Responsibility not abstinence
Have you experienced the gut wrenching feeling that you child has lied to you? The sweet baby that you delivered, now manipulating you? A few years ago, I sat my young children down and told them of the dangers of social media; I told them they could not have Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat and that it didn’t matter if their friends had it, I said no. They nodded their little heads, and I handed over their iPads, and set them free in a virtual world. I was so proud that I had taken steps to keep them safe.
Clearly, I made many mistakes during that conversation, the largest one being that I didn’t explain what social media was, or why it was dangerous. In my defense, I’ll tell you they were so young and I just didn’t think I needed to give them the details. The truth of the matter is that I just didn’t know how to approach this enormous subject.
Unsurprisingly, my elder daughter who must have been 9 at the time, asked me if she could download an app called TikTok. I asked her what it was, and she told me she could use it to watch children making videos of themselves. She told me the two friends that we were having family night out with that evening had it. I put my finger on the button, and downloaded it. I was so proud of the fact that my daughter came to ask me if she could download this app, because it meant we had open communication.
Clearly, I made more mistakes. I didn’t look into what the app really was, and I basically gave her permission to be on social media. Later, when a parent called me and asked me to have my daughter remove pictures of her daughter from TikTok, I would be flabbergasted that I had allowed my daughter to download a social media app.
When you think you have taken precautions to protect your children online, finding their TikTok account with several postings is jarring. All the talks we had about social media were ignored. All the check points I had put in place were useless. I was very lucky, my daughter was nine and her posts were very innocent, but I had failed to explain my concerns about social media.
In the months to come, we completely banned our children from electronics. We went back to playing board games, playing outside, reading books and even watching TV. We went from total freedom, to abstinence.
About two years later, COVID transformed our school experience, and we were thrown into “homeschool by iPad”. It didn’t take long before my now 11 year old came to me with the familiar “Mommy, everyone has Roblox, I know what I did (referring to TikTok) but it’s been two years, can I play for just 10 minutes a day?”. This made me instantly sad. Had abstinence been the correct response?
I spent a couple of days thinking through it, and then she and I had a talk about the internet and responsibility. This blog grew out of that conversation. We talked about the internet, social media, sexting, cyber bullying and the physical effects of screen time. I sat with her in my nook, and we talked and I answered questions. It was my intention to research Roblox and understand parent controls, but at the end of the conversation, she said to me “I don’t want Roblox. It’s much more fun playing outside.” Victory? That remains to be seen, but for now, I’ll take it.