Are you struggling with social media use in your home?

Parents in the 80’s and 90’s had to worry about late night phone calls on the land line (which they had the option of listening in on) and polaroid pictures from the weekends party being hung on their teen’s bedroom walls. Parenting in this generation is full of entirely new challenges. Our kids, younger and younger, have access to cell phones, internet, and basically anything they can google. The truth is, we are living in a digital friendly time. We are all at risk of our kids knowing more about social media platforms before they hit their teenage years than we do as adults.

As parents we need to do our best to regulate kids screen time and encourage in person rather than virtual contact. We need to equip our children with tools to survive in this social media frenzied world. The reality is teens are documenting and posting every minute of their lives for the world to see, judge, like, follow, and share.

Read along for points parents can consider when addressing social media use in their home!

The social media conversation

The social media conversation has become just as important as any other “life lesson” talk we have with our children. Our kids need to know that in a world where anything can be said at your fingertips does not mean that this is how everything should always be said. They need to understand the importance of having face to face conversations and the circumstances when this should always occur. If we would not say something to someone’s face, then we should not be saying it behind the safety of a screen. There are real people behind every post and every comment which means, there are real feelings. It’s ok to disagree with people in person and over social media BUT kindness always wins. Nothing is ever private, posting on the internet makes it public and it can never be permanently deleted. Posts we make can affect our future. Negative comments to pictures, posts or status, likes or no likes should never change the way they feel about themselves. In a virtual world we never truly know who we are connecting with and should never share our personal information or location.

Screen time regulation for kids and ourselves

Limiting screen time will prevent excessive social media use and this needs to be done for both kids and parents. We need to connect with our kids and build our relationships without the usage of social media apps. Overuse of screen time can negatively impact our kids and our own mental health. Youngsters learn from us and we need to model the behaviour we want to see.

Using social media impulsively

Participating on social media can help young people feel they are increasing their interactions with peers and address their fear of missing out. Knowing our children’s fears can help us to understand them and assist in preventing them from impulsive social media usage. We need to teach being thoughtful about the posts and comments they are making and taking time to think about our reactions before posting them. We need to teach our kids to be mindful of what they are posting and practice this same skill ourselves.  

Put notifications on mute

One of the major causes of anxiety is social media platforms sending continuous notifications and updates. These social media notifications can have us, and our kids left constantly checking our devices. The last thing anyone needs is to be woken by notifications and urges to check the latest updates. We all need to have boundaries and silence our notifications from early evening to morning hours.  Here

We are always here to help!

Sometimes kids, teens, and parents really struggle with understanding the reasons behind reducing and regulating social media use. We can help sort some of these issues out and explain the impact usage can have on our lives. We can also treat mental health issues which can arise due to excessive or inappropriate social media usage.