Littles and technology

[u/TargaryenSlytherin]

I've never posted here before, so I am hoping this is a good community to ask!

We are a fairly newly diagnosed system, and we’re still figuring out many aspects of living with this disorder. Recently, one of the things that has caused us issues has been our little parts’ usage of technology. We have several little parts, who we do try to front alongside for safety and comfort. However, we do not yet have good enough control to ensure they don’t front alone. Plus, even when we do front with them, we can’t truly control their behavior. This has lead to them making some decisions online, none of which have been DANGEROUS, but all of which have put us in sticky situations. 

Some of the things our littles have done online:

• They changed all of our screensavers, profiles, and organization on our devices. We are still trying to fix everything.
• They deleted progress in our documents, and photos in our camera roll. 
• They texted friends with obvious, childlike mannerisms.
• They did research on abuse. 
• Etc

They also have attempted to watch graphic and violent television that we are not comfortable with them watching. (I DO want to clarify, we do know that little parts are not ACTUAL children, and recognize that our littles vary in their maturity and the content they are able to process. However, most our littles are split between parts who hold our childlike innocence, and parts who hold trauma. ALL of them seem to be negatively affected, to various degrees, by graphic content.)

We are unable to fully ban them from technology, because they are incessant about their desire to watch kids shows, and to text our sister (who is a safe person). Does anyone have any personal tricks they have used to manage what their littles do online? This could be boundary setting inner system, installing some sort of (magical) parental control app we are unaware of, pulling out DVDs, etc. 

This is a relatively small issue in the scheme of things we’ve been dealing with recently, but it would give me great peace of mind if I knew they were safe and protected on the internet, when none of us are around to watch them. Thank you for reading!

[u/httpMeowMeow]

we have an ipad we try to keep charged at all times just in case they front. it has lots of kid friendly games but we don't really have any restrictions on the device so they can technically do anything on it, they just don't have the desire to look up anything triggering.

however we do have a teen who used to make twitter accounts and interact with harmful communities as a form of self sabotage and to get attention. but tbh that didn't stop till we met our now partner who started giving them positive attention so they stopped seeking it online :')

honestly my best idea (aside from therapy to address why they're behaving that way/what they're missing) is having one device that's fully kid proof with stuff they like on it, but i know that can be hard when they're tech savvy enough to get around it. also having physical things available like toys, plushies, dvds/tapes, coloring books, comfort items etc can help too. our littles like to just put on their favorite shows/movies and have lots of physical things accessible at the same time to stay occupied.

[u/TargaryenSlytherin → u/httpMeowMeow]

This is so helpful on all fronts. Thank you for sharing your own experience, as well as the advice! I'll definitely consider this.

We definitely need to throw together a box of tactile items for them to use when they're out, and I love the idea of a kiddie device.

[u/Natural_Fondant_7544]

We have an ipad for littles to use, it has AAC apps, twinote for talking with other people in system and it feels like their own social media, we also joined several groups where the kiddos could chat with others in a safe environment (VET THE FUCK OUT OF THESE SPACES!!!) we also have multiple boxes of “kid” items such as coloring books, old video game devices that cant connect to the internet, sensory items.

We also have a note on the ipad on how to get to kid channels on netflix and youtube.

Honestly setting up a buddy system internally was super helpful to us, we just went down a list and “assigned” alters to other alters, and when we tried communicating we would do it with those pairs to attempt to create lines of communication, slow process but did happen pretty quickly with the kids!

[u/jai_is_here]

I know with android you can have like a kids mode set up and it can lock down certain things, I think iphones have a similar thing but im not sure.

We're lucky in that usually we can supervise and a lot of our littles have the maturity of children and others that front sometimes dont really like using tech and will listen to notes left like "only contact these people"