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If you happen to be raising kids or teenagers in these days, then you deserve to be nicknamed “the social media parent.” And let me tell you, if you thought being “the Internet parent” was hard, think again, because in comparison, that was a walk in the park!
Like anything in the world, social media comes with the good and the bad — the exemplary figures that you can learn from and the lousy, misguided personalities. While filtering websites and teaching your kids how to use e-mails and how not to share messages with strangers was good enough in the pre-social media era, it is not that simple anymore. For one thing, social media is all about sharing, about interacting with friends, or those who want to be friends.
In a 2013 survey report by Pew Research, 80 percent of teens using the Internet are using at least one platform of social media. 24 percent of them are using Twitter compared to only 16 percent in 2011. The average number of friends on a Facebook account of a teenager is 300.
Not only that, what the survey noticed was that teens were sharing more personal information like never before. For example, 91 percent posted their personal photos online compared to 79 percent in 2006. 71 percent shared their school names and cities, while only 49 percent were giving their school names back in 2006. 20 percent of them posted their mobile phone numbers compared to only two percent of the same year.
For a parent, monitoring his or her kid’s behavior on social media is not only challenging, it is full of worries and fears. It is a wide spectrum of dangers out there, from online sexual abuse and cyberbullying to kids submitting to peer pressure. To be a good parent in the age of social media, you need to equip yourself with a whole new set of skills and techniques. The first of those skills is to actually know what social media is all about. Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and parenting expert, recommends that parents take time to research and learn about the different social networks their children are using, as reported on Mashable. It is impossible for a parent to assess the risks a social media platform could pose on his or her children without being familiar with the platform itself. “It’s important for parents to understand the difference between Tumblr and Snapchat, because each social media platform has different risks,” Morin said.
There are so many tools, resources, and tips on social media that are available to parents these days; adjusting the settings to control content, for example, keeping the devices used to access these platforms in the open family area, and above all, talking to your kids, opening a channel with them to talk about the risks they might be facing online, at least you would ensure that they would come back to you when they are faced with an abnormal situation.
I told you, it is not a walk in the park.
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@smaldosari