The influence of social media on our kids is undeniable, and I understand how people and parents can come to blame social media for many of today’s issues. It’s a complex problem that we haven’t experienced in prior generations. How can we help our kids navigate a world in which we are so unfamiliar and have so little relatable experiences with?
Here are a few major ways social media and other online content can impact our thinking and worldview:
— Overwhelming access to content without context
- A child’s mind is not fully developed, depending on their stage of growth, their perception will be drastically skewed towards black and white thinking, overgeneralizing, internalizing, and catastrophic thinking. Children (and many adults) don’t have the experience to understand the bigger picture. Adolescents may only be able to understand things from a point of view with themselves at the center; meaning they believe a narrative they can relate to without understanding that everyone has similarities and differences. It’s difficult to grasp that relating to an idea or feeling doesn’t mean it’s a concrete or unchanging fact.
— Varying degrees of reliability and validity presented with the perception of objectivity, importance, and as fact
- Many of us don’t learn critical thinking and research until late adolescence or early adulthood, if at all. Our kids don’t have the formal operating capacity to make deductions, fact check, or scrutinize sources and intentions. We need to learn how to validate content and find trustworthy sources before we formulate opinions.
— Curated content creates a lack of diversity in ideas, eliminates opposing views or questions.
- This simultaneously validates biases while discrediting any potential for exploring additional viewpoints. The danger here is that it breeds a lack of tolerance for healthy debate and inability to experience contradictions without conflict. An exploration of ideas, facts and beliefs becomes a personal attack on one’s self concept.
Without thoughtful strategies to ensure we are getting enough information to make good judgements, we are likely to get caught in traps of misinformation and radical ideas. Here are a few tips on helping your family use social and online media safely:
- Review who they’re following and who’s following them. Help them clean up their algorithms so that they’re being fed positive messages by following accounts of people and companies with diverse, reliable, and value-added content. Remove accounts with content that encourages hateful ideas or demeaning messages.
- Talk about current events. Ask them what they’ve heard, and what they think about the topics. Ask them where they find info and how they know it’s accurate. Don’t judge their thought processes, take this time to learn more and also share your own views. Let them be different without putting them down or getting angry. Teach them that there are many ways to look at each situation, and it isn’t always black and white.
- Monitor without being too critical. It’s important to keep in mind that your child is learning, they don’t understand how to make good choices and who to follow. Kids and teens need to know it’s okay to be wrong and that they’re opinions aren’t stupid or bad – you’re there to help them see things from more angles and help them find more information.
The world today is polarized and complex. Our kids need us to thoughtfully and intentionally teach them how to navigate. We can’t ban them from the internet (as much as we might want to!) so the best thing to do is teach them how to access it safely.
