This is Part II of a five-part series:
Part I – When Their Childhood Exists on Virtual Platforms
When it comes to understanding our kids and their lives on social media, we have to understand how they view the world both online and off. With the peer group at the center of their focus, children and teens ages 11-19 are constantly striving to fit in and impress their social circles. Social media platforms are quickly becoming a dominant method through which teenagers are promoting themselves for popularity. So how does child development affect one’s usage of social media? Let’s take a look!
Adolescence is when the peer group becomes an important entity as teens begin to branch out on their own and prepare to leave their parents’ homes. As these kids begin to strike out on their own, they look for new groups to which they can belong and be accepted. It is a very primitive instinct to search for comfort through belonging, and during the teenage years is when our children are first learning how to form genuine bonds with people outside of their immediate families.
Parents who have already been through high school can attest to the existence of social cliques and the desire to fit in. However, the difference between high school in past decades and high school today is that today’s students aren’t limited to searching for popularity while on school grounds. Rather, they are now pressured to prove their worthiness 24/7 through handheld smartphones and all other technological devices with a WIFI connection. As the lunch table is being replaced with Instagram and Snapchat, the quest for popularity and perfection no longer ends at 4PM when the final bell rings because the Internet retracts the possibility of an “OFF” button.
Given that social media allows one to highly curate a persona, there is more pressure than ever before to present perfection and an aura of wonder. In the age of “The Rich Kids of Instagram”, measures of wealth and consumption are driving kids to dedicate large portions of time into creating the optimal picture. Couple the need for the perfect photo by dozens, if not hundreds, of Snapchat streaks to maintain (see Part 1 of this series for an in-depth look at streaks) and teens are spending hours each day attempting to promote an image that is cool enough to grab the attention of their peers.
The pursuit of peer acceptance is not entirely negative, though. Striving for belonging in the peer group can be beneficial for later in a teen’s life because it allows the teen to develop interpersonal skills that can strengthen non-familial interpersonal relationships. Learning how to form a bond with new people on one’s own is a crucial life skill, and it is during the adolescent years that this skill is heavily cultivated. Forming a community with the peer group allows the adolescent child the foundation for building one’s own family in adulthood. In this, we shouldn’t discourage the creation of the peer group during the teen years, but rather we should discern ways to protect our children from the 24/7 pressure to achieve popularity that exists because of the internet.
So how do we support our children’s development in a world in which they are constantly surrounded by “likes” and “upvotes” measuring their purported popularity? First, we can understand how their brains are growing and how their perception of the world is changing. We must meet them where they are with compassion and empathy. Then, we need to help them set healthy boundaries that will safeguard them from the pressures of having to be perfectly curated at all hours of the day. Encourage your teen to commit to a consistent time of the day that is designated as “technology free.” During that time, foster participation in an activity that is done purely for enjoyment and not for the potential of being posted on social media. Talk openly with your teen about the pressures to be popular. Remind your teen that it is normal to want to fit in, that it is important to build genuine and meaningful relationships with peers, and that the rank of one’s social media profile doesn’t necessarily dictate the strength of an interpersonal relationship. This is a great first step to take in building a sounding board from which you and your teen can conquer the social media frontier together!
Have other suggestions of how to connect with your teen on issues relating to social media? Let us know! We want to hear from you, your stories and your experiences.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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