Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen dozens of first day-of-school photos posted on social media by proud parents. No longer are pictures limited to beatific kindergartners with unicorn backpacks. Parents are badgering college students to text them first-day photos, leading to shots like the one I saw of a sour-faced University of Georgia senior holding a sign that explained, “My mother made me do this.”
Children today lead well-documented lives, starting in their cribs with enthusiastic picture-taking and posting by their parents and then, as adolescents, revealing themselves on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat.
As a result, children now have major benchmarks shared in public: first steps, first words and first days of school. But lives played out on social media hold risks as kids get older, from being canceled or even denied college admission because of their online missteps, and that increasingly worries parents.
U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued an advisory in May that social media could be harming young people’s mental health, noting that 95 percent of teens now use it. As an expert on the digital habits of kids and author of the upcoming book “Growing Up in Public,” Devorah Heitner delves into what it means to come of age with zero privacy and constant judgment.
In a telephone interview from her home in Chicago, Heitner said she often hears from fearful parents unsure of how closely they ought to oversee their child’s online activities. With social media now a fixture, Heitner advises parents to guide their kids through the digital universe rather than attempt to lock them out of it.
“Kids need these skills for their future professional and personal success. Many of them will potentially meet their college roommates online and work colleagues online. They will have to email professors and bosses,” said Heitner, who holds a doctorate in media, technology and society from Northwestern University and has taught at DePaul University, Lake Forest College and Northwestern.
Heitner recommends parents aim to become sounding boards for their kids rather than spies. She advises the same approach if parents fear that their child may be seeing content posted by hate groups. Parents could mention that some kids are being drawn into racist and misogynist conversations online and ask, “Is this happening to anyone you know?”
“If you indicate you have some idea of what is out there, it opens the door up for kids being open to you and you become a resource,” Heitner said.
Boundaries
She warns against overreaction to such common teen occurrences as sexting. “When two kids willingly and consensually are sharing images of themselves, I don’t think that should be a crime, and we lose credibility when we lead with the fear factor in talking to our kids because they know their friends have been doing this and have not been arrested.”
Heitner also acknowledges that “you can’t prevent every dumb thing your kid is going to do.” In some cases, parents may need to take cellphones from kids at night. But that isn’t a workable approach for older teens who need to learn how to self-regulate.
If parents want kids to understand boundaries in social media, Heitner says they have to respect boundaries themselves, and that includes asking permission before posting anything about their children.
Heitner credits young social media users with fostering a cultural shift in how we regard and talk about issues once considered taboo. “It is not all gloom and doom,” she said. “The more kids talk about surviving sexual assault, therapy, mental health and LGBTQ identities, the more I recognize that they are destigmatizing these experiences and feelings by sharing them and they are changing the world.”
Maureen Downey is a longtime reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution where she has written editorials and opinion pieces about local, state and federal education policy for more than 20 years.
