Give our children back their youth, beauty, confidence and self worth.
I am a single Mom of two girls aged 15 and 13. I have seen first hand the effects social media has had on both of them. They are both in counseling to help with self esteem, depression, and anxiety. I strongly believe these issues they struggle with are a direct result of social media. The constant bombardment and constant interaction they experience. My oldest has struggled with suicidal ideation for a few years. It started it age 11. 11! She is a beautiful young lady. She doesn’t think so. She sees herself based on what others say to her or about her. She bases her self worth on how many likes she gets or doesn’t get. They have both missed days out of school after things have happened on social media and they cannot face their peers. I have seen messages through multiple social media outlets such as: “ Why don’t you just kill your self?” , “Everyone hates you”, or “ You are nothing, just die already”. My oldest lost a friend last year to suicide. A beautiful young boy, 15 years old. He was handsome, an athlete, popular and smart. Last week another one of her friends attempted to take her life by hanging herself in the back yard. We still don’t know if she will be alright. Last we heard she was awake and alert and was able to move her left hand. She is 15 years old. Depression and suicide rates among teenagers has sky rocketed since the onset of social media. Our kids are being exposed to adult themes and adult issues 24 hours s day. They can’t escape it. Their frontal lobes are not fully developed and they cannot process what they are seeing the way an adult can. Because they are children! Instagram has an age limit of 13. Both my girls had Instagram accounts at age 11. When I asked them how they were able to create an account they said: “Easy just put a fake birthday”. I think Instagram needs to be held accountable to enforce their age requirements. That being said, who decided that 13 was an appropriate age for social media anyway? I think the age limit needs to be raised to 18. Or even 21. That is why I am writing this. We are losing our children to the internet. The internet is raising them, not us. Some will have opposition to my idea of raising the age requirement. They’re argument will be that parents need to monitor what their kids are seeing. Well, we can’t. There is no way possible to ensure that we keep our kids from seeing things they shouldn’t. If any parent were to say that they know everything their kids are exposed to online, they are lying. We are the first generation having to deal with social media with our children. And we don’t know what we’re doing. Our kids are growing up in a totally different world today. A world that we cannot relate to. We are failing them. We are allowing this. I feel sad for them and the things they are missing out on. Our children should not have to deal with suicide. Or violence. Or any other adult theme. They should be enjoying their childhood. Not dreading every school day. Or waking up and checking their phones to see how their day is going to go. Not only that, the way they interact with people is always through messaging apps or social media sites. They are not going to know how to interact or communicate with people when they are older. Their relationships will suffer in the future due to lack of effective communication. I hope I am articulating this well enough. I simply think our children are not equipped emotionally, intellectually, or otherwise to navigate through their world by way of the internet. We can do better than that. We owe them better. I want social media sites to raise and enforce their age requirements to 18 or 21. How do we make this happen? There are plenty of stories and plenty of studies out there confirming that social media and the internet is bad for our kids. Why are we allowing this? Something needs to change. Let’s let our kids be kids!
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