Growing up in a big family with five older siblings and very firm parents shaped a lot of how I see the conversation around kids and privacy today. My dad was tough, I avoid using the word strict, but rest assured you weren’t getting away with much under his watch. We lived in a very comfortable home, and I had to share a room with my sister, so there was no such thing as total privacy. If my parents weren’t watching me, then definitely my older siblings would, because basically, I was one of the youngest.
There was a lot of guidance from my parents, not just to me but also to my other siblings, because in the end, we were all their children. There were a lot of limits placed on us, the kind of movies we watched, whom we could hang out with, and we didn’t even get phones until we left secondary school. That rule applied to all of us. I remember how my mom wouldn’t even let me play games with her button phone back then. It’s not like the phone could even access the internet, but she still wouldn't let me use it. If I needed access to the internet, probably for homework or research, I had to tell one of my older siblings the exact thing I wanted to search for online and have them look it up for me, because they wouldn’t just let me use their phones however I wanted.
As I reflect now, I’ve come to appreciate more the kind of protection I had from not doing everything I wanted with nobody watching me. I lived with my aunt for a while, and it was so strange having my cousin’s daughter, who was barely 10 years old then, using her mom's old phone that could access the internet. She would tell me all the songs she had downloaded and show off how much she could sing them word for word. Most of these songs had adult lyrics that even I, as an adult now, can’t say out loud. Her mom was working as a nurse then, so she was often away, and I was the one taking care of her. At a point, I noticed she was having back-to-back conversations with a particular number when I checked her call logs. I later found out it was her male teacher. To add to that, she had endless recordings of herself in reference to that same teacher. It got me thinking: what business would a male teacher have with a child barely 10 years old outside the classroom? I called the attention of her parents, and the phone was seized. She didn’t get it back until she was grown.
A lot of things might have gone wrong with that kind of interaction, which is why I strongly support that kids don’t need a lot of privacy. What they need is guidance and training in their early years. Just because a parent can afford devices doesn’t make it right for a child to gain full ownership and usage. The social space is not all that child-friendly. A lot of kids have gone astray just because they saw something they shouldn’t have, and it stayed in their heads until they had the chance to practice it.
Kids don’t take responsibility for themselves, parents do. They need to keep an eye on them so as to know when they need help. Some kids have even gone astray while living with their parents simply because the parents were too busy providing instead of protecting and guiding as well. True though, at some point parents will have to give their kids a measure of freedom according to their age to show that they trust them to do the right thing. I mean, even when I got my first phone and I watched reels online that made me laugh, my mom would always be curious and want to see what I was laughing at. As the years kept rolling by, my dad’s grip slowly began to loosen because I was no longer the little girl anymore. I earned both my parents trust and in no time, I was starting to be treated like a grown up. I was allowed to hang with my friends without anybody reminding me I needed to be home early. I just knew because I learned. Even now, the rules haven’t vanished completely. I still do my own stuff, but the training I received shaped me to always do the right thing that my parents would have wanted, even when nobody is watching.
So it doesn’t matter now whether I have all the privacy I want or keep my door always closed. I know there are things I simply can’t try because of how I was raised. And if parents can successfully train their kids with just the right amount of privacy for their age, then those kids will grow into independent, confident, and responsible adults who don’t need anyone policing them around.
