Like it or not, social media is a massive part of our culture, and it’s here to stay. While social media gets a bad rap for projecting a false version of reality and the intentional use of addiction-causing practices, there are some benefits social media provides. One of the best features of social media is how it can keep you connected to friends and family who live at a distance. What was once used as a way to connect with distant friends and family has now become so much more.
Like most things in life, anything in excess is not good, and social media is no exception. Parents today are concerned about how much time their children spend scrolling through these time-consuming apps. However, it isn’t just time we should be concerned with. Here, we outline ten important lessons to teach your children about social media, especially our daughters, who are even more susceptible to its fake bravado and harmful false standards.
Lesson 1: Understand FOMO (Fear of Missing Out):
Social media inadvertently invented this concept. Before Facebook, Myspace, or Instagram, we had no idea what our friends were doing without us on a weekend night. Now, carefully curated pictures are posted with appropriate tags and locations before, during, and after events. Teenage girls are wired for belonging and inclusion; thus, being publicly excluded can feel like total isolation.
Teach your children that spending all their time with their friends is unrealistic. A good life includes a balance between friends, family, and time spent alone. They cannot expect to be at every gathering of their friends, and though it hurts to be left out, we all experience this one way or another.
Lesson 2: Algorithms at work in your app:
Social media platforms collect data on every interaction you make. They use this data to load your feed with content you will most likely interact with. It’s important to teach our daughters that what they click on, scroll through, or watch will continue to show up for them.
There is both healthy, inspirational content and negative, fake content on any platform. Algorithms work just like the Law of Attraction: what you focus on you will get. Teach your children to interact only with valuable content, things that are less about trivial topics, and have positive lessons.
Use the algorithms correctly, and they can help make social media more useful. For example, my son loves to play basketball, and he watches instructional videos on TikTok. His ‘for you’ feed on TikTok is now filled with several accounts that show all types of basketball instructional videos, and he has actually used some of the tips in his play.
When you use social media to learn about a topic you are interested in, the algorithm can ensure you find material you didn’t even know you needed.
Lesson 3: Influencers vs. Real-Life
One of the biggest criticisms of social media is the invention of the influencer. A social media influencer has made a career by showing a glamorous or attractive life on one or more platforms.
The danger here is in believing the lie. Social media influencer culture is correlated to increased levels of anxiety and depression in young girls by taking an unachievable ideal and making it look “normal.”
Teach your children to view these accounts not as real people (even though they are) but as employees of the platform and the products they are using, promoting, or just simply wearing. They are marketers, actors, and models, not “regular people” as they wish to be portrayed.
Lesson 4: How the social media machine works
A continuation of lesson #3 is to teach your daughters that practically everything you see on social media is an ad. It is a way of selling you a product or service or keeping you engaged with the app.
Influencers attempt to look like “real” people who love the products they are using when, in fact, they are paid to promote those specific products. Every post, reel, or video is essentially a commercial or ad. Influencers are promoters and actors.
Lesson 5: The impact on brain development
Adolescents make up the largest percentage of social media users. Between puberty and adulthood (roughly ten years old to 24 years old), the brain is rapidly developing. The adolescent brain benefits from social interaction but is driven toward a desire for peer attention while being inherently sensitive.
Social media platforms designed to count likes and comments can ultimately be dangerous for brain development. Young people are hard-wired to want more and more and are left feeling deep sadness when the levels of attention they desire are not achieved.
Limit your daughter’s use of apps designed toward likes and comments. Use parental controls to set time limits.
Lesson 6: The impact on health
There are several reasons to limit time in front of the screen. From eye strain and blue light damage to adverse effects on mental health, the idea behind everything in moderation is essential regarding screen time.
Social media is designed to be addicting and keep you on the app. It is best to recognize the hazards and put limits in place (like screen time and parental controls) to keep our social media habits in check.
Teach your children to make a conscious effort to minimize their time on social media and prioritize in-person activities. Establish rules for getting off devices a couple of hours before bedtime and sleeping with phones in another room.
Lesson 7: Dangers – hackers, pedophiles
Personal electronic devices brought the dangers of far-off places right to our hands. Educating your child that their social media app is accessed by people worldwide and right in their neighborhood is essential. The information they share can be viewed and used by people they have never met (if their accounts are public). From hackers and identity thieves to sexual predators and sex traffickers, there are many serious dangers on these apps.
Educate your children, with age-appropriate descriptions, on the dangers of social media and sharing your information online. Insist they keep a private account and only communicate with people they know in real life.
Lesson 8: Nothing is ever truly deleted.
There is no such thing as anonymity on the internet. You can still be found unless you are a high-level hacker who knows how to disguise your IP address.
Even apps, like Snapchat, that delete messages once they are viewed can be screenshot or screen recorded on a phone. In most cases, deleted content can be found, and anonymous usernames can be discovered.
A general rule we need to teach our daughters is never to send inappropriate pictures or messages, no matter how much they trust the recipient or how confidential they think it is.
Lesson 9: Pressure to be thin/perfect/sexualized
Another considerable criticism of social media is the altered content used to make the ideal seem real. When influencers post content that shows a fantasy of a perfect life with their gorgeous faces, they neglect to share how they use filters and marketing tools to give you a glimpse of a carefully curated situation and make it look effortless. The viewer doesn’t see the several takes it took to record the video or the hours of editing that occurred before posting. This false standard of perfection leads to feelings of inferiority and depression in adolescent girls especially.
Additionally, young girls on social media who want to emulate these older influencers are striving to look and act more mature and are sexualizing themselves by posting mature photos and videos of themselves. The pressure to be perfect, mature, and older is exposing our children to more mature concepts and content, and the result is a generation of kids growing up “too fast.”
Require your child to keep you as a follower of their accounts so you can monitor the content they post. Additionally, they will know that their parent or guardian will see anything they post and will hopefully think twice before sharing anything inappropriate.
Lesson 10: Warning signs of too much use
As a parent, you should be aware of the warning signs of too much social media use, but also teach your children about them so they can monitor themselves. Warning signs include:
Avoidance of face-to-face interactions.
Anxiety around everyday routines.
Avoidance of responsibilities such as jobs, chores, and homework.
Poor or worsening performance at school.
Using the phone in public to avoid social interactions.
The best lesson we, as parents, should take away from social media experts is to model good social media use by having hobbies of our own and prioritizing off-screen family time. Parenting takes diligence, knowledge, and strength, but most importantly, it requires setting a good example for our children to follow.
Tools such as the MMGuardian Phone can also be a fantastic way for parents to teach their child responsible social use while making sure they are safe.
