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Discussing Social Media and Sexting with Kids and
Teens

Social Media Best Practices

Today’s teens and tweens are connected to one another, and to the world, through digital technology more than any previous generation. Recent data indicates that social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have exceeded e-mail as the favored communication method in all age groups. Although today’s tweens and teens may be more tech savvy than their parents, their lack of maturity and life experience can quickly get them into trouble with these new social platforms. That’s why it’s important for parents to speak with their children of all ages about social media and monitor their online social media use to help them navigate this new online social world. How parents talk with their kids and teens will differ slightly by age depending on the topic being discussed. Here are some helpful tips to help begin that expedition with your family.

Explore these technologies personally. There is simply no better way than to create a profile yourself. It will also allow you to “friend” your kids and track their activity online.

Make it clear that their use of technology is something you want and need to know about.

  • For kids of all ages, ask daily: “Have you used the computer and the Internet today?”
  • Technology use will differ by age. Tweens are likely to be using more instant messaging and texting, while teens use those technologies and also networking sites such as Facebook. (These tools often are referred to as social networking “platforms”.) Ask daily how your family used those tools with questions such as: “What did you write on Facebook today?” “Any new chats recently?” “Did anyone text you today?”
  • Share a bit about your daily social media use as a way to promote daily conversation about your kids’ online habits.
  • Get your kids talking about their social media lives if you can just so you know exactly what they are doing.

Keep the computer in a prominent part of your home, such as the family room or kitchen, so that you can check on what your kids are doing online and how much time they are spending.

Ask other parents what their kids of similar ages are using for social media. Ask your kids about those technologies as a starting point for discussion. If they are in the same peer group, there is a good chance they are all using the same platforms together. For example:

  • For teens: “Mrs. Smith told me Jennifer uses Facebook. Is that something you’ve thought of doing? Do you already have a profile? If you do, I’d like to see it.”
  • For tweens and older elementary school kids: “Are you planning on meeting up with kids on Club Penguin today? I’d love to see how that works.” Or, “Let’s check your text log today together. I’d like to see who’s been texting you.”

For all ages, explain that everything sent over the Internet or a cell phone can be shared with the entire world, so it is important they use good judgment in sending messages and pictures and set privacy settings on social media sites accordingly.

  • Chat with kids of every age what “good judgment” means and the consequences of poor judgment, ranging from minor punishment to possible legal action in the case of “sexting” or bullying.
  • Remember to make a point of discouraging kids from gossiping, spreading rumors, bullying or damaging someone’s reputation using texting or other tools. 
  • To keep kids safe, have your kids and teens show you where the privacy features are for every social media platform they are using. The more private, the less likely inappropriate material will be received by your child, or sent to their circle of friends.
  • Be aware of the ages of use for sites your tweens and older elementary school kids want to use.  Many sites are for age 13 and older, and the sites for younger kids do require parental consent to use.

Be present where your kids are online: IM, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Have a policy requiring that you and your child “friend” each other. This is one way of showing your child you are there, too, and will provide a check and balance system by having an adult within arm’s reach of their profile. This is important for kids of all ages, including teens.

Show your kids you know how to use what they are using, and are willing to learn what you may not know how to do.

Develop a strategy for monitoring your kids’ online social media use, and be sure you follow through. Some families may check once a week and others more sporadically. You may want to say, “Today I’ll be checking your computer and cell phone.”  The older your kids are, the more often you should check.

Consider installing tracking systems to monitor your child’s email, chat, IM, and image content. Parental controls on your computer or from your Internet service provider, Google Desktop, or commercial programs are all reasonable alternatives.

Enforce time limits for Internet and cell phone use. Learn the warning signs of trouble: skipping activities, meals and homework for social media; weight loss or gain; a drop in grades. If these issues are transpiring due to your child being online when they should be eating, sleeping, participating in school or social activities, your child may have a problem with Internet or social media addiction. Contact your Pediatrician for advice if you notice these symptoms.

Monitor chat logs, emails, files and social networking profiles for inappropriate content, friends, messages, and images periodically. Be honest and let your kids know what you are doing.

Multitasking can be dangerous – even deadly. Be sure to emphasize to teens the importance of not texting, Facebooking, using the phone, listening to ear buds or earphones, or engaging in related distracting activities while driving. These forms of distracted driving are illegal in many states because they are so dangerous. And warn kids of all ages about using mobile devices while walking, biking, babysitting, or doing other things that require their complete attention.

