Trust, Social Media and FBI skills
When one of my girls was about 11 I allowed her to get the App Musically. If you’re not familiar it’s basically the TikTok of a few years ago. Still not familiar? That’s ok- I wasn’t either, but I got interested because she was interested. She would create these cute little music videos and she could post them or share them with her friend group. We created rules for how she was to use it and made sure to have appropriate boundaries about who was seeing them. Everything she posted had to be mom-approved and any people she followed had to be mom-approved. We did not allow her to become friends with people who we were not already connected to in our community.
One day about six months into this experiment, she comes out to the living room and says, “Mom, someone sent me a private message and I don’t know them. Should I open it?” She sat down on the couch with me and I opened the message. It was a boy/man? asking for naked pictures of her.
NOW- here is where it gets really important.
We had done this program called Secret Keepers. Part of the program teaches your kids that they can come to you with anything and they are NOT in trouble for being open with communication. So at this moment, while I was very concerned about the app, about this boy, about a thousand things… what mattered most was SHE HAD DONE THE RIGHT THING! She had come to me, she’d let me open the message, she hadn’t contacted this person- she had done nothing wrong. So no… she didn’t get yelled at, lose her phone, lose the app, loses anything. In the next hour, she watched as I reported the incident to the FBI, contacted him via the app, and told him he’d been turned into the police and the FBI AND I tracked his username and pinged his location to a cell phone at a school where I called and reported the incident as well. (Mom’s become mini-FBI agents when we have to.)
I've noticed that a lot of teens are not open about communicating about Social Media with their parents. The consequence of communicating runs the risk of them losing their technology. For most of our teens, this is the only communication tool available- people don't have landlines and kids don't email. The risk of being punished outweighs the need to have a conversation about what happened. But we must remember they should not be punished for someone else's misusing the technology. The result of this choice in your child's mind can lead to a whole lot of sneaking OR a very open line of communication. It’s so important to start creating a safe place for your kids and it starts with a relationship.
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve chosen not to use certain apps, taken away apps when they are not working in our boundaries or phones when our kid’s mess up- we lose privileges when rules are not followed… There are some things my kids simply won’t ever have. Social Media has major pluses and minuses… not to be debated here. The point here is to have the conversations, create a space for safe open communication, and work through the whys together. Teaching them how to navigate these things will benefit them for their entire lives!
No matter how you choose to parent Social Media, the most important thing is that you establish trust, communication and teach them how to work with it- like reporting things to the FBI when you need to!
Leia Hardimon
Director of Communication and Fundraising