> There has always been a small but consistent group of parents who stand firmly on their decision to delay giving their child broad access to social media until later, and the vast, vast majority who can't be bothered to.
For the latter group, do you feel like it's always willful ignorance? For example, some parents think you're talking about TikTok, when (as I'm sure you know) it often starts with Roblox/Minecraft chat and associated Discord servers.
What tools have you found useful to help parents understand and manage this?
Every time this topic comes up, many of the responses here are about how it is pointless to try and impose limits on social media (or anything for that matter) on children, as they will inevitably circumvent them or something like that. To me it comes off like mental gymnastics to excuse a failure to actually parent.
The same could be said for teen drinking, smoking, casual sex, and drug use. Those who are dead-set on doing it will always find a way, that's the energy of teenage rebellion at work.
Whilst I do agree that it's a failure to parent to a large extent, locking things behind restrictions can also make people want it more without them understanding why they're being restricted from having something that clearly makes a lot of people happy.
I go back to my teenage self, and if instead of treating me like an idiot, people explained the pros and cons to it, and helped me to understand it, I might just not want it for myself. In the same way that I had teen pregnancy and accidental overdoses explained to me, I understood the risk-to-reward ratio and why people were concerned enough to try and educate about it.
FWIW, whilst I don't take drugs, I do believe in legalizing them because punishing users makes precious little sense instead of helping them kick the addiction and get their life on track. However, legalizing of drugs equally doesn't mean I think people should seek them out, but those who are going to take them are probably going to take them anyway, and that should be something we can deal with in an appropriate and compassionate manner.
No one is suggesting to deprive your kids of social media without explaining the dangers. But I also think its a fallacy that I see all the time when the situation is boiled down to only two options: restrictions with no justification and treating your child like an idiot pet, or explaining why its bad but not actually imposing any restrictions and letting your child choose for themselves like they are an adult (which they aren't). A middle ground exists of treating your child like a growing human being in which you put in place restrictions to protect themselves from themselves, while also explaining the importance and motivation of those restrictions.
> those who are going to take them are probably going to take them anyway
I also think this is a common fallacy. As you said, some individuals are dead set on using drugs, participating in risky sex, teenage drinking, or utilizing social media may circumvent any restrictions you place on them. But there is also a large proportion of the population who isn't "dead set" on using those things, and are only interested enough to use them if convenient, but if otherwise restricted or disincentivized will move on to other things. Its certainly a far more nuanced equation than "People will do whatever they want, regardless".
I agree. The key thing is this: people vary drastically.
What is effective in preventing x person from doing something bad for themselves isn't going to be effective on y person. This is where parenting styles must vary in order to be effective.
> The same could be said for teen drinking, smoking, casual sex, and drug use.
There are things that have been shown to have an effect on teen drinking, smoking, casual sex, and drug use. And things that have not.
Parents forbidding it is definitely not in the effective category.
It is wild to me that the GP's analysis of what might be done begins and ends at "we've run programs asking parents to forbid social media use, and they just can't be bothered to!"
I think you have to consider the broader peer group. If all the anti-social media parents and their kids become friends with each other, it will be far easier to avoid peer pressure compared to regular society. Same with drugs, sex, smoking, etc, if your kids have good company and friends, avoiding harmful things is much easier.
It doesn't really matter if they circumvent it. The problem with social media is not exposure, it's overstimulation/"addiction". If you put an inconvenience between the kid and the stimulus, you're already more than halfway there. If they need to use a desktop and a VPN to go on Instagram, they can't spend as much time on it.
Likewise, the kid will smoke less weed and drink less beer if they have to hide it and jump through hoops to get it. Most of the studies showing harmful effects of drug/alcohol consumption on teenagers identify subgroups who used multiple times per week or every day. Interpolating these effects linearly, they usually become very small below once per week.
We aren't even close to this though with social media. We are still at the 1930s attitude with my grandfather and cigarettes.
He smoked cigarettes for 50+ years starting at 13 in the 1930s. No one gave a shit about smoking then.
Why you being so ridiculous? Let the kid smoke his cigarettes. Making such a big deal out of nothing. From what he told me it sounded like cigarettes then were on the level of having a sandwich. Literally as normal as waking up in the morning and the kid checking their phone. What is the big deal? What could possibly go wrong?
