Several big mistakes parents make with their child's social media use--and how to avoid these traps (Pt. 2)

A whole bunch of sad stories about well-meaning parents who made parenting mistakes in the context of their child's social media and digital life.

I hope summer is treating you well. I find it glorious! I am basking in my garden and my grandkids—two of the greatest joys in my life!

I have spent the last few weeks digging into the Surgeon General’s sobering report on adolescents and social media use.

I shared what the recent report said about the risks and benefits of social media, as well as some recommendations for parents and kids. You can read those pieces here, here, and here.

After that, I started sharing my thoughts on what this reports suggests about parenting, and a lot of cautions, based on my experience as a father, teacher, and administrator (here and here).

I have some very specific cautions I want to discuss, some big mistakes I have seen many parents make (myself included) when it comes to their child’s social media use.

For the most part, these are easy things to do, and easily corrected, but they are the sort of small things that can lead to big things. They are mostly attitudes, habits, and dispositions.

I do sincerely hope it is helpful to hear cautions and learn vicariously from other parents’ hard lessons. It also takes a good deal of time to put these together, so am putting today’s piece behind a partial paywall.

You can read a good bit for free. After that, it will ask you to subscribe. It’s only $5.00 a month (or $50.00 a year). You can even buy a monthly subscription to read and then cancel it.

As with nearly everything, I sincerely believe that good, sustained, engaged parenting is sufficient to protect your child from much of the possible harm.

Note, please, that I said neither “perfect” nor “flawless” nor “free of lapses and mistakes.”

“Engaged” and “sustained” are different. And “good”, in a parenting context, has more to do with your heart and mind and willingness to try again than any sort of perfect execution.

That said, I believe the level of parenting required for this is pretty significant, and based on my experience I am not sure that most parents are matching their parenting to the challenges of a teen and social media.

Okay. Let me rephrase that. This parent has not been—is still not—doing all he should. I think I am not alone, based on what I have seen.

My child is now nearing 17 so the horse is out of the barn in some ways. I would have done things differently if I knew what I know now.

I think I have been too sanguine perhaps. With my older kids, I was pretty prescriptive and granular. But over 30 years, my whole parenting approach has mellowed and become more collaborative and trust-based.

I still believe in this approach in general. That said, phones and social media constitute a new challenge and I think I built too much of my phone/social media parenting on trust and collaboration–more than was wise.

To be clear: my child has not done anything to ruin that trust in the sense of doing bad or sketchy or sneaky stuff, breaking rules, etc. 

Rather, I trusted a teenage brain to have better control over a device and apps specifically designed to make his brain crave more and more dopamine hits. There are just too many vulnerabilities teens have, too many ways their developmental stage makes them unable to manage this well.

Think of a toddler in a room with a big bowl of their favorite treat. You tell the toddler not to eat any and then leave.

You know what is going to happen when you come back, right?¹ It’s not that the child is bad or malicious or dumb or sneaky or weak. You have just put them in a situation almost perfectly engineered a situation to hit them at their weakest points.

That, I submit, is a reasonable analog to teens and social media.

So, how do you parent in this area? Kind of like the old joke about voting in Chicago back in the days of machine politics: you do it early and often (note: that was just an old joke that fits here. I am not making any statement whatsoever about the integrity of our elections!)

There are a lot of experts out there who specialize in this stuff. I suggest you do some research. I like to get conflicting ideas from smart people because the old Hegelian dialectic helps me think deeply (The dialectic suggests that one idea (a thesis) provokes another, contradictory idea (antithesis). As these two ideas collide and conflict, they lead to synthesis, ideally, something that helps bring out the best of both ideas, while shedding some of the less helpful or less true ideas. The Hegelian dialectic is probably one of your very best friends in parenting.

I have mentioned before that I like to follow the work of Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a profound and passionate skeptic who is super-smart and has the data to back up his points.

I also like to follow Dr. Devorah Heitner, who is more tech-positive. Dr. Heitner is a wonderful person—I “know” her a bit online. She is gracious and thoughtful, super-smart, and has studied this stuff almost from the beginning and she’s a parent.

