Dear Ruti,

I am a mother of young girls and am completely terrified of how the social media landscape will affect them. Do you have any thoughts on how best to protect and prepare my daughters for their inevitable encounter with social media? 

Thank you,

Worried Mom

Dear Worried,

Your concern is understandable. Just a generation earlier, a mother could slip the modem in her purse when she left the house to reduce the likelihood that her young teens would surf the internet while she was away. The advice given then and still relevant today is that the competent parent would not allow her children to have computer access in their own rooms, but rather, kids should be allowed to use the computer for predetermined periods in an easily-monitored area of the home. Once wifi became nearly as available as clean air and water and nearly every American child has a cell phone by age 11 or 12, those recommendations became useless. Even filters that guard young eyes from sites better left unseen are only somewhat effective.

Universal availability isn’t the only problem facing the conscientious and concerned parent. Many sites fire constant images at our children of what they think they should have but don’t. As a wise philosopher said of the social media universe, “You’re not just competing with the Joneses next door, you’re competing with all the Joneses all over the world.” Rather than just television shows depicting wealthy people with perfect homes, our children must now deal with stories and images, tweaked to keep them scrolling and clicking, of other children who seem to be prettier, wealthier, more successful than they are.

As if bullying in school weren’t enough of a problem, online “fat shaming” and other meanness, available to young people 24/7 through their personal

phones, has become a pandemic problem. Even the bullies themselves often are engaging in this behavior not to harass, but because they think they’re being funny. Their idea that they are only enjoying a little “humor” doesn’t stop the young recipients from being nearly twice as likely to consider suicide as those who are not also cyberbullied. Young people admit to sharing more information online than they should; many admit to engaging in “sexting,” sending and receiving explicit sexual messages.

So now that we’ve validated your concerns (and given you even more to be terrified about), what can you do to protect your child from this “brave new world”?

Sadly, protecting our children long ago became something we can’t do by putting up fences. The only way to begin to protect our children against the big, scary world is to arm them from within.

We parents and grandparents can start with ourselves. Ask yourself what values you project to your children. Do they see parents who are satisfied with themselves and with what they possess, or parents who constantly long for what others have? Do they watch their parents treat each other and their family with love and respect, or do they see brusqueness and sarcasm? Do they hear you speak about others supportively, and come to the aid of those who are harassed, or do they hear their adult role models gossiping, criticizing and demeaning others?

A child whose parents have given her supportive comments about her appearance and her intelligence will be less likely to seek that emotional nourishment outside the home. If she gets respect from her parents, she will be less likely to measure her self-worth only by comparing her Instagram and Facebook “likes” to those of her peers. This said, one mustn’t minimize the need young people have to receive acceptance from their peers; and lack of peer group acceptance is something parents can do little to ameliorate. We can encourage open discussion, and we can make the effort to let our children know that they