Waterloo parents look to limit kids’ access to social media | #childpredator | #kidsaftey | #childsaftey

“In some people’s eyes, I may be a little old-fashioned, but I’m trying to protect him. I hope he eventually realizes this is not to punish, but to protect them,” said Shanna, a mom to two boys aged 11 and 12. Shanna’s last name is not being used to protect her sons from repercussions.

Instead of a phone, Shanna and her husband decided to get their 12-year-old son a Garmin watch. It allows them to check their son’s location, send voice messages and text with their son, leading to more independence, without needing a smartphone.

“We thought it was the best alternative,” she said.

Since giving her son the Garmin watch, Shanna said, he spends more time with friends, because the watch has allowed them to build trust and communicate more easily.

“I find he’s not glued to the TV or watching YouTube. It’s actually made him go out more because now he’s like, ‘OK, Mom’s going to trust me to go out because now she knows where I’m going, but I still have the independence,’” she said.

While her son is able to use Facebook Messenger Kids to talk with friends, Shanna won’t allow him to create other social media accounts. She said they have conversations about social media and why they believe it is unnecessary for him at 12.

“I’ve told him, ‘I’m this way because it’s a proven fact. It’s not safe for you guys, it’s predatory, it’s declining attention spaces.’ I show him the facts,” she said, adding she keeps the conversations about difficult topics such as the harms of social media “as PG as I can.”

Conversations around social media and technology use are not a one-time task, said Jessica Rizk, a social development studies lecturer at the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University and senior research associate with Signal 49.

“The most important thing is to have these open lines of communication,” she said.

As a mother to a four-year-old and a two-year-old, Rizk said, social media is not yet an issue, but she is already having early conversations around it. 

“It’s always important to have those open conversations where you can talk about misinformation, privacy, cyberbullying, even.”

 She said children need to be taught how to be safe while using social media.

Rizk said conversations around technology and social media need to be a combined effort between parents, schools and the community.

“It’s a communal effort,” she said. 

When the prevalence of social media began increasing and younger children were starting to get cellphones, Rizk said there was little emphasis on teaching students the skills needed to handle social media. She said parents left it to schools, but schools weren’t taking on the responsibility of teaching these digital literacy skills. 

“There needs to be that sort of conversation across all parties involved in supporting students (in their) social media use,” she said. 

“I would say for parents who are verging on the extreme, like banning, it’s not great,” she said. “In this age of heightened social media, heightened AI, allowing young folks to develop the judgment, the critical thinking, that literacy they need to navigate technology” is essential.

Rizk added there is no single answer for how families should handle access to technology and social media, as it depends on the child’s age and maturity.

“As a parent, they know their kids the best and can understand what makes sense in that context,” she said.

For Cambridge parents Mackenzie Blain and Samantha Becker, they wanted a way to contact their daughter, Ellen, but weren’t thrilled with her iPad usage.

“It’s obviously a fun device and there’s positives to it,” Blain said. “But we’ve noticed shifts emotional-wise, what she reacts to, how she reacts to things.”

While their daughter is still allowed to use her iPad, Blain said they monitor it more. As for contacting their daughter for things like running late to pick her up, Blain said, they decided a flip phone was the right decision.

He said the conversation around the phone focused on it being more like a lifeline. “If you need to call us, if you need to get a hold of us, that is what it’s for,” Blain said they told their daughter, underscoring that it is not a smartphone and it must stay in her bag while at school. “It’s purely just a contact thing.”

While Blain’s daughter is only eight, boundaries with technology, including Roblox and YouTube, have changed over the years.

“It’s gone through many iterations,” he said. Currently, their daughter is only allowed to access YouTube for a limited amount of time on the weekend, but Roblox has been removed.

“It was a big conversation but, again, we noticed patterns and then once that was gone, we noticed that is wasn’t missing from their life,” Blain said.

He said with his daughter’s ADHD, the game increased her being hyperfocused and irritable, leading her to get very upset if things didn’t go her way. Since removing the game, Blain said, his daughter quickly filled her time with other activities. 

Cambridge mom Rebecca German decided to increase technology restrictions for her daughter after her daughter began posting videos on YouTube without her knowledge.

“I had to very firmly sit and have a discussion with her about how and when people see that online, they have the ability to track what country we’re in, what city, what house and thereby follow us and find our routines and potentially take her away from me,” German said.

She handled the conversation this way to protect her daughter’s innocence while underscoring the importance of keeping her safe. “It was a very scary conversation for her. She was in tears; I wanted to throw up. It was a very abrupt awakening for both of us.”

Before this situation, German said what her daughter watched was limited to age-appropriate content. This meant not watching makeup videos, shows depicting romantic relationships or content where women are made to look or act “sexy.”

However, since this situation, German has not allowed her daughter to access YouTube at all. “It’s more to protect her innocence and to stay at a level that she understands,” she said.

German knows her daughter will eventually want a phone. 

“She is going to want her independence to some degree before 13, so a flip phone is definitely a good alternative.”

German added she would have preferred to use a flip phone for her other children, who are now 20 and 22, when they were younger, as it would have been easier to monitor.

As she fields questions from her children about social media, Rizk said, she uses these questions as a way to be mindful of her social media use.

“Sometimes I really have to train myself to (not) mindlessly just scroll because he’s seeing that,” she said.

Rizk said she uses these situations to also explain her usage to her son, such as using it to contact friends. 

As parents face questions from their children about getting a phone or social media accounts, Shanna encourages them to reflect on the decision they are making.

“We need to be more careful about exactly why are they letting their kids have these social media accounts so early,” she said. “I just think it’s unnecessarily giving kids more access to things that they don’t need to have at such a young age.”