It would surprise us if it weren’t so common. But every time it happens it still breaks our hearts. This past week a famous relationship therapist revealed her 16 year old son, bored from the many months of quarantine, had been approached by a drug dealer on Snapchat. The teen thought he was buying Xanax, but it was actually Xanax laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid similar to morphine, but 50 to 100 times more potent. The teen was a straight A student, getting ready for college, and his parents say they monitored his social media “closely.” The teen overdosed and was found dead.
You can watch/read the story here.
One thing his parents did admit: they didn’t know the passcode to his phone. If you’re a parent of a teen, you understand the battle. Your kid believes he or she is entitled to privacy. They don’t want you reading their messages. However, they are not yet mature enough to understand the dangers and power of the device that is in their hands. We’ve had a generation to wrestle with the implications of technology as it has evolved through the years. Should parents have the passcode to their child’s devices? An emphatic yes! In fact, because of parental controls my children are not even able to change their passcode without my permission (we’ll teach you how to set that up).
This is one of the many tips we will be providing to parents this weekend in our Navigating Our Digital World workshop. Our goal is to provide you with some strategies and tips to prevent tragedies like the story above, show you some tools to assist, but also help you work through the relationship challenges our devices can cause. We want to empower you with a plan to navigate this incredibly complex landscape. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions, but we’ll provide some principles you can take home and immediately put to use.
Navigating Our Digital World: A Parent Workshop
Saturday, Feb 20 from 9:30-noon
Online and in-person
Register at redlandhills.org