled brat, a b***h, a freak, and more. And my daughter was the ringleader. After reading this I immediately sat my daughter down and asked her what the heck was she doing. My daughter replied that Millie had been being “extremely rude” to her and the other people in the group since Millie joined the school in November. So these people got together and made a WhatsApp group so they could rant about their frustrations. Apparently it was never intended for Millie to be added.

I asked my daughter to give examples, and my daughter replied that Millie had refused to download social media, didn’t wear trendy clothes and barely used her mobile phone. I explained to my daughter that doing these things was not being “extremely rude” and Millie simply had different interests to her peers. My daughter said that it was wrong for Millie to not be like anyone else. I tried to talk to her, showing her videos about diversity, etc., but they didn’t work. And then I found out that Millie had been invited to our house the following Saturday. I told my daughter that Millie could still come round, but if I heard any rude comments she would be leaving. When Millie came round, I found out that she is Black, bisexual, and transgender. I don’t have a problem with any of those things but apparently my daughter does. I immediately took Millie home. I’ve confiscated my daughter’s phone but she still makes random comments to me about how “stupid” Millie is. How can I explain to my daughter that this isn’t okay?

—Not So Wonderful People Only

Dear NSWPO,

I’m not sure that you’re going to like what I have to say here. Your daughter was part of what sounds like a significant cyberbullying incident targeting a girl of marginalized identities. She and the other kids ought to be held accountable for what they did to Millie, and I think you should inform the school of what took place and who was involved. There have been too many tragic stories of children taking their own lives after being targeted in such a way for this to be taken lightly. Your daughter still clearly doesn’t understand the potential dangers of what she has gotten herself involved with, as made evident by her willingness to make fun of this girl in front of you.

The school may see fit to punish your daughter and the other bad actors in this situation, and I think that would be appropriate. I also wonder if you have given any thought at all to how you might enforce consequences yourself. Does your daughter still have access to the phone she used to harass her classmate? Perhaps there should be some limitations on her phone communications until she can prove capable of conducting herself responsibly. If social media use and trendy clothes are the metric by which she feels empowered to judge other kids, perhaps she should experience a period of time without access to either of those things. I personally can’t fathom the idea of allowing my child to engage in such cruel behavior without making it very clear that it would not be tolerated and that she can expect to be punished if ever she’s caught doing such a thing again.

Furthermore, you need to talk to your daughter about Millie’s humanity. She is a person with thoughts and feelings, and there’s nothing she could have done to warrant being singled out for abuse. It must be incredibly difficult for her to exist in a space where most of the kids aren’t Black or LGBT, and she deserves to be protected, not picked on. Your conversations about how to treat people who are different will need to be frequent and serious. Did she tell you straight out that she has a problem with Millie’s identity? (I’m so curious as to why this child ended up in your house, and what led to you taking her home.)

Also, let your daughter know that while Millie’s identity makes her more likely to be targeted, that the same kids who were happy to bully Millie with her could easily turn on her in the future. Talk to her about what cyberbullying is and why it is so dangerous. Keep that phone largely away from her for the foreseeable future and make it so she can’t download any chat apps at all. Make it clear that bigotry and hatred will not be tolerated and that she is expected to treat everyone with respect. And, again, I think you should report what happened to Millie to the school. Her parents need to know what she’s endured, and she deserves whatever sort of support mechanisms that may be available to her. This will likely upset your daughter, but it will also help her to understand the gravity of what she has done–and, hopefully, prevent her from behaving the same way in the future.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2022/09/combat-cyberbullying-advice-phone.html

Comments

[conuly]

What gets me here is not that LW's daughter, along with these other kids, is being so awful. I don't want to handwave that away, but that can happen even with the best parenting.

No, what I see is that Daughter's argument, that she used to defend herself to her mother, is that Millie is being "rude" by not conforming.

