Teaching your kids to practice safe social

Helpful Parenting Tools for Managing Your Kids on Social Media

Every parent has to face the same fears as their kids grow up: driving, dating, and social media. If you’ve had “the talk” with your kids about safe social practices, that’s great! But your work is far from over. Because as fast as you educate your kids about the hazards of one social media platform, another, cooler one (often, one less frequented by adults) pops up in its place. So, here we are helping to make your lives easier, sharing knowledge about current social media platforms and the risks they pose for kids.

First, kids are sharing everything, in all the places that you probably aren’t. According to Statista, only 6 percent of kids now regularly use Facebook and Twitter, which were the most popular apps among teens five years ago. Now more than 75 percent of teens are using Snapchat and Instagram to instantly share photos, video, and other content from their smartphones. Other popular apps include messaging applications WhatsApp and Discord; video sharing apps TikTok and, of course, YouTube; streaming apps such as HouseParty, Live.me, and YouNow, and chat apps such as Monkey and MeetMe.

Second, the risks kids face on social media have evolved beyond the (very serious) dangers of bullies and thieves. Now parents also need to protect their kids from:

• Meeting up directly with predatory strangers through streaming apps
• Having their personal information gathered and their behavior tracked by advertising and research companies
• Posting images, audio, or video content that could cause them embarrassment and loss of opportunities in the future

All this can seem a bit overwhelming, but it’s important to remember that you do have tools available to help protect your kids. The most basic is to keep children under 13 from downloading apps that are not meant for young users. You can use parental controls on your child’s iOS or Android device to prevent them downloading programs and content that are not suitable for their age group. The age-based ratings in the app stores aren’t complete protection—for example, there’s nothing to stop a predatory adult from lying about their age and contacting a child through a children’s app—but they’re a start.

The only perfect protection against social media is not to use it, and that’s not a realistic solution for everyone. Over 95 percent of American teens now have smart phones, so they have access to social media anytime, anywhere. And according to Pew Research, teens report a multitude of benefits from social media, from peer support to greater confidence. It’s the human condition: parents worry but progress marches on. No doubt Stone Age parents worried about their kids using some newfangled invention called a wheel.

If you want to really protect your kids on social media, there’s no substitute for involved, informed parenting. You need to be aware of the latest trends in social media and how your kids are using it. We’ll go into specific threats and remedies in upcoming blogs, but for now, here’s a great article from Common Sense Media about popular apps kids are using and what parents need to know about them.