Teach your child to navigate the digital world with confidence. Build trust, model healthy habits, and help them balance online interactions with real-life skills.
“It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves that will make them successful human beings.” ― Ann Landers
Key Concepts:
- Monitoring isn’t fool-proof. Your child needs to have the skills to navigate technology safely without you. Conversations around monitoring help, but tweens and teens also need practice with skill building in real life.
- It’s critical with tweens and teens that we practice what we preach. If we don’t show our children that we actually believe our own rules, our authority and respect is lost. What you model matters.
- When a child is ready for social media depends on many individual factors. One way to assess underlying skills is to consider the following categories: their maturity and social savviness, their understanding of social media, and their communication and openness with you.
- Readiness also depends on the platform. Each platform brings its own benefits and concerns.
- One of the simplest ways to teach your child about consent, is to practice what you preach and start with your own social media use. Begin to ask your child consent for any information (stories or pictures) you share on your own accounts or with others.
What to Do:
- Your job is to create a safe space where you can encourage your child to talk to you about anything happening in their group chats and posts, good or bad. Let them know you're not there to judge, but to help navigate these situations. Schedule casual talks about their online interactions. Ask them about their favorite group chats, funny moments, or anything that might be bothering them.
- Help them set boundaries: Think before you post and know when to walk away
- Foster positive communication: Be kind and respectful, stand up for themselves and others, use emojis wisely.
- Create ways to spot trouble: Identify red flags and cyberbullying
- Establish a drama free zone: Ignore the bait, take a deep breath
- Learn the signs of too much technology use: emotional distress, academic performance issues, new issues with sleep, behavior, or social interactions, being unable to entertain themselves without a device, being difficult to engage in conversation, or withdrawing from in-person activities they once enjoyed.
- Focus on building relationships, having conversations, finding balance, reducing anxiety, and increasing real world independence.