Start there if you like—but look around and find your own experts. Make sure to include people with whom you disagree. That is critically important—you need an interlocutor who will push back and force you to confront possibilities that go against your prior assumptions and preferences. There are all sorts of cognitive biases, tricks our brains use to make us think we are being rational and open-minded, when, in fact, we tend to use motivated reasoning to come to conclusions that agree with our existing beliefs.

Contrary arguments help us overcome these and help us be better able to help and protect our children.

There are lots of people who can help you get it right and give specifics.

If I may, however, I am going to tell you a whole bunch of ways you can get it wrong. These are traps and pitfalls I have often seen.

I don’t mean to make this critical or snarky, but I have seen a lot of really sad parenting mistakes. All of this comes from things I have seen over the years in many contexts, especially with hundreds of families I have known and worked with professionally and also in church and other community settings.

1. Don’t ever say,—or even think—“My child would never do that.”

I don’t know how it works, but every time people say that there is a big fall that comes. I can’t explain it, but it happens with astonishing regularity. Just wait if you don’t believe me (but please believe me and be warned!). Is it fate? Karma? A malicious fairy? An angel who follows around recording these things? Nemesis? Or, as the ancient Greeks would likely say, hubris?

I suspect it is a benevolent form of hubris. It is human for us to see the best in our child, and almost inevitably, we start comparing our child to others, often comparing our child’s best moments against another child’s worst moments. 

We also make assumptions based on a unique perspective and context. We know our child’s intentions, vulnerabilities, struggles, hopes, and dreams and we balance anything undesirable or negative against all those things. “Well, yes, she was super mean to the other kids but that’s just because she’s insecure and so this is protective.” Or “I know he shouldn’t have said those words, but he just wants to fit in so badly.” You get the idea.

These basic parenting instincts are natural and, I suspect, are probably why the human race has survived this long.

The problem is that your child is the other child to parents, teachers, coaches, and other kids. We parents may contextualize our child’s mistakes and bad behavior, but no one else is doing that. They are just judging the child based on their actions and impact.

But that can create hubris, a sort of pride that blinds us to our child’s problems and human flaws (and we all have them!). And, thus blinded, we overlook or miss things. Since we don’t know to correct our child, the child goes uncorrected and is set up perfectly to make the mistakes we swore they never would.

As much as we love our children, remember that they are unfinished humans. They have all the quirks and flaws and bad habits and vulnerabilities of any other human. They also have virtually no decision-making ability, almost no risk assessment skills, and tend to act impulsively. They are flooded with powerful hormones, their brains and bodies are changing, and, to top it off, they have no life experience to mediate any of this.

Of course, your child is going to mess up! Of course, my child is going to mess up. Everyone’s child is going to mess up. If we don’t see this, if we aren’t aware of it, or at least open to the possibility, that suggests our view is very rose-colored and not very real.

I have talked more about how to triangulate to try to see a more balanced view.

2. Don’t romanticize or overestimate your child and their maturity

Continuing on that theme, let me address a specific kind of hubris. I will admit to falling into this trap many times, but I’ve seen it so often, I feel in good company.

Everyone loves their child and we all want to think well of them. But do not be fooled that your child is mature. They are not! I promise you, they are not! They are immature. Not mean or bad or stupid. They are still developing.

I know just said this above, but please repeat it like a mantra. This is one of the best ways to shield your child from making big mistakes—and remember that a lot of mistakes and impulsive acts on social media can have outsized consequences.

Their brains are being re-wired and during the teen years, they have little to no ability to make good choices regarding risks. They have very little life experience or earned wisdom. They often act impulsively and the way they feel in any given moment may motivate them far more than prudence and thought and long-term outcomes.

It is critical to repeat this because, as a wonderful counselor I know says, “We have to be their pre-frontal cortex.”

That is at the root of parenting in the digital age. We have to set things up so they are as safe as possible. That requires a lot of time and effort and thought.

I have seen so many great kids who presented as very mature. What I learned from years of working with them (anywhere between eight to three years, and then continuing acquaintance in high school) is that they weren’t mature. They acted maturely, but it was essentially an act—not a sneaky or deceptive act. It was sincere, but an act, nonetheless. They were adult impersonators, doing a great act. and sometimes the act produced good results.

It wasn’t that they were trying to be fake. It’s just that parents, teachers, neighbors, coaches, etc., responded to their acts with high praise. What kid will resist that? Praise led to more impersonation, which led to more praise, and so on.