Teaching Your Children Safe and Healthy Ways to Use Social Media Platforms

Parenting has always been a daunting task, but with the advent of social media platforms and hyper-connectivity changing the social landscape, parental guidelines are getting even blurrier. It has become imperative for parents to be vigilant regarding the challenges the younger generation faces each day online.

Knowing the amount of time your child spends on social media

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, kids ages eight to eighteen spend, on average, a whopping seven and a half hours on a screen for entertainment each day, four and a half hours of which are spent watching TV. Over the course of a year, that adds up to 114 full days watching a screen for fun.

In effect, this means that children spend almost half of their waking hours each year engaged in online activities. Networks like TikTok, X, Snapchat, Pinterest, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook are designed not only to grab your attention but also to maintain your continued interest.

In these first few months of 2024, the American government has been up-in-arms with TikTok over its controversial new TikTok-Lite promotional incentive that seeks to reward its users with gift packs for spending more time on the site.

That means people will be paid to spend more time online, with potentially catastrophic consequences for their mental health. Children spending even more time on leading social media platforms like TikTok means the problems caused by excessive use of the internet are only exacerbated.

How social media platforms can endanger children’s well-being

In this day and age, the long-held moral stance of simply forbidding kids from socially immoral places to keep them safe is no longer enough to keep them safe or protected. Con artists, criminals, and every form of predator are now just a click away each time your child or teen is online.

The dangers the digital era presents can affect a child’s mental well-being in the following ways:

Inappropriate and abusive content

In recent years, a new social evil, known as deepfake technology has arisen in digital social circles. Although most parents have probably never even heard of this, many young people already have.

Quite simply, deepfakes are distorted images, GIFs, or videos that are created by manipulating artificial intelligence tools to superimpose explicit content into someone’s existing images and videos.

There are now countless free online deepfake apps and websites where content is generated by those who want to bully, victimize, extort, or defame their peers. Already, there are some documented cases of children who have taken their own lives after having such degrading and untrue content circulated about them.

Without proper guidance and moral education, young children can get introduced to these technologies under the guise of fun. They do not realize how harmful they can be and that this is a cybercrime punishable by jail time.

Attracting cyber-criminals

One of the most tantalizing aspects of social media platforms is how instant they are. The attraction for sites frequented by children, such as Snapchat, is the ability to take shots of oneself in real time doing whatever activity you are doing for sharing. Whether kids are bungee jumping, racing, dancing, traveling, or eating, all it takes is one click. They can share this with the world what, how, when, and where they are.

The problem is that, with the internet, sharing is not always caring for oneself. Just like in real life, cybercriminals have learned how to study and groom their targets and victims using any information they can get their hands on about that person. This means that if not properly advised and educated, children can be easily tracked by those who want to prey. They post about their day-to-day activities and locations.

Over-sharing makes your child vulnerable to cyberbullies who will know too much about them and use them to find their weaknesses and exploit them, opening them up to a myriad of physical and mental health threats.

Social media dependency or addiction

Social media platforms offer unending, exciting activities that can ensnare a child to the point of constant distraction, or even addiction. That’s right, experts have now officially coined the phenomenon of internet addiction, also called technology addiction or phone addiction, as a medical term in the mental health field.

Experts say it is quite easy for one to find themselves straddling that fine line between healthy use and addiction. Parents are encouraged to closely monitor the behavior of their minors when they engage in online use and set healthy guidelines like limits on screen time and having technology-free zones in the home.

Red flags to look out for

• Children who experience intense anxiety, depression, or irritability when they don’t have access to the internet.
• A child who constantly distances herself from the real world, family, or relationships, preferring instead to only interact with virtual communities.
• Drastic changes in academic performance caused by a lack of interest in school activities, in favor of online ones.
• Lack of sleep from late-night internet use.

Left to their own devices, children might not fully understand the implications of exposing themselves to social media. They may be unaware of additional risks such as privacy breaches or identity theft.

Online communities, at times, create unattainably high standards of living. This can lead to feelings of inadequacy in children who compare their lives to those with carefully curated, usually fake, online personas.

Positive aspects of social media use for children

The internet isn’t all doom and gloom. If carefully monitored and educated, children can benefit a lot and contribute a limitless number of positive things to their virtual social circles. Some great aspects of social networking include:

• Expanded interaction with a more diverse group of age-mates than they may be used to; this allows for broader learning about various cultures, traditions, and experiences.
• Increased connection and interaction with friends and family from across the globe without missing important milestones, such as birthdays or graduations.
• Learning about the challenges kids in other parts of the world face, encouraging involvement, advocacy, and volunteerism with charitable campaigns, nonprofits, or initiatives that help others.
• Access to countless healthy lifestyle tips and life-saving information, like fire safety tips or emergency first aid steps.
• Efficient exchange of information, ideas, or notifications with educators and fellow students.
• Staying in tune with current affairs, important dates, or events occurring locally or internationally.
• Getting access to support from peers when they feel sad or anxious, from peers who may have experienced similar challenges.

Ultimately, social media use in itself is not necessarily a dangerous or unhealthy place for children. It is when it is misused or abused that there are potential dangers if minors are not well protected. The mammoth task of promoting that healthy balance between online time and other social human activities falls on every parent and guardian of a minor with access to the web.

Getting help

If you think your child might be headed in an unhealthy direction or you need more support, counseling is the place to turn. Meeting with a counselor could help you negotiate healthy internet use with your child. Please look at the resources available on this site and reach out to us for help.

There are counselors ready to assist you and your child with whatever they are facing, including excessive use of the internet. A counselor can help your child to learn healthy coping mechanisms both virtually and in face-to-face interpersonal relationships. You can begin today by contacting a counselor in this website’s directory or reaching out to the office for more information.