I read a story a while ago of a public school in Sydney that was requiring all parents to provide an iPad for their kids at kindergarten. One parent objected noting that ‘iPads are not educationally proven – we think our kids should get concrete learning in writing and the basics throughout the whole of primary school’. However, by far the biggest concern for me would be the difficulty in protecting such young children who really are just starting to negotiate the world of real friendships, from the precarious and often narcisstic world of social media.

When it comes to teenagers, kids starting high school in Australia, you begin to realise that even if you want to say ‘no’ and shut down all access to social media, it’s actually quite impractical. You see, all their peers are on to it and they’re all organising stuff without your child. It’s not that friends are being deliberately mean spirited and leaving your child out. More likely it’s just practical; your child’s not on Skype or Instagram or whatever, so they miss out on being invited out for the movie on Saturday. Other times they might miss an update about an assignment or a last minute detail about an excursion; all easily answered in social media, but if you’re not on it, you’re out of the loop and miss the update.

If your school requires each student to have some form of computer, such as the Ipad, then they’ve automatically got access to texting services like ‘Messages’, which allows Apple users to communicate efficiently between themselves. But it also can be a kind of ‘in-house Facebook’ where students can play all the usual dirty tricks only in a virtual playground.

So what do you do?

I'd love to hear your thoughts and if you have any positive policies for how you let your kids use social media, just email me is fine!

I’m not a big fan of social media as I’ve said before. I’d be quite happy to never share another breath and just enjoy the moment myself. But, since the world is on FB and the like, I try and do what might contribute to bettering the world through promoting the good news about Jesus on social.

Pre-teens using social media

I’m against kids in primary school using social media; even things like Messages on the iPad. Why on earth do they need to be constantly buzzing each other? I mean a 7 year old doesn’t need that level of connection; life’s not complex and we are making it complex unnecessarily by allowing them to use it. So I’d say schools should have a policy that is set with parental support on the non-use or very limited use of apps like Messages. Yes, parents and the school need to have this out and work together as a unit to look after our kids. Parents along with teachers need to set the controls on the devices so they can block people, limit and monitor the use of such apps. Our policy is to allow access only for our pre-teen to organise a play date or similar. We don’t allow them to just bang away in meaningless chatter…not saying we’ve got it sorted but that’s our policy.

Teenagers using social media

Easing your teenagers into the world of social media I think sadly is a must. We can’t stick our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist. They’ll be asking you for Skype, Instagram whatever their peer group is using. Or if they have an iPad or IPod then Messages will already on their device. Now as an adult you can and should set up a family account, that allows you to set privacy settings, block strangers and monitor your children’s conversation with a live feed. Ideally this means you need an iPad or iPhone as well, but a poorer version is that you can look at your child’s device each day or week and monitor it that way.

By giving access we are helping our kids transition into this world of over communication that sadly is only in its infancy and behaves like it too. Positively, we can teach them how to behave. We can show them how to be gracious and write text so that graciousness comes through. We can help them gain self control too, by encouraging them to not respond to everything. We can teach them love as they ignore meanness from others rather than retaliating. We can guide them through how to communicate clearly and forewarn them on how easy it is to misread things in the world of texting.

So essentially we’ll still be parenting, just through the use of technology. See I don’t think we should just abandon them to the wild and let them bush bash through themselves. Kids need guidance, they need the qualities of good character that we as parents should already be teaching them, but they need to help to see how those things of faithfulness, grace, peace, love and self control apply in this virtual setting.

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