Let’s come out and address the elephant in the room.
Isn’t it a violation of a kid’s privacy to let their parents see everything they’re doing on their Aqua One smartphone?
If you’ve wondered this, you’re not alone! But here’s the truth.
We’re not afraid of this question.
Pull up a chair and let us tell you exactly why we believe that parents should have complete access to everything their kid does online.
Privacy matters…until it doesn’t.
Can we be honest? It’s easy to say we value our kid’s privacy and want to respect their personal space. That is…
…until they mention they have a secret.
…or we find their phone sitting unlocked on the kitchen counter.
Suddenly, all concern for our kid’s privacy gets tossed aside and we jump in, desperate to know what secret they’re hiding or what they’re doing online. This is especially true if you know every social media password and sit down to comb through their phone each night. Where is the privacy there?
Now, let’s get one thing straight. We’re not saying that parents shouldn’t monitor what their kid is doing on their phone. It’s not overselling it to say that’s a cornerstone of our beliefs.
Instead, we want to point out the two-sidedness of it all.
When the rubber hits the road with our kid’s online activity, we as parents don’t actually care about privacy.
If it’s not privacy, what is it that we value the most?
Our kid’s online safety is our highest priority.
Let’s face it. Our mom’s parenting books just won’t cut it anymore because smartphones and social media have literally changed EVERYTHING. The parenting techniques that worked 10 years ago are now completely out of sync because technology is changing at lightning speed.
As parents, we’re faced with a problem that’s never been seen before.
We’re all too familiar with the dangers social media poses to our kids. We have to worry about internet predators, sextortion, cyberbullying, body image, drug use, sexting, and many more issues. All this from one little device that sits in the palm of our kid’s hand.
Parenting in our technology-driven world has made parents face the music and pivot their stance. We now have to worry about our kid’s virtual safety as much as their physical safety because both are equally threatened.
This response to smartphones and social media is a good thing!
Refusing to acknowledge the impact of technology or trying to eliminate it altogether is as useful as burying your head in the sand and hoping something bad doesn’t happen to your kid. We’ll give you a hint: that doesn’t work.
Unlimited parental monitoring is the only answer.
Yep. This is a hill we’ll die on.
When it’s time to give your kid access to the online world, they’ll need you right there by their side. Nothing can really prepare them for what they’ll encounter, for good and for bad. It’s like a homework assignment on material they’ve had zero experience with. They need you to sit down and help them if they want to have any chance at success.
The same applies to giving them a smartphone for the first time. As an adult, you’ve learned the consequences of a careless post on social media or seen the effect that too much negative or explicit content can have on someone’s mental health. Your experiences serve as a wealth of wisdom that you’re able to pass on to your kid so they don’t learn these brutal lessons the hard way.
However, this only truly works if you know everything that they’re doing online.
When you rely on parental controls that decide what you can and can’t see for you, you’ll never have the complete picture with which to help your kid.
Instead, you’ll be plagued by the fear that something’s been missed and this tension will prevent you from ever fully developing a trusting relationship with your kid.
It’s only when you have unlimited access to their online activity that you’re able to share your wisdom and help guide your kid through tricky experiences they’ve never faced before online. As your relationship grows, so does the level of trust that you have in each other.
Because you CAN see everything, you won’t NEED to see everything.
Imagine this for a moment.
You give your kid an expensive gift. At first, you watch their every movement, terrified that they’ll drop and break this valuable present. Over time though, you notice that they have a habit of being careful and they’ve developed a strong sense of responsibility for taking care of this gift. Because you’re beginning to trust them, you feel like you have to watch them less and less, and soon, intense supervision isn’t needed at all.
This is what’s possible with the Aqua One’s unlimited parental monitoring.
When you put that smartphone into your kid’s hands for the first time, you’re entrusting them with a gift that has equal potential to be positive or negative. It’s normal (and responsible) to supervise them closely, in the beginning, to make sure they don’t do something they shouldn’t with it. Knowing you can see everything helps them build good habits from the start. However, as time goes on and you notice that they’re consistently making good decisions, you can lessen your supervision. Instead of pouring over their online activity in your Parent Dashboard, you can begin to focus only on the apps that you feel are especially risky for your kid. As they grow and mature, you can shift to spot-checking their online activity occasionally.
Notice how much room your relationship has to grow when it begins with unlimited monitoring access. It might be an over-used phrase but it’s true here. The Aqua One is the phone that grows with your kid. It’s also the one that helps build a relationship truly founded on trust.
Involvement is in. Secrets are out.
Here’s what the Aqua One’s monitoring capabilities are never meant to be…
…a secret.
We didn’t set out to make the next greatest spyware app that helps parents lurk in the shadows of their kid’s online activity.
Remember that gift we talked about earlier? It actually hurts your kid if you hang around outside their door, wondering if they’re going to break it without actually going in to help them. That’s what happens when parental monitoring is treated like spyware. It puts up more walls and builds distrust that could take years to reverse.
The Aqua One is meant to do the exact opposite. Instead of encouraging kids and parents to virtually sneak around each other, our smartphone breaks down those barriers and puts involvement front and center.
No more secrets. Just open communication.
This is why we’ll never believe that unlimited parental monitoring is an invasion of your kid’s privacy.
Rather, we believe that it’s the most important step you can take to help your kid safely navigate the dangers of the online world and build lasting trust along the way.