> Likewise, the kid will smoke less weed and drink less beer if they have to hide it and jump through hoops to get it.
In my experience/observation, how strict the parent is at trying to forbid drug and alcohol use doesn't actually have much correlation with whether and how much the kids use drugs and alcohol. Or if it does, it's a negative correlation. The kids with the biggest problems always seemed to have the strictest most punitive parents, whether as cause or effect. I am pretty sure plenty of research backs up that an effective way to reduce teen drug use is _not_ to have parents just try to be really strict and punitive about it.
Sure, there are a few parents who are totally absentee or abusive (say, giving kids drugs) and it can be related to kids with drugs and alcohol problems. But the vast majority of kids with drugs and alcohol problems indeed "have to hide it and jump through hoops to get it". And I don't find the kids whose parents try to be stricter or are scarier about it are in fact any less likely to have problems. I wouldn't be shocked if the correlation is the opposite.
> But the vast majority of kids with drugs and alcohol problems indeed "have to hide it and jump through hoops to get it".
Feel free to share your research and sources, because this sort of assertion seems to get made all the time, but I haven't actually seen anything supporting it.
>Sure, there are a few parents who are totally absentee or abusive (say, giving kids drugs) and it can be related to kids with drugs and alcohol problems.
You seem to be arguing for the same thing as I did. The status quo regarding social media is for parents to be "totally absentee" as you put it, while the usual approach to alcohol is "don't let me catch you". It's very rare for parents to take a permissive approach regarding teen alcohol use, especially considering it's illegal to do that.
>But the vast majority of kids with drugs and alcohol problems indeed "have to hide it and jump through hoops to get it".
The vast majority of kids have to jump through hoops to get alcohol, period.
>I am pretty sure plenty of research backs up that an effective way to reduce teen drug use is _not_ to have parents just try to be really strict and punitive about it.
"Results indicate that parental permissibility of alcohol use is a consistent predictor of teen drinking behaviors, which was strongly associated with experienced negative consequences."
"Reduced levels of later drinking by adolescents were predicted by: parental modelling, limiting availability of alcohol to the child, disapproval of adolescent drinking, general discipline, parental monitoring, parent–child relationship quality, parental support and general communication."
Of course, the more important factor is not discipline of the child by the parent, but discipline of the parent by the parent. Parental use is the strongest predictor of children's use. So we should also consider that parents who use social media too much may influence their children to do so as well.
>For example, some parents think you're talking about TikTok, when (as I'm sure you know) it often starts with Roblox/Minecraft chat and associated Discord servers.
US psychologist Jonathan Haidt has said there is an interesting distinction in impact between cooperative online play, e.g. gaming, and using social media, e.g. posting on instagram and reading others posts. He says the data shows the former can benefit a child's social development while the latter is absolutely toxic.
I don't think it's ignorance as much as "well, that won't be my child." Also, its a much more appealing alternative when it is the path of least resistance. I suspect, too, we don't really have a sophisticated enough conversation on the distributions of the outcomes. From my experience working with teens, I think it is probably the case that the media outcome of having broad access to these is strictly worse than not, but probably of a small magnitude, but that there is a long tail of negative outcomes that no one believes will be their child.
I do a thing where I get a chance to meet with lots of smaller group of kids, and I let them ask anything tech anonymously. it is absolutely eye opening, and it becomes very clear that adolescence for a lot of them is much, much harder to navigate because of these tools they've been given. What I do sometimes is just share with parents some of the questions I get from the kids, and that has been the only slightly effective thing I've seen. To me the biggest issue is that there's a lot of "not my kid" sort of sentiment, and I think letting the kids' voices speak through to the parents sometimes helps hit home to them that they may not have a full grasp of what these tools introduce to their child's life, and that yes, their child could also be one of the ones who struggles with it more accutely.
For the latter group, do you feel like it's always willful ignorance? For example, some parents think you're talking about TikTok, when (as I'm sure you know) it often starts with Roblox/Minecraft chat and associated Discord servers.
What tools have you found useful to help parents understand and manage this?