That's an incredibly stupid argument, as noted, and I can't shake the feeling that the only reason any child would use it to their parents is if, for some reason, their parents spent the last 14 years somehow not teaching them acceptable behavior and why "they're not like me" isn't a reason for bullying.

14 years old is a bit late to suddenly start talking about the value of human diversity!

I'm also struck by the fact that LW seems to think of this and the previous incident as isolated one-offs. "There was once an issue at her school where several unnamed children were being very rude online" - yeah, that was then, and this is now, and now there is ALSO an issue where several unnamed children at your kid's school are being very rude online, which makes this seem like a pattern - and I have no doubt that they're also "being very rude" in person.

LW is not taking this seriously enough.

[troisoiseaux]

The word "rude" is doing some extreme load-bearing in this letter.

[ethelmay]

Yeah, like maybe one of the other kids' parents previously found out about this or similar bullying, tipped the school off, and the school said something vague about "There have been reports concerning online rudeness toward others, we don't tolerate this at St. Matthew's Saintly School, blah blah, please make sure that wasn't your kid." And nothing was done to actually stop anyone, and here we are.

Calling others "rude" for not conforming sounds to me a bit as though this girl may have grown up hearing "we don't do that, darling, that's rude" for every sort of behavioral infraction, and essentially learned that the important thing was to conform to a certain outward look, and otherwise do what you want. I may just be making that up, of course.

Another basically irrelevant matter: I wonder if LW is British, given the use of expressions like "different to" and "come round."

[minoanmiss]

I can't reply to coherently to this letter. I'm in a corner curled up in a ball.

[lilysea]

Much sympathy, much empathy.

[sathari]

*offers you your choice of cozy, pointy, and/or hard things to outfit your corner appropriately* *goes to outfit own corner from which to comment*

[julian]

Wow, yeah. Not a bad response, all in all. I *think* it hammers home just how over the line these kids are being. Because holy crap, are they ever.

[cimorene]

So many questions, but uppermost in my mind is that a kid doesn't get to 14 a gleeful ring-leading bully in spite of good parents who have never noticed any signs of it before. I hesitate to say the only way is bad parenting, but like... I'm sure there's like a 95% chance of bad parenting here.

[jadelennox]

oh jesus is everyone “Wonderful People Only” white, perchance, LW? Because that's absolutely an internet trollism, to say "trains" or "wonderful people" or .... you know what, I don't even like thinking about some of the ones I've seen?

If everyone in WPO is white, LW, you have a significant racism problem you need to address right the fuck now, because your daughter helped make an explicitly white only whatsapp group with an explicitly racist name of the type that implies she's spending time in some extremely shitty corners of the internet.

[jadelennox]

Also, JSYK, LW? This

Apparently it was never intended for Millie to be added.

is a complete lie, and you are a credulous fool.

[hashiveinu]

Yeah. This is pretty terrifying.

[ethelmay]

"I was looking through my 14-year-old daughter’s phone. I do this once a week"

I realize this is not at all the most important point, but WHAT.

[shirou]

Is it unreasonable for a parent to check the phone of a 14-yr-old child? I have no idea, and I am genuinely trying to figure these things out because my elder child, age ten, will be on social media soon enough. This letter seems like an argument that such checks are necessary.

[ethelmay]

To me a phone is inherently private - you don't let your kid have a phone if you can't respect that privacy and don't consider them able to handle the responsibility. Looking at it is like reading their diary or listening in on their conversations with their friends.

Though how realistic it is to try to keep a high school age kid from having a phone these days, I have no idea - seems as if it would be easy for a kid with a bit of money to get a burner phone and a pay as you go account and hide it from their parents. My kids (now in their twenties, so the tech and the societal expectations around it have changed a bit) did have smartphones in high school, and non-smart cellphones in late middle school.

[shirou]

The potential for a child to do harm, or be the victim of something harmful, is far greater with a phone than with a diary. I don't think responsibility and privacy are binary, and I am trying to figure out how I will transition my children to greater responsibility and privacy. It may or may not involve checks like LW conducts, but I don't think I can agree that a child's phone is inherently and fully private.

