Who allows their child to use TikTok?

[BatsInSummer]

I've never understood why anyone would.
The very premise makes it so dangerous for kids. They only have one childhood.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c708v7qkeg1o

But it’s not, is it? The cases where the worst happens to children have almost always started with social media. The news is full of it. It’s not full of children who haven’t got access to social media and nothing has happened to them…

Not letting children access social media is not sheltering them, any more than notletting them eat shit food all day every day is sheltering them. My children are learning age appropriate life skills, and I’m doing my best to keep them from inappropriate content before they are ready. And no, I don’t think 13 year olds are ready to deal with the Wild West of social media.

But in just 5 years at 18, they are ready to live alone, handling bills, academic study, friendships and adult, sexual relationships, cooking, cleaning, drinking, access to drugs?

Seems very quick to go from mummy telling you what sites you can view via an app that let's her lock your phone down to full independence.

What does access to social media have to do with all of the things you mentioned? You don’t need social media to learn how to live alone, study or handle bills. My teenager is already responsible for buying her own train ticket to get to school!

Eldest is almost 15 and doesn’t have access to TT. We talk about online content, everything being not as it seems, inappropriate images, exposure to porn, etc erc. I don’t think she needs to see it or be exposed to it in order to learn how to cope with it. Every year that goes by without her accessing it is another year older and wiser. She hangs out with friends, she has access to some areas of the internet that are fairly dubious (archiveofourown for example) so not totally sheltered. She plays a physically risky sport and is learning how to handle herself against bigger, stronger people. She draws, she writes. Post GCSEs we’ll probably let her loose when there’s less risk of the distraction affecting her.

It's very hard to say no and go against the tide and be the 'bad guy'. But as a parent that's your job.

Your job is not to tie your self in knots trying to find reasons why it's probably ok to say yes, or to have said yes. Once you've said yes and it's out of the box it's even harder to backtrack but it's SO worth it.

Anyone still thinking it's ok to give primary age (and the next few years up) kids access to these sites should spend a bit of time looking at child safeguarding advice, and the reasons given.

Behaviour and attention span levels are awful at our primary. Most of them are spending hours a week on roblocks ect. I know because they tell me all about it. Our HT has had to send out an email about a year FOUR showing other children inappropriate material on the way home from school on a youtube video shared on whatsapp on their i phone.

My 11 year old can text and take pics on her phone and that's all. She has kids youtube on her i pad but no devices go upstairs. That's how it's going to stay for the foreseeable.

There are some brilliant books on this subject, such as 'inbetween' and 'the teenage brain'.
Scientists and experts in their field who knows a great deal more than most about how children's brain's develop, what they can and cannot process, how they learn, and what, in reality, they need in order to be prepared for adult life.

Agree @BatsInSummer parents can be so naive. Every year in my school we bring in this excellent Internet safety speaker/psychologist .She has worked with those who have groomed children online in prison so really knows both sides of the spectrum. She has also worked with the guards and schools in cases where children have sent and received and sent on nudes. (It is an offense to even be in the text group they are shared in)

In the morning she does a workshop with the kids and in the evening with the parents. I attend both. It is fascinating to watch the parents nod along smugly to her talk when I have heard what their children have said that morning. Most children were changing their age to get on sm meaning they were connecting with older people, many had spoken to strangers online. Some had shared name of school and what clubs they played for. A few were posting TikToks and YouTube videos from their bedroom and many had seen pornographic images by accident. Lots felt they couldn't tell their parents what they had seen as they were using accounts they didn't know they had.Many also had two accounts for each social media, one their parents were on and one they were not. There were also multiple Whatsapp groups leaving certain people out.

To hear the parents then say , well I check their phone and it's not my child was frightening when I had seen and heard the evidence that it was .

This is a rural primary school with most children having parents with professional jobs.

I'm quite happy with my child being sheltered if this is the alternative.

It is fascinating to watch the parents nod along smugly to her talk when I have heard what their children have said that morning. can you not see the link between this and I quite happy with my child being sheltered if this is the alternative?

Your children will be no different and your belief that your children are sheltered away from all of this could also be interpreted as misguidedly smug.

Not at 10/11/12 years old they won't which is the age group I am talking about here. My child is 10 already.They have literally no access to a device that allows this type of behavior and neither do any of their friends.

I have a 10 year old and sadly there are some children in the class that do have access. Often it’s play dates and older siblings providing that access or else being at a sports game with some of the other children playing things on their phones whilst waiting their turn to go onto the pitch that you need to watch out for.

It’s shocking you say parents are naive yet fall into that same category yourself.

@LoftyRobin i think it’d be a good idea for you to look up some of the more data / science driven research around allowing children unfettered access to the internet. You seem to be going on your feelings and, unfortunately, you are not an expert.

