Parenting Through Social Media

The keyboard warriors are at it again. There was an ad on Facebook about the fact that social media is addictive to teenagers, so they were setting up something in order to sue, and the comment section was absolutely ridiculous as usual. The commentators were talking about how people are bad parents because they allow their children to be on social media, and it irritated my very core.

I don’t believe that social media sites should be sued for their addictive nature because we can’t sue every drug dealer in the world for the addictive nature of the drugs they sell. Both things are unhealthy for anyone taking part, but calling people bad parents because they parent differently than you is completely ignorant.

As a parent these days, we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. People are always looking for a reason to point the finger at our parenting, when in reality, we do the best that we can and then the kids do whatever they are going to do anyway. There is judgment everywhere we look from the schools, our families, our children, and now from the trolls on social media. There is no cookie cutter style to parenting just like there is no cookie cutter version of a child. We all have to parent the children that we have in the best way for that child.

Most of these judgments are completely outdated. The things that we went through as children have nothing to do with the children of today. The things that are going on with the children of today have very little to do with what we had when we were growing up. Technology is different. School is different. Basically the entire world that we live in is different from the world we grew up in. So is it any wonder that the children who are being born into it are different.

Looking back to the comments on the ad, there were people on there stating that if children didn’t have access to the internet then they wouldn’t be able to get on social media. There’s internet access everywhere. McDonald’s, Starbucks, Walmart, Fry’s, school, the public library, there are a million places children can get on the internet. So making it because the parents pay an internet bill in the home where they can monitor their children seems a bit oblivious to me. Plus, as a teacher I must point out that students need the internet for more than just social media; research, the platform to turn in assignments, access to email their teachers for any help they may need. Ever since the pandemic, most of what we do is online.

They also talked about not allowing your child to have a cellphone. This is 2022. I don’t know one middle school aged child that does not have a cellphone. Considering that middle school is the age where most of the teenagers are starting their social media accounts because they can agewise, I can see how the fact that they have a cellphone may contribute to their social media use. However, cellphones are meant to keep in contact when we are not around. They are also a great way to track our children’s whereabouts when they are supposed to be at their friends house and they went somewhere else. Things happen in this world that our parents didn’t have to worry about back in the day. We were able to walk to a friend's house without our parents having to worry too much about something happening along the way. We were able to get on the public bus alone without our parents worrying too much about if we would make it to our destination. I learned this lesson the hard way when I allowed my daughter to get on public transportation by herself to go to school and she got robbed at knife point. Thank goodness she got home okay, but if she had a cellphone, she could have called me to come get her instead of getting back on public transportation to get back home when she was already traumatized.

There was even a lady who said that her daughter didn’t even learn about Facebook until she was 18. The lies! So you’re saying that your daughter had no friends growing up. They were home schooled and completely sheltered. These would be the only plausible explanation, and even that is less than likely these days. These kids have all kinds of fake accounts that their parents don’t know about. Ever heard of the term “Finsta”? That’s your child’s fake Instagram account. They give you access for one and then privatize their account that they give their friends so you can’t monitor it. There are ways to hide all of social media if the child really wants to.

At the end of the day, the ad did not lie. All of the social media platforms have an algorithm designed to keep you interested in the site. That’s why you only see what the site wants you to see and not everything that the people you follow posts. This does cause an addiction, and it is not healthy for any of us let alone our teenagers. Social media contributes to depression, body image issues, cyber bullying, and other mental health issues. All of this has been proven time and time again. That’s why it is important to take a social media break every now and then. We as adults have trouble doing this. Why would you think it would be easy for a teenager to do that?

So do I believe that social media should be sued because of all the mental health issues it causes? No. However, I don’t believe that calling someone a bad parent because they choose to allow their child to be on social media or because their child is on social media without permission is appropriate either. We shouldn’t be calling people bad parents for doing the best they can anyway. A bad parent is a parent who chooses not to parent at all.