This Little Mental Shift Will Make You Approach Your Kid’s Social Media Use Differently

When I was growing up, I had this phone with a bulletin board stuck on the side. Did you ever have one of these?I would pull the cord into the corner of the dining room, prop my legs against the wall, spiraling it around my toes.

I could chat with my friends for hours.

I don’t remember talking ABOUT anything in particular. I just remember being on the phone. We would try to daisy chain the three-way calling function by linking as many people as we could. I think we got to nine people! (Google Hangouts, eat your heart out.) Everyone was talking over each other so that no one could have a conversation. That wasn’t the point, however…

We were having fun.

Inevitably, we would hear an ominous click on the line.

A parent would announce, “It’s time to get off!” Or “Why do you need to talk so much; you are going to see each other tomorrow at school!” Sometimes, the click would follow with silence, and we would know that someone was eavesdropping.

My friends and I developed a sophisticated system of code words to alert each other that someone might be listening in.

“Do you have lots of homework to do tonight?” meant “Do you think someone is on the line?” “Let me check my notes from school,” meant, “I’m going to see if it is my nosy mom…”

 

Kids have used encoded messages since the dawn of time.

Back in the 1800s during the Georgian period, nice English girls would use a flutter of the fan to let courtiers know that it was “game on”. This hilarious BBC sketch from the “Horrible Histories” series (tip: highly recommended screentime to teach gross history facts for your grade schooler) illustrates how economical and efficient this form of communication was for that time.

So, it’s not surprising that with the prevalence of social media, our kids have thought of some creative ways to Morse their remorse of their parents online.

In fact, there is an entire lexicon of cryptographs from social media acronyms to text message shorthand that will make your head spin.

I wanted to get hip with the slang, and verywellfamily.com was very resourceful in educating me on my path.

 

I regret enlightenment.

Knowledge starts to feel like this back-of-the-neck raising sense of over-whelm. Have you ever felt it? Do you know what GNOC means?

For me it starts with a quickened heartbeat that pulses to the tapping of my fingers on the keyboard…

Google search: “What are the negative effect of social media on kids?”

Oh GOODNESS! Experts say… More depression, more anxiety because of social media.

A research-based psychology article links to another article entitled, “Is Social Media Contributing to Rising Teen Suicide Rate?” on NBC News.

Must be credible… CLICK!

A story about a bubbly 15-year-old girl with history of challenges, a drug addict biological mom who was mercilessly bullied online by classmates and strangers until her aunt smashed her phone one week before she hung herself.

Oh, Lord, cold sweat! Slam laptop.

I send up prayers for my children. I start to see flashes of my babies…

 

PANIC!

Has this happened to you?

I call it the “Parent Panic Beast (PPB).”

You start to feed the beast by clicking down the internet’s rabbit hole until you find yourself in a place that makes you want to shut the whole thing down. But you can’t. It’s impossible.

The internet is much bigger than you. It’s bigger than all of us. It IS all of us.

I’m reliving my path of panic to you because I don’t think that I am alone. We parents, teachers, and child advocates put ourselves in this situation when we are confronted with something unknown and new.

We have all experienced it. It is the same thing that makes momma’s protect their kids under extreme duress. The anxiety and fear prepare us to flee, freeze, or to fight, but with an added action for us to PROTECT.

This natural cycle makes for wonderful click bait, and it fuels an entire economy of fear-based parenting that we have all fallen prey to. Fears are emotional not logical.

 

But here is the thing…

Recognizing that our reaction to this NEW THING (technology, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) in the context of  an OLD THING (telephones, message boards, slam books, etc.) might be the MENTAL SHIFT we need to understand how to talk about THE BEHAVIOR expected from our kids when it relates to screentime.

So again… Put the technology in the context of your childhood experience, and talk about the HOW not the what.

Let’s remember… It was YOUR personal curiosity and compulsion that brought you to this place of panic, and it will be YOUR calm gifted knowledge of how to put technology in its place to serve YOU that will bring you out.

So, let’s break it down…

1. Accept that your child’s behavior of sophisticated subterfuge has been happening for generations.
It’s part of growing up and separating from you. Rather than fight that behavior, lean into the relationship… It’s your relationship that will be the voice that brings them out of any situation that they shouldn’t be in. For me, personally, it is has always been my dad’s voice, in so many places, even as a girl in her mid-forties.

2. It’s not the fault of the technology.
Acknowledge that the apps, sites, and corners of the internet are built to be sticky. However, what they are searching for and exploring has always been the same: connections, purpose, and escape.

3. The technology will heighten any issues, for sure.
The New York Times responded to the JAMA’s (Journal of the American Medical Association) June 2019 report about the narrowing gap between historically male youth suicides and growing female suicides with an article about a need to focus on any underlying issues BEFORE looking to the problematic use of interactive media.

Dr. Michael Rich, an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital, cautioned against the impulse to look for binary answers to complex problems by drawing too-simple connections between social media and suicide, or video games and violence. He and his colleagues are coming to believe that the problematic use of interactive media “is not a diagnosis at all but is a symptom these other already established psychiatric disorders.”

If you kid has underlying issues to start with, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, social anxiety or depression, social media may highlight or exasperate his or her issues.

When I met with Laura Cowan, the always open and inviting Middle School Counselor at Hong Kong International School, she said something so profound to me, “When a parent expresses concerns in regards to their child having a ‘screentime problem,’ 99.9% of the time the screen time is being used as a coping mechanism for an underlying issue. The challenge is to identify what this is and to support the child and family unit, providing guidance, tools and strategies to work through the challenges. Essentially treating the cause as opposed to focusing only on the symptom.”

4. You are not going to be all the places that your child goes on the internet.
But in the places that you can be, I would heed the advice of my friend Priyanka Raha. She believes in engagement-over-entrapment in your screentime. She is the founder of Popsmart Kids, a software company focused on transforming the way children spend time with their digital devices. She wants your kids to learn and develop social emotional skills through technology so that they know how to be in society. Her big idea is to “Mentor Over Monitor.”

 

So, in conclusion…

Let’s flip the conversation about social media with our kids. Rather than talk about social media as the culprit, talk about the desired behavior from our kids when it relates to screentime.

What do you think?