When You And Your Child Argue Over Social Media

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

One night, when my daughter was 14, I dropped her off at a city park in downtown Chicago. It never occurred to me she could be in danger. The thought that someone would exploit her innocence, steal her childhood, or crush her soul never entered my mind. You see, my perception was that I was giving my girl a new iPhone. Her reality was much different: I dropped the depravity of every city corner into the palm of her hand.

No good parent would intentionally drop their child, especially a vulnerable young girl, off on a city street corner. At night. Alone. And yet, that is exactly how VA Attorney General Jason Miyares describes it when we give our children access to social media apps:

“If you’re a parent, tragically, and if you give your child a smartphone with social media apps and you have no parental controls on that, that is a day that your child’s childhood ends. That’s the day their innocence goes away because the messages and the targeting what happens for our youth… it’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen… whether it’s meta or whether it’s TikTok the reality is, is that you were literally dropping your child off at a city park at 1:00 a.m. in the morning with no parental supervision and a lot of bad actors around there waiting.”

There is no such thing as parental control on social media

Parental controls are virtually nonexistent. Platforms that actually do have parental control features, are not robust enough or in the tiniest bit user-friendly. For the latest on using parental controls, check out Plugged In’s guide.

As difficult as it is for parents to effectively monitor or limit their children’s social media use, the bottom line is that we can’t control the algorithms. These algorithms are designed to captivate our attention and keep us on the platform. There’s no app to control the platforms’ algorithms’ ability to target our children or make it possible for them to be exploited.

Shaping a generation’s mental health

In spite of the mental health social contagions plaguing our children, or the fact that one in three teenage girls have had suicidal thoughts, tech giants refuse to acknowledge their roles in shaping a generation’s mental health crisis.

Mark Zuckerberg recently told Congress:

“Mental health is a complex issue and the existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health outcomes.”

So they continue to create algorithms to draw children in. Yes, adults too.

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How social media targets and draws in children

Content Creation: Platforms like TikTok encourages children to become content creators, which leads to sharing too much personal information making them vulnerable to bullies and predators. Getting discovered, or becoming TikTok famous can easily become the misguided center of a teen’s life.

Exploitation of Child Psychology: Social media companies understand child psychology very well. They use it to their advantage by designing the features to captivate young users. Most use reward mechanisms including likes, comments, and shares, which create an environment that leads to validation-seeking behavior.

Influencer Partnerships: Companies partner with popular influencers to increase engagement with children and teens.

Despite knowing the risks to kidsm aside from mental health issues, even more so than most parents, social media companies have yet to implement safety measures that protect children from harm. Instead, they use data collection, which includes children, to draw them in. The data they collect is solely for profit not protection.

And they are wildly successful.

• 45% of 10, 11, or 12-year-old children in America have an Instagram or TikTok account
• 58% of teens are on TikTok daily. Of those, the Teens, Social Media and Technology 2023 research confirms what parents suspect: 17% say they are on TikTok almost constantly.

The reality of media addiction

Author of The 20 Hardest Questions Every Mom Faces, Dannah Gresh notes that although watching that creative video on social media is fun and harmless, hanging out online isn’t without risks. We already know that teens using social media give away every detail of their lives. This can lure stalkers, provide bullies with potential fodder, and affect how future colleges or employers view them. There’s also a serious issue that is a growing problem with teens: technology and smartphone addiction. New research shows that half of American teens believe they are addicted to their smartphones.

Researchers believe that as teens become hooked on social-media apps, they are less able to regulate emotions, manage impulses, and make good decisions. Social-media addiction also creates lower self-esteem — the direct opposite of what teens use social media for. This addiction has also resulted in the nation’s first cellphone addiction rehab center for teens.

The bottom line is that when our teens spend an excessive amount of time online, they are on a journey to find their identity by comparing themselves to others. The fame, beauty, wit, status, and identity of other online teens become the measuring stick by which they judge their value. They can never measure up; they are susceptible to anxiety and depression.

A parent’s greatest error could possibly be turning a blind eye to how much time teens spend online and what they’re doing there and why. Fortunately, there are things we can do to help our teens using social media to appropriately navigate technology and avoid becoming addicted to its promises of identity, fame, and celebrity status.

Arguments over social media

Arguments over social media usage between parents and teens is not uncommon. Yet these discussions and boundaries are vital to protect and guide our children. Disagreements aren’t the same as fights, and the former don’t have to lead to the latter. That’s true when it comes to hairstyles and junk food, and it’s true where media choices are concerned.

