Monitor Your Teen's Survey Earnings Safely

# Monitoring Your Teen's Earnings and Account Activity on Survey Cash Club

Excerpt: Learn how to safely monitor your teen's survey earnings and account activity while respecting their privacy and complying with COPPA regulations.

Why Monitoring Matters

The primary goal of COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection Act) is to place parents in control over what information is collected from their young children online. Even for teens, the FTC is concerned about teen privacy and does believe that strong, more flexible, protections may be appropriate for this age group.

According to the American Psychological Association, 60% of high-frequency social media users with low parental monitoring and weak relationships report poor mental health, compared to 25% of those with strong parental relationships and monitoring. In addition, 22% of high users with weak parental connections have thoughts of suicide or self-harm, versus only 2% of those with strong monitoring and relationships.

Understanding Your Rights and Responsibilities

When it comes to the collection of personal information from children under 13, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) puts parents in control. COPPA requires that companies obtain verifiable parental consent before collecting any personal information from children. This means that companies must take appropriate steps, such as sending a confirmation email, to ensure that the person providing consent is the child's parent or legal guardian. In addition, COPPA mandates that companies provide parents with the right to review their children's personal information and ask for it to be deleted.

For teens 13 and older, accounts allow parents to monitor balances, deposits, and spending in real time. Through this, the parent has access to monitor transactions and control the account completely.

Best Practices for Monitoring Account Activity

1. **Know Your Teen's Login Information**

Knowing children's passwords is a key element of online tracking for many parents. More than half of parents (62%) say they know the passwords for their children's social media accounts, while nearly three-quarters (73%) know the login information for their child's email account. Tweens and teens should understand that you will have access to all of their passwords and user IDs as a condition of having these social media apps.

2. **Regular Communication Over Surveillance**

When parents used autonomy-supportive monitoring (eg, gave children some freedom to support their independence) their children were more likely to talk openly about what they do online and less likely to hide it. On the other hand, when parents used controlling monitoring strategies, their children tended to hide what they were doing online. Further, being open about their online activities was associated with more prosocial behaviors, while keeping secrets media was associated with fewer prosocial behaviors and more drama or conflict.

The best way for parents to monitor kids online (without being intrusive) is to be on the same social media platforms that they use and have regular discussions about their online activity.

3. **Set Clear Expectations**

Active media monitoring includes setting rules, establishing how rules will be monitored, and having consistent consequences tied to those rules. Further, monitoring that grants children increasing opportunities for autonomy or independence over their decisions and behaviors has more positive outcomes than controlling, restrictive media monitoring, particularly as youth get older.

Monitor respectfully: Respect your teenager's need for privacy while still doing your part to keep them safe online. Consider discussing your plan for monitoring their devices openly, allowing them to provide input and understand the reasons behind your concerns.

4. **Use Built-In Parental Controls**

Use tools like Apple's Family Sharing feature. This parental control feature allows your tween and teen to use their smart phone and social media and provides you with a way to monitor and set screen time limits to what they are doing online.

Protecting Against Scams and Fraud

Parents can check feeds and messages for signs of foul play, from catfishing to financial scams to grooming. Nearly 1 in 50 children is affected by identity theft. Though they may not have financial assets, kids do have valuable personal information, such as Social Security numbers, which can be used by identity thieves to borrow money, obtain government benefits, or commit tax fraud.

Building Trust While Staying Safe

Monitoring apps can be useful, but pairing them with open conversations is important to ensure mutual trust. It may be helpful to think of parental oversight as training wheels or scaffolding, with the goal of your teen building the skills to self-monitor.

The best parental control app in the world, is a good parent child relationship and an ongoing dialogue.

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