Writing bad fanfiction is a teenage rite of passage.

This might be a controversial take, but I don’t think parents should be snooping through everything their kid does on their phone. There is definitely a time and a place for some parental controls on certain websites, but if a parent reads everything their teenager texts literally when they’re only a couple of years from being an adult, they might develop paranoia and trust issues along the way. 

Kids deserve a place to express themselves without judgment from their parents, siblings, or peers. For many teens, that place is a diary where they write all of their innermost thoughts and feelings. It’d be pretty humiliating and horrible for your parents or siblings to read your diary without your permission, and it’s pretty taboo to do so. But what if they aren’t reading your diary? What if they’re reading something you publicly posted on the internet that technically anybody in the world could read if they really wanted to? Would that be an invasion of your privacy? If you’re posting concerning things on your Tumblr account and your parents find it and have questions about it, that’s not as much of a privacy invasion as it might feel to a middle schooler. After all, the internet is forever, and if you’re posting wild stuff with your face and name attached to it, it could very well ruin your life. That outcome is pretty unlikely, but you never know what will go viral unexpectedly!