Privacy for kids and teens

Set up the device once, properly

1. A child or teen account, not a hand-me-down adult one — Family Sharing on Apple, Family Link on Google. Age-appropriate defaults come for free.
2. Location sharing within the family, and off to everyone else. Check Snap Map, Life360, and any game with a friends list.
3. Turn off ad personalization and delete the advertising ID. Children's data being used for ad targeting is the part most parents object to once it's pointed out.
4. Lock down app permissions — microphone and camera off except where obviously needed; location to while using.
5. Private profiles by default on every social app, with DMs from strangers off. Do it together so they know where the setting is.
6. uBlock Origin in the browser, and a private-by-default search engine.
7. A password manager on their device too. Teaching this at 11 saves them a decade of reused passwords.

School devices are not private

School-issued Chromebooks and laptops are managed devices: filtering, activity logging, and sometimes screen monitoring are normal and often legally required. That's usually fine — the problem is a kid treating one as personal. The rule that works: school device for school, personal device for personal. Don't sign into personal accounts on a managed machine.

Platforms worth specific attention

• Discord — where most contact from strangers actually happens. Set DMs to friends-only, turn off "allow DMs from server members", and keep an eye on who's in the servers.
• Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite — voice chat with strangers is the exposure, not the game. Restrict chat, and turn off cross-platform friend requests.
• TikTok and Instagram — private accounts, no location tagging, and a real conversation about what's in the background of a photo. School logos and street signs are the leak.
• Snapchat — Snap Map off entirely. Screenshots exist, so "it disappears" is not true and shouldn't be believed.
• AI chatbots — worth saying out loud: anything typed in may be stored and reviewed. Not a reason to avoid them, a reason not to paste your full name, school, or a friend's problems into one.

What to say — three sentences that land

1. “Free apps make money from information about you, so being careful with it is normal, not paranoid.” Frames privacy as ordinary rather than a punishment.
2. “Screenshots exist. Assume anything you send can be shown to anyone.” This is the single most useful sentence for a teenager, and it covers disappearing messages, DMs, and group chats at once.
3. “If someone online makes you uncomfortable, you can always tell me and you will never be in trouble for it.” Most harm comes from a kid hiding the early stage because they expect the device to be confiscated. Say it before it's needed, and mean it.

If something has already gone wrong

Don't confiscate as a first move — it teaches concealment at the exact moment you need information. Screenshot the evidence, report to the platform, block, and if an adult is contacting a child or images are involved, go to the police and your national reporting line rather than handling it yourself. Our harassment page covers the triage; if it's a peer pile-on rather than an adult, that page's first row is the relevant one.