How can you calm the troubled waters of an entertainment-related conflict? Authors Joe White and Lissa Johnson, in their book Sticking with Your Teen, offer the following advice. If your child isn’t a teenager yet, don’t worry. Most of the tips are adaptable to raising younger children — and even to keeping the peace with spouses:

Confrontations happen in practically every home, but they’re guaranteed when you and your teen aren’t close. How can you communicate in a way that helps you reconnect?

Here are a dozen tips for talking your way through conflict:

1. Start strong. Psychologists say the first three minutes of a conversation generally dictate how the rest of it will go. Begin a confrontation with a soft voice and respect for your teen, and it’s likely that the confrontation will be more productive and less destructive. As one teen testifies, “My mom and I had effective communication because I was treated as an equal. Not in terms of who was in charge (that was clear) but in that I had a voice.”
2. Let your teen speak first. Young people we surveyed said that if they have a chance to talk first, they’re more receptive to what their parents say. Once teens get to speak their minds, they’re usually willing to listen to the other side.
3. Don’t interrupt. It’s tempting to dive in and react to a piece of what your teen just said, but one girl described how that looks from her point of view: “My parents interrupt me and lecture/yell. Then while they’re talking and I want to get a word in, I’m yelled at for interrupting. It’s really unfair.” If either of you tends to talk nonstop, set a timer for two or three minutes and take turns.
4. Watch your tone of voice and body language. Model what you want your teen to do. When parents yell or use sarcasm or point fingers, kids figure it’s OK for them to do the same. They also put on their protective gear and get into “fight” position. If you turn angry, use a quieter, calmer voice. If nothing else, your teen will have to listen harder to hear you.
5. Explain what you want and why. Some teens say they just don’t understand what their parents are asking them to do. Have your teen restate what you’ve told him. Explain the reasons for your request or rule. For example: “I understand you’d like to be with your friends at the concert. But you’ve been out late every night this week and you can hardly get out of bed in the morning. That’s not good for you, or for your schoolwork. Maybe next time.”
6. Fight fair. No name-calling. Stick to the issue at hand. Don’t dredge up past failures. Avoid the words “always” and “never,” and don’t compare your teen with anyone — living or dead, related or unrelated.
7. Don’t beat your teen over the head with Bible verses or biblical concepts. Sure, it’s crucial to pass principles from God’s Word on to your child. But most arguments don’t qualify as “teachable moments.” Your teen won’t be too receptive if you declare, “I don’t care if it makes you look like a nerd! You’ll wear that orange sweater to school because the Bible says to obey your parents. Besides, vanity is a sin!”
8. Give weight to your teen’s feelings and opinions. You may think it’s just “realistic” to tell your teen, “So, the girls said mean things about you. Forget it. You have to get used to people doing that.” Instead of feeling like you’ve just prepared her for the real world, though, your teen will feel dismissed and misunderstood.
9. Don’t try to control your teen’s side of the confrontation. It doesn’t work! Let’s say your teen is “sassing” you. You could retort, “You will not talk to me like that!” Not a good move, since a statement like this challenges him to prove he, not you, controls his tongue. Instead you could say, “I’ll be happy to listen to you when you speak to me more respectfully.” Now you’re saying what you will do — something you can control.
10. Keep the issues in perspective. How important is this fight, anyway? Is it possible to work toward a win-win solution, or at least one everybody can live with? Are you choosing your battles wisely? Stand up for the values that are most important to you and to your teen’s welfare — but consider flexibility on lesser matters.
11. Take a break when necessary. If you or your teen are getting too wound up, take a time out. It doesn’t hurt to put a conflict on the back burner until people calm down.
12. When talking fails, write a letter. Writing gives you time to sort through your thoughts and express yourself carefully. It gives your teen time to respond instead of reacting defensively. A notebook passed back and forth can work, too; so does e-mail. That’s what a mom and dad discovered when their 13-year-old son wanted to see an R-rated movie; they kept telling him “no,” and he kept arguing. Finally Mom wrote him an e-mail, explaining their reasons. The boy never asked about it again, and seemed warmer toward his parents than he’d been in quite a while.

Disagreements can be healthy. Your whole family can grow closer by dealing thoughtfully and lovingly with media-related differences of opinion.

Social media’s unavoidable impact

• Exposure to harmful content on social media platforms can lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues
• The addictive nature of social media can result in reduced face-to-face interactions, impacting or impairing social skills and emotional development
• Social media creates a pressure to maintain an online persona. It leads children and some adults to believe they need validation through likes and comments

Today, handing a 14-year-old a smartphone with access to social media is more dangerous than we ever could have imagined in recent years. In fact, I think it’s safe to say most parents today still can’t quite equate Facebook, Instagram, Snap, or TikTok to a dark city street corner. Mainly because that’s not been their experience.

Are you willing to wait until it is?

Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.