When, Why and How to Teach your Kids About Social Media?
“I think you’re missing one of your parental obligations if you don’t teach your children about social media,” says Social Family panelist Alyson Schafer, a psychotherapist, parenting expert and avid social media user. Schafer was speaking along with Royan Lee (father and teacher who has been using technology and social media in the classroom for years), Brad Moon (contributor to wired.com’s blog Geek Dad) and moderator Rebecca Brown (Chief Ideas Officer at Bunch Family).
Schafer compared a parent teaching their children about responsible social media use to teaching them to eat right or do well in school. It’s just part of the job now.
But how old is old enough to dive into the world of mobile phones, laptops, email, Facebook, Twitter and all of the rest of it? Lee talked about the uses of social media from a young age. “My nine year old has a blog,” says Lee who loves that his daughter is able to contribute something to the world that is creative and thoughtful.
Having used a high-tech approach to teaching for years, Lee believes there is far more good than bad that can come from embracing social media. Especially, Lee says, if you can do so from a young age. “There’s a lot less ‘un-training’ to do when you start young,” says Lee. When he tells his younger students that social media is not for using bad language or being mean to people, they accept it.‘Tween or teen students, who have already figured out that anonymity makes online bullying and other negative behaviours much easier, are not as receptive to this instruction or view it as patronizing.
There’s a misconception around social media according to Schafer, it’s not the tools that are the problem, the environment and attitude surrounding them is what requires mending. If parents and teachers place bans on social media, children will be more intrigued and likely to abuse them. Lee makes the comparison to a cookie jar on an unreachable shelf – children will find a way to get to those cookies and they’ll probably overindulge once they reach the jar.
So what do we do? How do we navigate to make sure our kids are safe online and how do we slowly and safely introduce them to the wild, wild web? Yesterday, when one audience member asked about his eleven-year-old son desperate to get a Facebook account, Schafer recommended a family page. Use it together, add only family members and cousins as friends and post pictures together while having a discussion about what’s appropriate and what’s not. After you both warm up to the idea, you can expand and give them a little more rope.
As Lee explains, trust means letting your children make mistakes – it’s in the way they fix their mistakes that true value and learning are found. No good can come from banning or ruling your children’s social media use with an iron fist. Depending on your child’s age, they probably already know more about technology than you do (or at least they soon will) so you might as well get them started on the right foot. Discuss how they use their computer or phone and the countless tools for social engagement available on each device. Encourage your children to think about the positive and negative uses of each tool and help them to make decisions for themselves.
This is not to say that preschoolers should be on Facebook and Twitter – in fact the recommended age for Facebook is actually 13. But it does mean that a gradual introduction into technology and social media can have great value from a young age. If you don’t introduce them to this world, someone will and it might not have as positive an effect.
What do you think? When will you introduce your children to social media?
