I tend to agree. I never snooped on my kids phones or computers. I never considered installing tracking software. I told them how to stay safe, not to trust strangers online, or things that sounded too good to be true, etc. and hoped that they would do that. The world isn't perfectly safe, and hovering over them at all times causes its own set of harms.
I really don’t get that specific fear. It’s likely your kids are already going to school with “predators.” Meanwhile the overwhelming majority of people online live very far away.
The actually risks are online are just so low by comparison is seems like being deathly afraid of pigs rather than say cars. Yep, sometimes pigs eat kill and eat people, but it’s hardly something that’s likely to come up.
If someone is going to abuse your child, odds are you already know them. They are friends or family members, not strangers on the internet. We just don’t want to think about it.
There have been plenty of child abuse scandals from Twitch streamers/Youtubers and such, often initiated through friendly chats on apps like Discord.
In reality the risk of your child being abused by a stranger is still incredibly low, but that's no reason for blind trust in internet strangers either.
One of my ex-coworker never left his children alone with his own parents. This seems extreme, but statistically, more effective than stalking their discord friends.
The message I'm trying and somehow failing to get across is it's more likely than you think. The internet is a lot weirder than when I was a kid and it was pretty weird even way back when. Don't be a "source??" kind of parent. Be a "who is animeprincess78??" Kind of parent.
