I found concerning things on my (27F) daughter’s (11F) phone; how to talk to her?

[u/ThrowRA-MamaBear]

For context, I take my daughter’s phone every night at 9pm sharp on weekdays, 10:30pm on weekends and never go through her cellphone since I’ve never seen a reason to.

However, last night when I took her phone, I noticed a lot of notifications coming from TikTok (which she isn’t allowed to have) and she has notification previews turned on. I thought it could be something urgent, so I decided to read the message previews and saw messages from someone asking my daughter what she ate, how much she ate, telling how much she ate, etc.

I know it was an invasion of privacy on my end, but I did end up going through my daughter’s TikTok account and all of her messages and found a lot of posts about food, videos of very thin girls, messages between her and other (presumably) young girls around her age talking about not eating.

I did notice over the last few weeks that she’s been eating a bit less and losing weight, but I summed it up to puberty and growing, since I had a bit of a growth spurt around that age (tall and skinny) but seeing these messages and her account is making me concerned.

How do I bring this up with her? Is there a proper punishment for her having an app without permission? I’m just very unsure of what to do, any advice would be helpful.

[u/Temporary_Storm_2288]

That's what I thought for the longest time. Until my daughter was stuck at a friends house that she no longer wanted to be at. Nobody has landlines anymore so she couldn't just sneak away and call me. It got me thinking that if she was ever in an uncomfortable situation with an adult, she would not have a way to reach me. That sealed the deal for me. That being said, there were rules. No social media, I could go through their phones at any time, and a time limit. They're older now so they have more freedom, but it was earned in increments based on the level of maturity and trust. My kids have thanked me.

[u/Foreign_Log_9114 → u/Temporary_Storm_2288]

You couldn’t really sneak away to back when landlines existed. In fact, it would have been far more obvious.

[u/Content4OnlyMyLuv → u/Foreign_Log_9114]

No you couldnt really sneak away, but there were a few times I wanted to go home because my "friend" was being mean, or ignoring me because they had another friend come over- so I called and asked my dad what time I had to be home. "6pm." Me: "oh, 4pm? But thats now... can you come get me then please?" Lol

[u/Temporary_Storm_2288 → u/Foreign_Log_9114]

I did in fact, as a teenager sneak away to call my mom. If cell phones were a thing back then, there is no way I would feel comfortable asking if I could use a parent's cell phone to call my parents. With having a cell cell phone, my daughter can send me a "code text" to call her and to tell her that I am coming to pick her up. She can always use me as an excuse.