No parent wants to imagine their children all grown: joining dating sites, social media, and driving- parents’ greatest fear. Also, parents usually fear to have “the talk” with their children, especially about social practices. But if you have, good for you!

While parents are striving to teach their children about the dangers of one social media network, another one suddenly pops up. In this guide, you are going to learn about the dangers of social media to your children, best practices, and tools to use to protect your children.

To begin with, children like to share everything on any platform they come across. As reported by Statista, 6% of children often use Twitter and Facebook but the most popular platforms now are Instagram and Snapchat because they can easily share videos and images through their mobile phones. Discord and WhatsApp are also pretty popular, and so is TikTok, YouTube, YouNow, MeetMe, Money, and HouseParty.

Risks continue to increase as more children continue to use social media- kids are exposed to thieves and online bullies.

Parents must protect their children from:

• Meeting with people via streaming applications.
• Sharing their details and stop them from being tracked by research and advertising firms.
• Sharing a video, audio, images that could make them lose opportunities in the future.

This may overwhelm most parents out there, but it is worth noting that there are tools that can protect children. They help prevent children below the age of 13 from using apps that are meant for adults. You can use parental controls on an Android or iOS device to discourage them from downloading content and apps unsuitable for them.

The only way you can protect your child from social media is discouraging them from using it, which is almost impossible to do. 

More than 95% of American teenagers own a smartphone, hence they can access social media anywhere, anytime. Teenagers use social media most of the time they spend online.  It is where all their peers are anyways.

So, How Do You Protect Your Child

If you want to protect your children from social media, then you should first brief yourself. Make sure that you know about the latest social media trends and how your child is using social media. We shall discuss more different threats that children are exposed to on social media in our future blogs. But here are some more steps to take to protect your child.

Create A Family Media Use Plan

The media should always work for your good and adhere to your parenting style. If used appropriately and thoughtfully, the media can improve daily life. Otherwise, it can displace a lot of crucial activities such as family time, exercise, face-to-face interaction, sleep, and unplugged downtime. Handle media like any other environment in your children’s life. So, set limits. Know who your children’s friends are- both off and online. Know the apps and software that they use.

Screen Time is not Alone Time

During screen time, always co-engage, co-play, and co-view with your child- this promotes social interactions, learning, and bonding. Play a video game with your child. It shows good gaming etiquette and sportsmanship. Watch a program with them as this will allow you to share your thoughts and experiences with them. Do not just monitor them but interact with them so that you can vividly comprehend what it is that they do and are interested in.

Be a Good Role Model

Always depict good manners and kindness online. Children are gifted at mimicking. So, reduce your use of social media. This will create more time to reconnect with your children if you are playing and hugging them instead of simply staring at a screen.