The Conundrum of “Sexting”

“Sexting” refers to sending a text message with pictures of children or teens that are inappropriate, naked, or engaged in sex acts. Based on a recent survey, about 20% of teen boys and girls have sent such messages. The emotional pain it causes can be enormous for the child in the picture and also to the sender and receiver – often with legal implications. Parents must begin the difficult conversation about sexting before it becomes a problem and introduce the issue as soon as a child is old enough to have a cell phone. Here are some tips for how to start these discussions with your children:

  • Speak to your kids, even if the issue hasn’t affected your community. “Have you heard of sexting?” “Tell me what you think it is.” For the initial part of the discussion, it is important to first learn what your child’s understanding is of the issue and then add to it an age appropriate explanation.
  • Use relevant examples for your child’s age. For younger children with cell phones who do not yet know about sex, alert them that text messages should never contain pictures of people – kids or adults – without their clothes on, kissing or touching each other in ways that they’ve never seen before. For older children, use the term “sexting” and give more specifics about sex acts they may be aware of. For teens, be very specific that “sexting” often involves pictures of a sexual nature and is considered pornography.
  • Ensure that kids of all ages understand that sexting is serious and considered a crime in many jurisdictions. In all communities, if they “sext”, there will be serious consequences, quite possibly involving the police, suspension from school, and notes on the sexter’s permanent record that could affect their chances of getting into college or getting a job. 
  • Experts have noted that peer pressure can play a major role in the sending of texts, with parties being a major contributing factor. Confiscating cell phones at gatherings of tweens and teens is one way to reduce this temptation.
  • Watch headlines and the news for stories about “sexting” that illustrate the very real consequences for both senders and receivers of these images. “Have you seen this story?” “What did you think about it?” “What would you do if you were this child?” Practice ways they can reply if asked to participate in inappropriate texting.
  • Urge school and town assemblies to educate parents, teachers and students.

Social Media Discussion Points for Parents

Just the Facts:
  • Social Media is not all bad or all good, how the kids use it is what matters.
  • Their decisions on usage have consequences, some serious sexting/legal.
  • Social media contributes to loneliness, loneliest generation on record.
  • Kids are losing the ability to develop and the know how to meaningfully connect with others.
  • How kids use social media elevates feelings of anxiety and depression, not simply because they use it but it’s what they are using it for and or exposed to.
    • Boys: Gaming, and not such a need to be seen/have a presence known.
    • Girls:  visual platforms, videos, and pictures.
  • Teens seek affirmation on social media, as when parents were themselves kids; however, the affirmation is given very quickly now.
  • Social Media usage is a privilege and not a right, must make sure kids are training and educated on the online world and have clear expectations of their usage and subsequent responsibilities.
  • The more things change the more they stay the same, just a different platform.
  • The Internet seems to have created a new way of doing old things, rather than being a technology that changes the manner in which people live their lives.
    • Relationships, socialization, popularity, flirting, etc.      
  • What kids are posting may not be really what they are feeling.
    • True feelings and or emotions may be hiding in plain sight.
  • When we know better, we do better.
  • Offline stress/issues carry over to the online world.
  • 70% of communication is not around actual words, body language.
  • Trend continues to move to visual effects over texting.   

Parent Involvement

  • Develop a plan around social media regulation with your kids.
    • I.e., setting time limits, putting it down at dinner table, time before bed.
  • Parents need to work with the kids on developing a healthy balanced view of what social media is and what can happen relatable to the real world.
  • Parents need to use their own examples of how social media has made them feel left out of things and that that’s OK, how they coped with that. Talk about not being included.
  • Parents need to model social media usage and behavior to be consistent with expectations of kids.
  • Parent need to talk to their kids about those other kids who may be left out and to teach kids to be thoughtful of those who may be left use.

Snapchat: Sexting Tool, or the Next Instagram?

Originally Posted by Douglas Gross, CNN

You may not have heard of Snapchat. But if there are teenagers or 20-somethings in your life, it’’s a safe bet that they have.

Snapchat is a mobile app which lets users share images or videos that disappear after a few seconds. That’s right–they vanish forever in the time it takes you to read a tweet.

In a little over a year since it was released by a Stanford student and his recently graduated business partner, Snapchat has has quietly amassed millions of users and now claims to process more than 30 million messages a day. Some bloggers have called it the “next Instagram.”

Not bad for a mobile tool which, rightly or wrongly, is often cited for one very specific ability — the “sexting” of naughty images to other users. In an age when young people are constantly being warned not to post inappropriate things online, Snapchat offers a degree of freedom by letting users share unfiltered thoughts or images without much fear of reprisal.