Lack of frontal cortex development means children are physically unable to reason and manage themselves online like older teens/ adults can do. It’s not something they can ‘learn’ until the brain is developed. It’d be like asking a 1yr old to learn to do maths by continual exposure. It can’t happen until the brain is ready.

A poster above has linked a couple of books that are great starting points here.

My 11yr old is very ‘street’ wise about the internet and we have continual dialogue about the good things and the bad things. What she doesn’t have is unfettered access to social media like TikTok as it’s not age appropriate or safe.

Even on Pinterest, which she uses for moodboards, she’s been served content that is pro-anorexia. We have an open dialogue so she chatted with me about it, but she was really really unsettled. And this is the more mild end of the internet Wild West.

You can’t wrap them in cotton wool. The world doesn’t work that way, when they are younger - sure. When they are teens, they are going to find things out and you can only protect them by educating them. So they can at some point, make good decisions and look after themselves.

It's shocking that you think you know absolutely anything about my child and my situation and that you think the behavior I posted about is inevitable.

I have never seen a child at the side of a pitch with a phone and she plays 3 sports, that's absolutely unbelievable and a safeguarding issue. Shame on those coaches .

I keep an open channel of communication and we discuss what they watch. They do the same with their dad. We have found that demonstrating traits like empathy, equality and compassion override the most damaging messages our kids may get from sources like the Internet or the peer group. It doesn't match their lived experience so they reject it. Sometimes brutally.

That’s a good start. But I’m still not sure why you would willingly expose kids to porn/ beheadings/ misogynistic content when you could just…not. It’s not banning them from the internet - it’s just having some controls. It’s just not something they can consistently do on their own when young teens.

Unfortunately, as I see in my job, even the most educative, open and caring parents can’t always outrun what their kids are seeing online. Particularly with bullying, conspiracy and misogynistic content.

Because all of those things will always be out there for them to see anyway. I'd rather raise the fact that there was a spate of people publicly executed in viral videos than them come across it first. Because they will come across it. I first watched one of those videos in my normal SM feed not realising what exactly it was.

I think you're going to find it a lot harder to keep up with your kids if everything is forbidden.

This makes no sense to me. I can raise it with them in case they somehow accidentally come across it. But they’re not likely to come across it if they’re not using those specific sites. Yes. When they’re older they may. But when they’re older they’re not going to end up disturbed, traumatised 12 years olds!

it’s like saying, they’ll drink anyway so might as well get them drunk at 12 or give them drugs - so they learn how to handle it. Mental health is as important as physical.

No its more like they'll drink anyway, so if they want a glass of wine with dinner at home at 12, I'm not going to say no and freak out about it.

And they are less likely to come across it if the default is no access to social media. You seem to think we are pretending that it doesn’t exist. We are talking about this stuff, not denying that At some point they probably will come across it, but it is my job as a parent to ensure that they don’t come across it too soon. The idea that they are going to see it at some point so why bother policing activity is nonsense.

Well yes. That would be what I’m arguing for exploration with limitations. So one glass of wine, not a bottle. I thought you were arguing the opposite - that they shouldn’t have limitations. Therefore in your analogy they could glug back a bottle.

Except that all of the data says otherwise - children whose parents have strict rules around alcohol consumption have fewer issues with alcohol in the long term.

Social media useage is heavily correlated with worse mental health in teens, particularly in girls. You seem very keen to dismiss lots of data in favour of your own prejudices.

No, you see, when you talk about it, you talk about why one wouldn't watch it even given the chance. For instance, we talked about watching the Charlie Kirk video and why we aren't going to look for it (husband accidentally saw it). We spoke about privacy, dignity, compassion, respect and gratuitous violence. I am quite sure that my kids would choose to switch off because we value those things.

Teaching them that there will be lots of things they can do, but many things they shouldn't do, is key for when I cannot police anything they do any more.

Teaching them that there will be lots of things they can do, but many things they shouldn't do, is key for when I cannot police anything they do any more

this is just basic parenting - not an argument for unfettered Internet access. As @DeafLeppard says, you’re wilfully ignoring all the research and data. That’s your prerogative but it seems strange to argue it’s wrong, based on nothing but your inexpert opinion.

As I said upthread, I work with children affected by many of these internet issues - and in many many cases the parents were ‘sure their child wouldn’t do that/ look at that’ etc because they’d ’taught them well.’

The issue is their frontal cortex (of the brain) is simply not developed enough to cope - they can’t make the right decision all the time, just as a baby can’t get up and walk. It’s physical, not moral.

No matter of great parenting can help in many instances.

This is American but a good explanation. Teenagers are not mini adults

www.apa.org/news/apa/2022/social-media-children-teens

I disagree that playing a game where yoj forbid things and they get around them is more productive than what I do.