Beyond Restrictions: Helping Teens Safely And Productively Navigate Social Media
Whenever the topic of the Internet and kids comes up, there is a sense of panic that accompanies, it, whether the people discussing it are parents, educators, caregivers, or even people that do not have to deal with kids day -to-day. It is common to hear,
“Parenting was not this difficult when we were children. All parents had to monitor was TV use (and TV was on only for a couple of hours a day), and maybe magazines. These days, kids have access to everything, and at such an early age. “
We are constantly afraid of what our children will find on the internet. When I saw that Safaricom was marking #SaferInternetDayKe , and the commentary around it, I decided to read more because I was curious. Other than panicking, and working to restrict/monitor internet use, what role do parents have to play in helping their children browse safely?
With younger children, the answer is simple – restrict unsupervised internet use, create Youtube playlists for them, and generally, keep the kids busy doing other things. There is a lot of fun stuff out in the playground, and in the house – a 5-7 year old will find fun anywhere you leave them.
What about when they get older though? When they not only need the internet for school and knowledge-seeking, they want to connect on social media. How do we help your tweens and teens browse safely?
First, it starts with developing an understanding why young people are online
In the book, “It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens
Teens engage with networked publics for the same reasons they have always relished publics; they want to be part of the broader world by connecting with other people and having the freedom of mobility. Likewise, many adults fear networked technologies for the same reasons that adults have long been weary of teen participation in public life and teen socialization in parks, malls, and other sites where youth congregate . If I have learned one thing from my research, it’s this; social media services like Facebook and Twitter are providing teens with new opportunities to participate in public life, and this, more than anything is what concerns many anxious adults. (Emphasis mine)
Unlike the past where young people could “hang out” in physical spaces, parental paranoia about teens being in public alone, coupled by highly structured lives where every free hour is taken up by structured activities means that most teens spend their free time indoors. This has not taken away,it has only intensified their need to connect with each other and other people. In the same book, Danah observes that a majority of teens are not connecting with new people online, their offline and offline circles are similar- the web is an extension of real life and given a chance, they would rather hang out in physical spaces.
When we view social media through this lens there is less fear, and more a drive towards understanding teens’ preferences and motivations, and maybe creating safe spaces that enable physical interaction without their parents looking over their shoulders.
That said, there are factors that make online spaces different from physical spaces that we should be mindful of, and educate our teens about:
- Persistence – The common saying that, “the internet never forgets” rings true, and this is by design. The durability of online expressions and contents means that even if we delete them, they may remain in other people’s devices. It also means something we post in one context, could be read in another context a few days/weeks/years later. This is a great responsibility to bear.
- Visibility – You do not get to control the potential audience who can bear witness. Social media is designed to ensure maximum visibility – the public is the default, you have to take active steps to make your messaging private. As Danah says, “In networked publics, interactions are often public by default, private through effort”.
- Spreadability – Related to the above, content that is on the web can be shared with great ease. Most web systems provide simple buttons to “forward”, “share”, “repost” content to articulated or curated lists. Even when these tools aren’t built into the system, content can often be easily downloaded or duplicated then forwarded along – we have seen screenshots of tweets or Facebook posts circulating on Whatsapp. I recently shared this dilemma with friends online – is it a violation if you post a photo with a friend, and the photo trends or becomes a meme? The friend may have consented to you taking a photo with them and maybe even posting it, but they may not have signed up to be a meme. While there are no legal ramifications, becoming an internet joke has emotional effects, especially on teens.
- Searchability – The ability to find content online means that material we have posted may land in hands we had not intended it to, sometimes even years/decades later.
Secondly, teens interpret privacy differently from adults
Teenagers are not crazy about hiding, their actions. Most are quite comfortable browsing the internet in centrally located computers within the house, and they do not mind sharing their passwords with their parents. However, snooping behaviour by parents communicates a lack of trust in the teens. They want you to use the password if they are in trouble or something is really wrong and not to regularly check what they are doing online. Checking over their shoulders to see what they are doing online is a no-no.
This is no different from real life interactions. Knowing where your teen keeps their diary is no permission to go pore through (unless said teen is missing from home), and them knowing that you do this could have the opposite effect from what you would like – them hiding from you.
Instead of trying to figure our children’s lives from their web interactions, maybe we could just…spend time with them and talk. Good old-fashioned stuff.
Finally, being “digital natives” (a controversial term) does not mean that teens have the knowledge to critically examine what they consume. I experienced this in a class that I teach, principally made up of early twenties girls. All the girls, from disadvantaged backgrounds, have smartphones and spend a significant amount of time on social media and Youtube. When I ran a poll, a good 90% of them regularly watched vlogs and music videos, whenever they had access to the internet. They had Facebook and Instagram accounts to which they regularly posted, and kept track of what their friends posted. This is not surprising. What surprised me, was that when I gave them some homework to research online (and cite sources). Most did not know how to compose a good query on Google, to decipher which sources were legitimate or not, and even worse, attaching documents on email did not come easy.
This is not unique to my group. Most teens are quite adept at social media, but not the internet.
We (as grown-ups) have a role to play in helping our children tap into the power of the www, and to help them adeptly navigate through the potential dangers. It is naive to assume that the youth are automatically informed.
A few social media accounts do not a digital native make.