“Like most people born before the 1990s, I’m not a Snapchat user, and I’ve long assumed the worst about the app–that combining cameras; young people; and secret, self-destructing messages could only mean trouble,” wrote Slate’s Farhad Manjoo last week.

But increasingly, he writes, it appears possible that “teenagers are more likely using the app to safely explore the sort of silly, unguarded, and sometimes unwise ideas that have always occupied the teenage brain … in a manner that won’t haunt them forever. In other words, they’re chatting with Snapchat precisely because it’s not like chatting with Facebook.”

Not to be outdone, Facebook last month actually launched a virtually identical social app called Facebook Poke, a mobile re-imagining of one of the site’s earliest, and ultimately most ridiculed, features. But instead of siphoning users from Snapchat, Facebook’s move appears instead to have launched the upstart app to new heights.

Both apps let users send images or short videos and messages via their smartphones. The sender can choose how long the message will be visible–up to 10 seconds–before it self-destructs.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly was part of the team that coded the Poke app, currently available only on Apple’s iOS system, in only a couple of weeks. A family photo posted by sister Randi Zuckerberg purportedly showed their family playing with the app over the holidays.

But if Facebook was looking to flex its billion-user muscle to take over the instant-chat market, it doesn’t appear to be working.

On Thursday, Snapchat was the sixth-most popular free app for Apple’s mobile devices. Facebook Poke wasn’t in the top 100. As Forbes said in a recent headline, “the kids like SnapChat because it’s NOT Facebook.”

A newer version of Snapchat for Google’s Android devices sat at a respectable No. 33 in the Google Play store, ahead of stalwarts like Draw Something, Spotify, Fandango and Amazon Mobile. Facebook Poke isn’t available for Android.

A look by analytics firm Topsy showed that mentions of Snapchat on Twitter spiraled to more than 212,000 on New Year’s Day, up from about 16,000 on December 20, the day before Facebook introduced Poke. Facebook Poke got 1,822 mentions on January 1, according to Topsy.

So, does that mean young, socially savvy users are sending millions of racy pictures of themselves through cyberspace every day?

It’s difficult to say. Technological advances and nudie shots have shared a strong, if secretive, relationship for centuries. From the printing press to pay-per-view to VCRs, new tech (particularly the kind that creates new levels of privacy) has always been followed closely by folks figuring out how to personally or professionally use it to get dirty.

Read: In the tech world, porn quietly leads the way

There are clear, and sometimes ugly, signs that sexting is common on Snapchat.

“Snapchat Sluts,” a Tumblr blog full of nude and semi-nude images, was started up last month by a “party photographer” who says he put out an open call for salacious shots on Twitter and was overwhelmed by the response. Another Snapchat-themed blog on Tumblr is filled with complaints about male users sharing photos of their genitalia.

Snapchat users may think their naughty images will never come back to haunt them. But people can still grab screenshots from their phones, even though both Snapchat and Facebook Poke notify the sender if the recipient of an image takes a shot of it.

And last week, Buzzfeed exposed an apparent security flaw that it says lets recipients retrieve videos sent via Snapchat.

All of which should be bad news when young people and questionable decisions collide with the dark alleys of the Internet, where even the most ill-gotten of sleaze is posted.

Snapchat did not respond to an interview request from CNN. But in one of only a handful of interviews he’s given since launching, Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel told TechCrunch he thinks the sex talk about his app is overblown.

“I’m not convinced that the whole sexting thing is as big as the media makes it out to be,” he told TechCrunch. “I just don’t know people who do that. It doesn’t seem that fun when you can have real sex.”

But he also acknowledged to TechCrunch that the idea for the app, which he and Bobby Murphy hashed out after meeting at Stanford’s Kappa Sigma fraternity house, was partly inspired by U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner’s unfortunate decision to share racy photos via Twitter.

So, if not for naughty bits, what exactly is the purpose of sending images and videos that rapidly disappear?

In a September blog post celebrating its first anniversary, Team Snapchat shared a vision that comes off as downright wholesome.

“We believe in sharing authentic moments with friends,” it read. “It’s not all about fancy vacations, sushi dinners, or beautiful sunsets. Sometimes it’s an inside joke, a silly face, or greetings from a pet fish.

“There is value in the ephemeral,” the post continues. “Great conversations are magical. That’s because they are shared, enjoyed, but not saved.”