[ethelmay]

If there's an understanding from the get-go that the phone isn't private, or that it won't be private until a specific age, and it's all aboveboard, that might be a little bit different? I haven't really thought it through. I did get the impression that this parent was checking the phone on the sly, though, rather than it being an open arrangement with the daughter.

[conuly]

I didn't get that impression at all.

I agree that sneakily looking at your child's phone is a no-go - either do it openly or don't do it.

[conuly]

I don't think so, so long as you either a. are open about this from the start ("We pay for the phone, and we have a right to check what you're doing periodically") or b. have an urgent concern that merits a breech of privacy, ie, you think your child or somebody else is actually in danger.

[sathari]

See my comment downthread--- I think that in this case there is likely to be a causal relationship between the approach that LW takes to their child's life overall, including but not limited to their electronic communications, and the child's attitude that anyone who doesn't live, including in their use of electronic communications, the way that child and child's friends do is being not just weird but actively rude to them--- i.e., not just different, but being different at them as a deliberate act of... contempt? Dislike? Insult? IDK the exact emotional valence but I'm seeing a connection between "LW is policing their offspring's communications with peers for what LW thinks is appropriate" and "offspring thinks that anyone who does not communicate with peers in exactly the way that offspring and friends do is being deliberately insulting to them". I think some other commenters covered that from different angles as well.

I don't know what to tell you in specific about what's appropriate for monitoring your specific kid's communications with peers, including the electronic kind. I am going to say that this stuff sounds like it's not dissimilar to the hell I got from age-peers to my face throughout elementary and high school, it's just that now the adult authority figures have documentation of how awful kids can be to each other. I also really, really like conuly's suggestion that you tell your kid upfront how much monitoring they can expect of their electronic communications before they have that capability.

[conuly]

Even if you don't intend to ever check your kid's phone, I do recommend you make it very clear to them that stuff that is recorded is not private. The police can, and will, look at your text messages and your call logs and anything else they can get their grubby little hands on.

So if you're going to do something unlawful, don't do it over the phone! Don't post pictures on social media! Just don't!

It is never to early to develop common sense about these things, but the sheer number of people who are arrested because they posted a picture of themselves to facebook with drugs or stolen goods suggests that many people don't.

Not that you particularly want your kids to do crimes, but lots of unlawful things are probably not immoral. (YMMV. This advice is not applicable to all moral or legal codes.)

...of course, if LW's daughter had gotten this advice, she'd probably have been a bit smarter about how she went about bullying this other girl, but let's face it, LW is obviously failing as a parent anywya.

[green_grrl]

Lol, I was going to say, teaching daughter to only bully this girl in person, maybe not the best idea…

[conuly]

Though quite seriously, probably easier for the teachers to at least pretend to attempt to stop.

[sathari]

THANK YOU for raising this point, because I've been trying to frame a comment here to the effect that I think there is a very strong causal relationship between "parent thinks they should have unfettered access to all spaces of child's life, including but not limited to electronic communications" and "child thinks that anyone who does not behave exactly the way they do, including in their use of electronic communications, is being rude and awful and deserving of social abuse".

Also, I bet that Millie does indeed have social media accounts that are carefully firewalled from her awful meatspace peers as IMO the internet was intended to be, namely an escapespace for people who don't conform to the dominant ingroup, not a place for the dominant ingroup to police them still further and into oblivion. /is an Old

[ethelmay]

Yeah, if Millie didn't have any access to social media, she'd never know about the WhatsApp shit-talking. Not that that would be a lot better. I am still wondering why she was invited to LW's house, and why she went.

I do think that being able to communicate in privacy with one's friends is a very important part of being friends (all the more during a pandemic, when you have less contact in person, though it sounds as though these kids are back to ordinary school and visiting).