Social Media

Opportunities and Challenges

Social Media has exploded in popularity and impact in the recent years. While initially aimed at adults and older teens, it has quickly evolved to be incorporated into the digital world of all ages including young children.

Social media brings many opportunities but also many challenges. Teachers, parents and carers are quite rightly seeking to tread carefully in this area to protect children.

Here are a few guidelines to assist:

1. Abide by age limits. Facebook, for example has a 13 yr old limit. If you allow underage access to this or other sites, think about the underlying message you are sending to your children. Younger children can still be involved and educated about social media through parent modelling how they use their social media sites (e.g. sharing a family photo on Facebook), talk about issues such as language use, face tagging, hash tagging, privacy settings and so on. There is also increasing use of social media in children's games, on TV news and current affair shows and so on. There is explicit education on social media at school too via safe positive avenues such as The Learning Place and class blogs.
2. Monitor internet use:  It is well advised by all research and experts that internet use for primary aged children should be monitored. Find out how to set parental limits on your technology. This can limit the type of sites, hours of use and so on. If your child has any subscriptions - make it a condition that you know all usernames and passwords. Consider a good web
3. Teach basic safety and netiquette. Research has shown that explicit and frequent instruction relating to digital citizenship is needed to help our children use the internet wisely and make smart, informed choices.  This generation of 'digital natives' may be good at USING technology, and they may even know more about the technology than their parents in some cases, but they are not automatically wise. Developmentally, they need help and guidance from parents, carers and teachers to develop a good sense of digital citizenship. A useful analogy is that you don't do anything on the internet that you would not do in real life:  

• We don't give away personal details 
• We don't talk to strangers (unless in an environment that is checked or with trusted adult guidance present)
• We are not left in parks or shopping centres by ourselves when young - don't leave children to roam unattended on the internet.
  
• Children happily use 'house rules' and 'classroom rules' . Set up your 'house rules' for their internet use too
  
• Behave with good manners, kindness and good sense.
• Alert parents or a teacher if anything seems or feels wrong. They will be able to assist.
• Don't say or write anything that you wouldn't want mum, dad, teachers or the world to see. Once you write it or send a photo, you can't take it back and you can't control who shares is.
• Check out the wide range of resources on digital citizenship for children at http://www.ictatcc.com/digital-citizenship.html 

1. Be aware of new fads:  when a child comes home and says 'Everyone has it" or 'Everyone is doing it" it is rarely true!! It's just exaggeration or emotional blackmail.  Some to definitely stay away from are Ask.fm and the Snap Chat app.  Article on Ask.fm
   
2. Read the terms and conditions:  If you actually read some of the outrageous terms and conditions some of the apps and sites have - you would not accept many of them. For example, some apps that are unrelated to 'email' or 'phone' apps, are asking to give full access to all of our contacts details. Now we wouldn't give away the names, phone numbers and addresses of our friends and family normally  - why on earth would we allow strangers to have access to this? For what purpose? And then if you learn WHERE the companies are, you'll find some are in places with a very different view on human rights. Again, I recommend you read the terms and conditions, as tedious as that is. If you are in doubt but really want an app, look for 'reviews' from independent and trustworthy sources. 
3. Highlight how digital media has helped improve our world:  while it might be easy to focus on the negative, the digital world is here to stay and will become increasingly prevalent in our lives, according to the trends. It is important to focus on how this can help us, how it can change lives for the better, how it can improve our experiences, and even how it can make companies and governments more accountable. 

It is always prudent to remember that what goes on the internet stays on the internet and forms part of our digital footprint.  Let's make our contribution respectful and positive.