- [Interviewer] Has your kid ever gotten in trouble
for anything online?
- There was one time when he was four
where we caught him Googling big butts twerking.
(everyone laughing)
- [Interviewer] Wait, at four?
(soft music)
- [Interviewer] Do you spy on your kids?
- Yeah, I guess so. - Do they know that?
- No, I don't think it's a big deal.
- I would say I monitor the wellbeing of their lives.
- Spy would not be the word I would choose.
I would choose monitor.
To me, monitoring is creating boundaries
and spying is doing something
that the child doesn't know about.
- [Interviewer] What do you do to protect your kid online?
- I'll probably get some sort of software that monitors.
- [Interviewer] Well, we made this video
in partnership with Aura.
It's an online safety app
that protects everything you and your family do online.
- Oh, okay.
- [Interviewer] How old do you think your kid will be
before you want her to have a device?
- Actually, I haven't thought about that.
- Kindergarten, first grade.
- Seven.
- 10. - 14.
- 18.
- [Interviewer] Do they play with phones,
laptops or tablets at all?
- Yes, yes they do.
I mean, it's just so easy
to hand them a tablet or a phone.
- I work with kids so I know how the generation
and these younger kids are with technology
and so, I'm at the point where I'm like,
"She's never gonna have a phone,"
'cause these kids are wilding.
- [Interviewer] Do you spy on your kids?
- Do I spy on my kids?
No, I trust my daughter.
- That's a good question. I've never done that.
- No. - No.
- No - No.
- [Interviewer] You've never looked through
any of your kids' phones?
- No.
- [Interviewer] You never were like, "Who are you texting?"
- No.
- [Interviewer] What is this porn site?
- Nope.
- [Interviewer] Are you just saying that 'cause you know
they'll see this video? - Nope. No.
- I don't want my kids to feel like they don't have privacy
and that they don't deserve privacy.
- [Interviewer] You snoop on them?
- Yeah.
- Do I spy on her?
Sometimes, a little bit. Yeah, I do.
- Yes.
- 100%.
- They're monitored.
Everything, even wherever they walking.
- I'm spying on him right now.
(everyone laughing)
We got cameras around.
I don't do the room thing
'cause I don't wanna see nothing crazy.
(everyone laughing)
- [Interviewer] Do you ever think
you were overly protective?
- Probably.
- [Interviewer] What were the rules?
- I need to be able to grab your phone
whenever I feel like it.
- I have to helicopter over her right now.
- It's a little different from when I was growing up.
- We monitor everything that she does
and every click that she makes.
- And I got all their text messages,
all their photos and all their phone calls.
- So I'd go in her room every night, get her phone,
go through everything.
Sometimes find her journals and stuff.
- [Interviewer] Why did you do that?
- When they get a certain age,
they kind of stop asking you everything
and telling you everything
and so it felt like I need to know what's going on
in her life.
- [Interviewer] What are you gonna do when she's older?
Are you gonna spy on her a little bit?
- Oh, no. God no.
- I'd rather not just 'cause I don't wanna lose that trust.
- I was spied on as a teenager
and it was detrimental to my trust in my parents.
- I would like to think that I'll trust him
until he's done something that takes my trust away.
- [Interviewer] What do you think of the parents
who are like, "You don't trust your kid"?
- I've been a kid before
and I know that I was doing a whole bunch of sneakiness.
- Yeah, I'mma spy on them.
This is my babies, man. I gotta make sure they safe.
- My job is to guide so I need to know what's going on.
- I look at what she's been posting
and kind of see what she's been doing.
I may or may not bully people
that are in her comments
saying dumb stuff. (laughs) - Aw.
- I think when you spy on your kids
that just breeds even more trouble,
then they just start getting sneaky.
- [Interviewer] You think your older kids
are hiding stuff from you?
- Oh, definitely.
- [laughs] I don't wanna think about it.
- Oh yes, most definitely.
She knows what she does and she's good at it.
- I think I would be a fool to think
that she tells me everything.
- I mean, we've found the search history of certain searches
and then one time-- - What was his searching?
- Well, the first time was naked girls,
but he spelled it naked grills,
so we knew that was him. (everyone giggling)
- There was one time when he was four
where we caught him Googling big butts twerking.
