This webinar, hosted by the Child Mind Institute, provided helpful guidance and resources for navigating social media. We encourage you to watch the recording. Here is a review of some of the key points:

• Social media isn’t all good or all bad. The most important component to supporting your child in their use of screens is to nurture open communication.

• Activity on social media can be seen as active and passive. For example, using a mindfulness app to help center yourself could be considered active, whereas mindlessly scrolling is more often considered passive. Active participation is better than passive.

• Similarly, one should consider what social media time is displacing. If one is passively scrolling rather than connecting with friends and family IRL, that’s more problematic.

• For parents to truly understand what their kids are doing, they need to also be using social media apps. In order to earn credibility in their house rules, adults must also follow the rules.

• Girls and LGBTQ+ youth are often more affected by the positives and the negatives of social media than boys.

• The resources mentioned in the webinar were exceptional. They are:

  1.  Center for Humane Technology: Resources for controlling tech use, many of which are endorsed by young people themselves:
  https://www.humanetech.com/take-control 

  2. Log Off — youth-run advocacy movement:

  https://www.logoffmovement.org/

  3. Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (And Adults Are Missing):
  https://www.behindtheirscreens.com/
  4. Center for Digital Thriving resources (from the Harvard Graduate School of Education): https://digitalthriving.gse.harvard.edu/resources#list
  How to use the resources

  5. More webinars on the topic from Children and Screens
  How to talk to kids about online bullying: article

  How to talk to kids about online bullying: webinar

  Anxiety and digital media: webinar

  Depression and digital media: webinar