In a hyperconnected digital age, how do you manage your kids’ social media use?
Parents: If your head is spinning trying to keep up with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram, well, brace yourself for the next wave: Ask.fm, Tagged, MeetMe, Snapchat. Not familiar with them? Rest assured that your kids certainly are. With technology changing so fast, tech-savvy youth usually has a leg up on their parents in the ever-changing world of social media and digital connectedness.
And there’s no end in sight to the constant connectedness of our kids. Last year, the Pew Research Center reported that 75 percent of teenagers have cell phones; a teen girl will send and receive 156 text messages a day; 73 percent of 12-to-17-year-olds use Facebook; and 350 million snaps are uploaded to Snapchat each day. Also popular are the growing numbers of downloadable social media apps like Entourage (where you can see thumbnail pictures of all your friends at once), TextTwirl (word games) and iLike (downloading and sharing music). According to a 2012 CommonSense Media report, 90 percent of teens have used social media, three-quarters have a social media site and one in three visits their profile several times a day.
“This generation is the first to have gone through their entire teen years with Facebook and social networking sites at their fingertips,” says UNLV psychology professor Christopher A. Kearney.
That’s a generation of digital natives who grew up connected to their peers in cyberspace as well as in real life. Psychologists and social scientists have only started to consider the far-reaching implications of this, but the costs and benefits of a hyperconnected world are starting to show themselves. For instance, Kearney’s research into school performance found that social media-caused stress can exacerbate academic woes. “As soon as you catch up with Facebook and Twitter, you have to catch up to Snapchat and Instagram and the newest thing. It’s ongoing and never-ending,” he says.
That problem is at the easy end of the social media spectrum. At the other end are hobgoblins such as overuse, oversharing, cyberbullying, harassing, stalking. What’s a parent to do? Become the digital media Gestapo and track their kids’ every online interaction? Leave the kid alone to find her way through the digital wilderness? Is there a sensible middle course? Current wisdom and research suggests a wave of regulation is on the way.
‘I watched everything she did’
Released in October, the American Academy of Pediatrics’ revised policy statement on Children, Adolescents and the Media offers tips, including a suggestion to create a media use plan with mealtime and bedtime curfews for media devices and restrictions on entertainment-related screen time. Balance is key, says Dr. Marjorie Hogan, co-author of AAP’s policy statement.
“It’s not a matter of social media being good or bad; it has positives and negatives. Parents have to communicate the positive and negative attributes and role-model its positive ones.”
It helps to start by setting expectations and boundaries, say experts — clear rules, effective follow-through, consistent enforcement. Assess your child’s maturity level. How responsible are they? How much can you trust them? State Sen. Kelvin Atkinson let his daughter, now 17, on Myspace when she turned 10 — but he didn’t dare err on the side of too much trust.
“I watched everything she did,” says Atkinson, who championed a state law that went into effect Oct. 1 criminalizing cyberbullying. “I watched everything she did. Parents have to know what their kids are doing.”
For older children, Dr. Gwenn O’Keeffe, lead author of the AAP statement, suggests stricter guidelines such as applying social media rules to all Internet-connected activities and keeping personal information secret. Whereas younger children should be offline as much as possible, older children can earn privileges. And, she says, no one gets a free pass when it comes to accountability: Children should expect some level of parental snooping, especially during middle school and high school, possibly tapering off after the child matures.
“If you don’t violate their trust, they usually will trust you and have no reason for you not to have their password,” says O’Keeffe. “If you have been authoritarian and violated their trust, they may not be willing to confide in you. You may want to enlist another adult to help.”
An unhealthy obsession?
What about kids who are new to social media? The same way parents teach their kids how to walk holds true for introducing them to social media, O’Keeffe says: baby steps. AAP recommends no digital media for children under two. For those two years old and above, the organization suggests an hour of non-educational programming a day, tops.
“I want to qualify that. I’m not saying that kids can’t watch ‘Sesame Street’ or a well-placed cartoon,” she says. “I am saying that they shouldn’t be bombarded with digital media and television. Use it judiciously. We’ve all used the television as a baby-sitter, so I don’t want people to feel guilty about that. I know that books don’t always work. But this is a very critical time for brain development and developing senses and learning skills.
“I’m attuned to the fact kids are using computers and digital devices in their educational programs, and they should do what they have to do for school and education. But then they should be offline as much as possible and not spending downtime on Facebook and a lot of watching television.”