(everyone laughing)
- [Interviewer] Wait, at four?
- And I look into the browser history
on the cell phone and it said boys having sex.
He explained that he was just looking for how boys have sex.
That was a very good lesson for him.
I think he was eight or 10.
- [Interviewer] Are you worried
about your kids' online safety?
- Absolutely.
- Yes. - Yeah.
- Yeah. - Fuck yeah, I am.
The world is a scary fucking place
and online is even scarier.
- Internet is awful.
- The internet is one of the scariest places
for children to be active on.
- My daughter has already had to deal
with classmates bullying her on TikTok.
- They're seeing sexuality stuff, they're seeing the news,
they're seeing people getting killed,
they're seeing school shootings.
- Sometimes I'll give him my phone
and he definitely can go on YouTube
and sometimes there's been a couple videos.
I'm like, "What are you watching?"
- People are very sneaky these days.
They're able to get really subtle messages through the kids.
- Children can be very gullible.
- They could be watching the most innocent YouTube video
and then if we step out the room,
the following video might be something extremely wild.
You really don't have control over that.
- This world is cruel.
- I don't want my son to see that.
- They're still kids.
Mentally they're not able to really make the right decision.
- Since their brain isn't fully developed,
we kind of do gotta snoop a little.
- Children in particular
have a hard time discerning what's right and wrong,
what's honest, what's a lie.
- There's a lot of predators.
- Predators. - Predators.
- They're able to hide behind kids' profiles.
- They could be a 40 year old man preying on them.
- And that's definitely my biggest fear.
- I even sometimes worry of just posting her honestly
because I've seen a lot of things about child pornography.
- I actually had a pretty terrible experience
online as a kid myself.
- Adults taking advantage of kids
is something that I was a victim of.
- When I was a kid, I used to get on the internet
and there were all kinds of grown men trying to talk to me.
- My one son was on Snapchat and he was talking to people
that were not who he said he was.
I could tell, but as a kid he could not.
He thought he was just being flirted with a girl his age.
- My oldest daughter was talking to somebody online
and I started watching
what they were texting back and forth.
It was definitely somebody older trying to bait 'em.
- [Interviewer] That's scary.
- Yeah.
- Kids are gullible and they may go,
"Oh, yeah I go to this school
and oh no, I can't do that, I have ballet on Wednesdays."
- [Interviewer] A lot of people know senior citizens
are targets for scammers,
but actually children are up there as targets.
- Really?
- They purchase stuff with our credit card unsupervised.
I'm worried they're going to buy something
that will compromise our security.
- I did write down my telephone number and my address
so she can remember it and she tried to use that
to purchase something.
- He definitely knew what he was doing
and ran up a check on Roblox.
He spent like $120.
- [Interviewer] But he has had
your personal information and used it.
- Yeah, well I had to put it in there
for him to be able to download things onto the iPad,
so I kind of played myself.
- There's Instagram people or influencers
who have YouTube pages and they'll be like,
"Oh, text me at da-da-da-da."
And she was texting them
thinking she was texting the real person,
but obviously it was some kind of ad or scam
or promo or whatever.
- I think when they see these free sites
or sign up here for a free this, free that,
that's a way that they can get your personal information.
- [Interviewer] How do you protect your kids now online?
- The spying is what I do to protect.
- I don't know how to, I'm not tech savvy enough.
(interviewer giggling)
- Honestly, micromanaging. (laughs)
- I try my best to always watch everything before she does,
which can get a little tricky with YouTube and live videos.
- Passwords and constant looking over,
checking their phones periodically.
- [Interviewer] Well, that sounds exhausting, right?
- It is, it is.
- [Interviewer] Here's my pitch.
Aura is an online safety app
that protects you and your kids.
A lot of parents use it to help monitor kids accounts
and see if any of their information's been leaked.
- Yeah, that sounds helpful.
- [Interviewer] Do you think your kids will game?
- Oh, yeah. My husband's a big gamer. I'm a big gamer.
- [Interviewer] Through the use of A.I.
Aura can identify predators
who are gaming with your children.
- Oh, wow. That's really awesome.
- [Interviewer] You can try it for free at aura.com/cut.
- I like that. I need that.
I need that asap actually. (giggles)
(soft music)