To hope that not all teenagers are into this looks and personality social media validation stuff?

[Hippospottymus]

I am a mother of toddlers so have all this to come, but my DNs and friend's children are all over Facebook, Instagram, snap chat with this "like this and I will DM you what I really think of you/tell you if I think you're pretty/rate you on a scale of 1-10."

Is this par for the course of having tween/teenagers? I find it fucking frightening. Do your teens get upset if people don't respond or validate in the way they want?

I agree with the unscientific theory that it's girls who are more into social media. My 11 year old uses whatsapp to message her friends and uses Facetime to talk to them. She's already asked for Instagram/Facebook and got all huffy when we said no.

My older child is almost 14, when he was 13 we said he could have Facebook but he's just not interested. He texts his friends if he wants to speak to them, and they all meet up and chat on Xbox live. I do know though that there has been a lot of trouble with girls in his year with social media - setting up fake accounts to bully each other, bitching about selfies and competing with each other to see who has the fakest nails, fakest eyelashes and most orange face in their profile pictures.

i don't have any social media but my dd2 [17] is quite opinionated on 'all this crap' - her words, she agrees it's mainly teen girls but there are a lot of adults - mainly young women doing this too. it'll pass in time.
i would say to op and others with young dc there will be other things going on by the time they are older, social media as we know it might not exist as we know it now. might not be such a bad thing.

My son has become fixated with getting the perfect angle of selfie in the bathroom after 1 hour of waiting to wee lli was like
What the hell you doing in there
Lie was taking selfies in the big mirror 🙄

I was always taught that being president of your own fan club was not good. Look at me ! Im so gorgeous! Etc would have got a deserved dose of derision.

Just take the piss out of the slapped- up fish pout photos. And point out the ugliness of the half starved dead eyed models.

I'm glad I didn't have this sort of thing as a teen as I'd have been into it. It's not so much vanity as insecurity, a time when you want to be validated as attractive to the opposite sex, or whatever sex you are interested in. That said I wasn't particularly into ridiculous amounts of personal grooming - though my reaching the age of 16 coincided with the grunge era, and you were a bit of a fancy pants if you washed daily, to be honest. I wasn't massively vain until my early 20s.

It's all part of being young these days. Many teenagers will be obsessed with their looks, after all clothes and make-up are geared up for them and heavily advertised.

Remember the Bruce Springsteen words, (is it from Dancing in the Dark?) "Wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face" a typical teenage lament - so glad I grew up and grew out of it and it and so will the teens of today and tomorrow.

teens use facebook for all sorts of things

some use it to unite around an interest (e.g. theatre, their particular brand of music) and keep each other up to date about events

some use it to drum up interest in charity or raise awareness about political issues

some use it for physical validation

but they are probably the ones who would have reached out for physical validation in any generation they had happened to be born in: who would have compared dance cards in the 1920's and wet their petticoats to look suggestive in the Victorian age

Do you see these teenagers often in RL? There's no correlation between what they present online and what they're like in the flesh. Scowly sideboob- volunteering in an orphanage before Oxbridge. Backbreaking pose to show unfeesible arse and tits- just got engineering apprenticeship. Vacuous rabbit ears over passed out friend- in a hut in Africa working and catering for 3 families.
Don't worry.

When I was a teenager I remember not knowing if I was good looking or how good looking I was

^This. I have also a very, very attractive relative. But she grew up in Ireland in the 1940s and no-one really commented on looks. Perhaps it was seen as distasteful or sinful to do so (pride). Nowadays little girls are constantly told they are beautiful even by their parents. I grew up in the 1970s where myself and teenage girls were fairly au naturel. Now some of the teenage girls I know demand Mac eyeshadows and professional nail jobs at age 13, and discussions about Victoria Secrets underwear. To be fair, its only some teenage girls, but its something I never came across ever at their age. It all seems rather strange to me, but perhaps I am missing something ...

Both of mine have nothing to do withthat sort of thing.

My girls are 15 &18, one runs a popular Intersectional feminist blog and Instagram account, the other is a cosplayer and has a couple of instagram accounts for that. She has supported other cosplayers through tough times. They use their superpower for good 😂😂

Apocalypse, that is so true

Some do, some don't - tbh the same teens (esp girls) who are looks obsessed would have been just the same in the 80s when I was that age.

I've got a 14 y/o, her online life revolves around Harry Potter obsession fandom and plenty of her friends are just the same (substitute Dr Who / Sherlock etc as appropriate).

Teenagers have done silly, shallow things since the dawn of time and probably always will do, they also always grow up and grow out of it.

This ^^

I have a nearly 15 year old daughter. Sometimes she posts bollocks on social media, sometimes she doesn't. She'll grow out of it, she's young, I know I did some pretty stupid shit at 15

I was at school during the Myspace era and when FB just came in, so an older teen.

I thought Myspace was the most vapid thing ever and rebelled by refusing to have an account.

The ones with all the glittery pages and endless selfies were the "popular" girls in the year who were obsessed with doing their hair and smoking in the toilets, not really read a book between them.

A lot of them have now got babies and are still posting selfies of them with their little ones, from what I've seen via an old friend.

You get those girls in every generation. If you're not like that, there's no reason your children will be like it. It's down to how they're raised.

Some kids do, some kids don't, it's not a big deal unless the adults make it into one. i agree with BillSykesdog .

My dsis and I did similar silly things in the 60s, when we were dopey adolescent girls, we've turned out highly qualified, 'normal' types.

Laughing at saying its down to how the child is raised. It's nothing to do with how someone is raised whether or not they post vacuous posts on social media. Over night my child became one of the blonde pouty wearing too much makeup picture posting teens. Did I not raise her properly?

Exactly Zucker If your definition of raising a child 'right' is to ban all social media. The only thing that will happen is that they'll obsess about it and find way to rebel !

ThinkingForever, for every child who grew up in the 40s and thought it was sinful to comment on looks, you could probably find a dozen who grew up in the same era and thought a lot about how they came across both to their own sex peers and to the opposite sex. If you want an example of how silly girls behaved in the early days of the 20th century, Agatha Christie's autobiography is a place to start. But probably any autobiography/biography of a middle or upper class girl would do.

My 13 and 15 year old sons are always posting pouting or frowning selfies. I think it is funny for the most part.

I did get onto them when they have posted 'rate my looks' posts. I hate the fact that they want other people to rate them.

My 17 year old son has never been into FB that much. He is on it but if he posts it is usually some cooking video. He posted a selfie at his prom two years ago but that is it.

Laughing at saying its down to how the child is raised.

Me too

4 teenagers in family here, none are as you describe.