How can we keep children safe on social media?

Social Media isn’t going anywhere – and neither is the pressure it exerts on our children. 

Through addictive bite-size content, adaptive algorithms that keep feeding us related videos, memes, posts and provocative headlines, it can become difficult to stop. It’s known that more than 90% of young people now engage with social media on a daily basis, an incredible statistic that underlies just how omnipresent this technology is to our daily lives—as well as how insidious its impacts can be on our children. 

But although social media is everywhere today—trying to absorb each spare moment we have away from work, school, family and friends–we can still protect ourselves and our children from its worst effects. Below are a few top tips to help parents navigate social media for the better of their children’s health, energy, and wellbeing. 

Talking with Your Children

As with all things, regular honest dialogue and communication is essential to a healthy relationship between your children and the social media content they absorb.  

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should interrogate your children on every app they’ve browsed that day, but simply checking in with them—asking a few open questions about what they might have discovered online, as well as who they’ve chatted with and what they’ve shared on social media platforms—can be a brilliant way to normalise conversations around Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook use. Think of it in the same terms as we would a conversation about the news. What’s happened today? And more importantly, What do we think of what’s happened? 

Social Media is simply a part of life now and so treating conversations around our use of these apps is an essential way for our children to know that social media is not an ‘escape’ from reality—but rather another facet of it—and should be discussed with the same enthusiasm and open-mindedness as a new book or film we might have watched. 

Staying Safe on Apps

Outside of conversations around social media engagement, it’s wise to be practical. There are a few important things we can do to ensure our children’s safety when using social media. 

It might be wise to remind young people not to share their live locations when uploading posts or videos. Consider reviewing–or asking your children to review–the location settings on their favourite sites and apps. Remember also to talk to them about what they’re uploading for their followers. For instance, are their accounts private or open to the public? When your child opens their profile to the public this means that anyone can view their posts. It’s been found that this can increase the likelihood of cyberbullying and unwanted attention from both friends and strangers. 

When you suspect–or are told–that cyberbullying is taking place, make sure you and your child understand how to block and report the people involved (whether they are known to you or not) and to use the privacy settings to limit what people can see on their profiles. Help your child understand that they are responsible for what they post and that social media is not some kind of vacuum, but a real place that materially impacts the lives of the people we encounter in our everyday world outside the digital. Think twice about what effect your posts have on others. Perhaps it’s best to live online as we do in-person and understand that we shouldn’t say anything online that we wouldn’t in-person. That means not writing hurtful things about the people we know – but it especially means not posting hurtful things about the people we don’t as well.

Lead By Example

Children are explicit mimickers. They can parody the mannerisms of their favourite characters and pets. But they will absorb and replicate the behaviours of the people around them, including you. 

In other words, then, your children will look to you for examples in how to conduct themselves in life. If you show discipline with your own social media usage–i.e.. putting your phone away at dinner and avoiding the evening doom scroll in front of the television or in conversation with the family–then your children will be less likely to exhibit these same tendencies. If you want your children to pick up a book or play outside, pick up a book and take a walk through the garden, as well. 

Remember, too, that children are canny observers. If they see you doing one thing, but telling them another, they might treat this as a form of hypocrisy and this can lead to further frictions and negative behaviours. 

So lead by example or at the very least offer to explain the reason why children follow a different set of rules to adults. If children understand the reasoning, they will respect–and more likely honour–the rule. And this same important principle is crucial in keeping children safe on social media usage, too.  If they understand, in an age-appropriate way, the dangers and the risks of unwise and excessive time on social media apps, your rules and restrictions will carry more weight. It is, after all, for their own protection.

---

Blog Post Crafted by Will

William read English Literature at Cambridge University. He wrote plays for the ADC Theatre, winning the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Other Prize in 2015.

He studied for an MSt in Creative Writing at Oxford University, before moving to New York City, completing an MFA in Fiction at Columbia University as a Chair’s Fellow.

Passionate about literature, Will loves to share his passion for reading and writing with the students he tutors.