Working with teenagers is truly a challenging responsibility. I always knew how true of a statement that is. However, I always believed that with time and experience, it would be a challenge that would become easier. After 10 years of experience, working with them, I can definitely attest to say that the statement still withholds its value. It has definitely not become easier. Through time, things change, and with those changes it brings new challenges. They are challenges that no one is really ever prepared for.
Going down memory lane, I remember that when I first began teaching, Snapchat was the popular app. In its time, the app seemed harmless, however, the app itself began to bring serious issues and my then teenage students began to make terrible choices in oversharing pictures that really should not have been shared. Students didn’t understand the gravity of how the oversharing could then spread and be distributed unwillingly.
In the most recent times, Snapchat is not used as much and Tik Tok is the current, popular Teen App, just like it was mentioned in the article, Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022. Just like with Snapchat, on its own, it truly seems like a harmless app. However, it has also brought upon serious issues like some of the Tik Tok challenges that would be shared on the App. At some point there was a challenge of damaging the school bathrooms, and my school was definitely affected by that. I believe another time, there was some kind of fire challenge, and our school surely had some real fire drills that year.
I have an 8 1/2 year old daughter, and I cannot imagine the challenges I will then need to face when she becomes a teen. I believe the following articles kind of give me an insight.
Teens and Social Media
The article, How to prepare kids for social media use, explained the importance of parents understanding why they need to teach their teens how to correctly use social media and how it can affect their lives. The article gave multiple suggestions as to what parents can and should do when their Teens are at an age that they want to have Social Media. Some of those suggestions included: having a ‘birds and the bees’ social media talk, teaching them that social media is not private, and it’s forever, if they are in doubt to don’t send it out or post anything, to be part of your child’s social media experience, to teach them accountability, to communicate with other parents, and to model good online and off behavior.
As I began thinking about my daughter, there were some suggestions that I already had in mind, such as having those conversations with my daughter of what Social Media is, how it should be used, and how it can affect her. I feel I have been doing my best to hold her accountable for her actions so explaining it to her that with Social Media it is no different are things that I had already considered. I have also held the philosophy of modeling good behavior so that my daughter can also learn it, so it would not be different in Social Media. I appreciated the additional suggestions that I had not even thought about before such as asking how her experience is with social media just like how I always ask her how her day at school went and to communicate with other parents when needed.
As I was reading this article, it didn’t really spark any ideas on how I would use that information with teachers or students. It did, however, give me the idea that it would be great to offer a workshop at the school that would help and guide parents on these suggestions so that they can apply them with their children. My school holds a Breakfast with the Principal meeting once a month, and one of those days, a workshop like that could be offered for our parents since as parent, I found this article super helpful.
Digital Self Harm
The article, Digital self-harm: What to do when kids cyberbully themselves, really caught my attention because it is a topic that was unheard of for me. The article explores this new, digital form of self harm that some teens have been exerting on themselves. This self harm involves the Teens creating Fake Social Media Accounts that are used to write mean posts and comments about themselves to their own, real accounts for a variety of reasons. As a parent, this is something that is quite frankly concerning, and I worry that my daughter could potentially do something like this. The article said that this type of self harm is harder as a parent to miss than a cut because it is something that you can’t really see.
The article also gave suggestions to parents on how it can be detected and what they can do. Some of those suggestions include: monitoring the Teen’s Social Media accounts, having an open and honest communication, discussing the dangers that can crop up online and let kids know what digital self-harm is, understand what drives the behavior, and counseling.
The article geared it towards parents, however, I believe that teachers and counselors should also know about this issue and address and discuss it in the school during Advisory, Mental Health Workshops, or School assemblies. In addition, the schools can hold meetings for the parents and address to them that this a new potential threat to their Teens so that they can be alert on what their Teens behavior is like in Social Media. I, for example, had no idea of this being a thing until I came across this article.
We all need to do better and work together to combat the challenges that out Teens are facing in Social Media.
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