By brother is lonely and has turned to the internet to fill his social craving. How do I tell my parents without betraying his trust?
My nearly 14 y/o brother doesn't have much social interaction (due to being homeschooled) and to fill his social craving I noticed several days when I startled him that he has turned to secretly watching youtube videos and reading other online sources. I was similar when I was his age but my computer had parental controls enabled that eventually led to me being caught and me realizing my struggles and eventually setting myself to go down the long path to fixing it. The computer he is using has no such feature turned on at the moment and I am afraid of the possibilities if he finds the internet to be a better friend than his families. While I do not want to betray his trust so I can continue to monitor the situation, I also am very aware of my own problems and how long, the entirety of five years, it took to clean myself up and I want to tell my mom. To this day, I do not have a close relationship with my parents (quite honestly because of the same things) and I do not feel that it would be wise to simply suggest checking on it to them.
This is a difficult issue and after hours of thought I am unable to come up with a path to success. Any Ideas would be appreciated.
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Don't focus on the Internet thing - if take action to reduce your brothers involvement with the Internet, that will just create resentment, and make him even more isolated.
Instead, focus on the loneliness. As far as you can, be a friend to your brother. Introduce him to your friends, create opportunities for him to socialise, encourage others to do the same.
If you need to, and you can do so without damaging relationships, and you think they can help, talk to your parents about your brother's loneliness.
Is there much to gain by involving your parents in your brother's use of the Internet? Doing so could easily damage your relationship with him, and your parents relationship with him, and make him even more lonely.
Once your brother has begun to feel less isolated - and not before - you can take steps to help him see, for himself, that he could be damaging himself by using the internet in certain ways.
I see no evidence that anyone has done anything wrong that needs fixing yet. Going on the internet is not something that requires "cleaning up". Maybe his family should work harder to make sure that their child gets sufficient face-to face socialization with his peers.
But really, he's reading things on the internet. This is not in an of itself a problem.
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