To help pediatricians assist parents in navigating social media, AAP encourages the doctors to ask questions: How much time is the child spending with media? Is there a television and/or Internet-connected device in the child’s bedroom? Too much time spent gawking at the Facebook feed can signal deeper problems.
“Parents should pay attention to children unable to detach from social media,” she says. “Normal teens are involved with other teens in people’s lives, even if they’re only in small groups. Kids text all the time, it’s their lifeline to each other. If they’re texting to communicate, that’s fine. When they’re only online, only on Facebook, only texting, then you might want to see if something else is going on — a body image issue, bullying.”
Here’s where role modeling comes in. Kids today are digital natives, says O’Keeffe. They’ve never known life without the Internet. As such, parents should model proper decorum and abide by a similar set of rules on appropriate language and behavior. “You have to remember that your kids are watching everything that you do.”
Battling the bullies
Facebook videos of Chaparral High School girls brawling in bathrooms and hallways. A photo of a near-naked girl at Durango High School posted to Twitter. Two Roy Martin Middle School boys arrested after a YouTube video surfaced of them attacking a special ed student headed home from school. Video of a vicious attack in Palo Verde High School’s cafeteria blasted throughout the Twitterverse. As a growing number of stories here and elsewhere attest, kids and social media can be a combustible mix. But no less disturbing are the lesser-known stories that don’t make the news — tales of harassing voicemails, chat room messages and posts, ominous texts and threats.
UNLV professor Kearney sees social media’s health impacts in his work as director of both Clinical Training for UNLV and the UNLV Child School Refusal and Anxiety Disorders Clinic, where he studies kids with school absenteeism and related disorders. He’s seen the rise of a decidedly modern malaise: social-media stress. Since such stress can exacerbate other academic issues, he says children should know exactly where parents stand on its use, misuse and abuse.
“Social media can be very damaging,” Kearney says. “Parents need to frequently monitor their kids, especially teens, and what they are doing. Kids need to know that if they are threatened online that they do have to not keep it quiet and do not have to remain socially isolated. When kids know exactly what’s going to happen to them when they engage in these behaviors, they may be less willing to pull out the cell phone. If there’s lax enforcement of rules or no rules, they’re more willing to pull out the cell phone and more willing to stage incidents (to put them on social media). Parents have to be proactive.”
And — okay, we need to say it — there’s always the possibility that your kid may not be the sweet little angel you think he is.
“Parents should talk to their children about the importance of thoughtfulness, about not saying something that could come back to hurt them in the future,” says the AAP’s Hogan. “Parents should know what their children are doing on social media. They should talk about privacy and about some of the possible impacts of exposure to media screens. Some kids get so immersed in social media that experts say it can result in depression.”
To combat the rise in cyberbullying late last decade, states across the country rushed to pass laws requiring school districts to develop rules, often drawing interest (and scorn) from the likes of the American Civil Liberties Union, which contends that such laws infringe upon free speech. The effect of the new laws is evident in the growing numbers of social media-related arrests. Consider the past few months: a 17-year-old Philadelphia boy jailed for harassing a witness via Twitter; seven Boston teens arrested for cyberbullying a 15-year-old assault victim; a Salt Lake City high school teen locked up for making terror threats on social media; and two high school students in Kansas charged with criminal threats after someone saw ominous tweets on Twitter.
Closer to home, in September, Ninth Circuit Court Judge M. Margaret McKeown upheld a district court’s ruling to suspend and expel Douglas High School student Landon Wynar for threatening to massacre his classmates on MySpace. Wynar, who was 16 at the time of his 2008 arrest, invoked the Virginia Tech massacre and threatened to shoot specific peers in his Northern Nevada high school.
We’ve come a long way from the notion of the Internet as some digital Wild West. The rash of cyberbullying and school fight incidents in Nevada over the past few years prompted Sen. Atkinson to examine state law. Nevada statutes were lax, he found, mainly requiring the Nevada Department of Education develop anti-cyberbullying policies for students, parents and school employees and to reiterate ethical use of the Internet.
“I was shocked that we had no language in statute to allow schools to effectively deal with cyberbullying. There were plenty of local examples of it leading to fights and violence,” Atkinson says. Enacted on Oct. 1, the new law puts teeth into the current state law, he says, by allowing criminal prosecution for cyberbullying. “No more wrist slaps. It also reminds parents that they can be accountable for the actions of their children.” In the new regulatory regime, it seems that social media will continue to connect us — but in some unexpected ways.