Three Settings to Check on Your Kid’s Phone This Weekend
This isn’t a checklist of 47 things you need to do. It’s three settings. Ten minutes. And ideally, you do it with your kid beside you — because it’s a better conversation than a covert audit.
None of this is about keeping tabs on your child or reading their messages. It’s about reducing unnecessary exposure — the kind that happens not because of anything your child did wrong, but because default settings on apps and platforms are designed for maximum engagement, not maximum safety.
Setting One: Location Sharing
Location sharing is more widespread on kids’ phones than most parents realise — not because of parental controls, but because apps ask for location access constantly and it’s easy to tap “allow” without thinking about it.
Start by checking two things:
Which apps have location access? On iPhone, go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services. On Android, go to Settings → Location → App permissions. Look for apps that have “Always” access — meaning they can see location even when the app is closed. Most apps don’t need this. Social apps especially don’t need it.
Are they actively sharing location with anyone? Find My (on iPhone) and Snapchat’s Snap Map are the most common. Snap Map in particular is worth checking — many kids have it set to share their live location with all their friends, including people they’ve accepted as contacts but don’t know well in person. Ask your child who’s on that list. They may not have thought about it recently.
This isn’t about refusing location sharing entirely. Family location sharing has real value. It’s about being intentional — knowing who can see what, and making sure it’s what you actually want.
Setting Two: Who Can Send Them Direct Messages
Most social platforms default to allowing anyone to send a DM — not just people the user follows or is connected to. This means a stranger can send a message directly to your child’s inbox without any prior connection.
Check the following:
Instagram: Settings → Privacy → Messages. Look at who can send message requests and who can send messages directly. Set message requests from “Others on Instagram” to something more restrictive if your child is under 16.
TikTok: Settings → Privacy → Direct Messages. TikTok has age-based defaults that restrict DMs for accounts under 16, but if your child’s account was set up with a false birthdate (common), those defaults won’t apply. Check manually.
Snapchat: Settings → Privacy Controls → Contact Me. Set this to “Friends” rather than “Everyone.”
The goal isn’t to prevent your child from communicating with friends. It’s to make sure that the first point of contact from a stranger has a barrier — a message request that can be accepted or declined — rather than landing directly in the inbox.
Setting Three: What’s Visible on Public Profiles
Take a look at your child’s public-facing profiles together. Specifically:
- Full name: Is their real full name visible, or just a username?
- Age or birthdate: Many platforms show this by default if entered during signup.
- School: Sometimes added to bios or visible through tagged posts or location tags.
- Profile photo: Does it clearly identify them, and is it visible to everyone?
The combination of name, age, school, and photo is enough for a stranger to identify and approach a child in the real world. None of these need to be public. A bio can be friendly and expressive without being an identity document.
This is worth doing together rather than alone. Ask your child: “What do you want people to see when they look at your profile?” They may have thought about this more than you expect. And if some of it is more public than you’re comfortable with, negotiating that together is more durable than just changing it without asking.
A Note on Doing This Together
The framing matters. “I’m going to check your phone” lands very differently than “can we look at your settings together? I want to make sure you know what’s visible to people.”
The second approach treats your child as someone with a stake in their own privacy — because they are. Teenagers, especially, are more receptive to conversations about online safety when they’re positioned as the person making the decisions, not the person being inspected.
You might also learn something. Kids often know these platforms better than their parents do. Let them show you how things work. Ask questions. The conversation itself is the point.
One Thing to Do
This weekend, sit down with your child and check these three settings together — location sharing, who can DM them, and what’s visible on their profile. Make it a conversation, not an inspection.