Parenting in a Digital Age

Story by Marion K. Underwood

Adolescents use digital communication heavily:  text messaging, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and many more platforms that change almost daily

  • According to the Pew Research Center for Internet and Technology, most adolescents are heavily engaged in digital communication:  95% have access to a smartphone, 45% say they are online almost constantly, 85% use YouTube, 72% use Instagram, 69% use Snapchat, 51% use Facebook, and 32% use Twitter (https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/ )
  • Reading and browsing may be as important as posting; “Instagram is the homework that girls always do…” (Rachel Simmons)
  • 54% of girls and 40% of boys report that their social lives would end or be greatly worsened if they could not text (CTIA, 2008).

Why are young people attracted to digital communication?

  • As a means of connecting and gathering with peers
  • To explore basic developmental issues
  • To engage with the Imaginary Audience
  • As a source of peer affirmation delivered on a powerful intermittent reinforcement schedule

How might social media transform peer relationships? 

(Nesi, Choukas-Bradley, & Prinstein, 2018)

  • Altering the frequency and immediacy of experiences
  • Intensifying experiences and demands
  • Changing the qualitative nature of interactions
  • Providing new opportunities for compensatory behaviors
  • Creating entirely novel behaviors

What parents should fear most for their children.

  • Cyberbullying at the hands of known peers or even friends – even one experience can be devastating.
  • The possible negative effects of lurking, spending vast amounts of time reading giant social media feeds of hundreds of friends and followers.

Nothing about digital communication is inherently negative.  Adults can teach children a code of conduct for Digital Citizenship, for using digital communication for good.

  • Before you post anything on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or send a text message or email or IM, ask yourself whether what you are saying is honest, kind, and necessary. Consider whether anyone reading it could be hurt by what you are saying:  the person you are talking to, anyone you may be talking about, someone who wishes they were your friend, someone who used to be your friend, your family, or any adults in your lives.
  • Do not post, text, or send any information about your physical location or who you are with, for two reasons. First, broadcasting your location is unsafe.  Second, posting who you are with could easily hurt other people’s feelings.
  • Be considerate about when you send messages and communicate online, plan ahead if you need to ask something of someone, and never demand that people get back to you immediately.
  • If you would not say it to someone’s face, do not post it, text it, or IM it.
  • Remember that lying, telling secrets, and being mean hurts even more in cyberspace.
  • Think before you reveal.
  • Never share passwords, except maybe with your parents in certain situations.
  • Remember that all private information can be public.
  • Remember that anything posted digitally can be permanent. Even if postings are deleted, they can be retrieved through Internet archival sites (e.g. waybackmachine.org)
  • Stay away from Internet sites designed to hurt people’s feelings or designed to bring you into contact with strangers.
  • If adults outside your family try to contact you digitally, check with your parents before responding.
  • Pay attention to how much time you are spending on digital communication. You have one chance at this time in your precious life. Do you really want to spend all of it on YouTube, Instagram, and texting?
  • If a form of digital communication is making you upset, spend less time doing it or stop altogether.
  • Remember that great people talk about ideas, average people talk about things, and small people talk about other people.
  • Use digital communication to build each other up, not tear each other down.

What can parents do to guide their children’s digital communication?

  • Socialize children in this domain just as you would any other social context.
    • Decide when children should have access to each form of digital communication. Respect age requirements, but also feel free to set you own family rules.
    • Require that children talk with you before starting any new kind of online communication.
    • Make clear that you will be monitoring.
  • Monitor digital communication until the child is around age 18.
    • Keep track of passwords, spot check text messages, and be children’s friends and followers to see what they are broadcasting to the world.
    • Be reasonable in how you monitor digital communication, and respectful of the child’s developing autonomy. Do not post on your child’s social media, do not friend or follow their friends, and respect boundaries of their relationships.
    • Do not spend vast amounts of time reading the tremendous volume of digital communication that will likely be generated by your children and their friends. Guard against becoming overinvolved in the details of their relationships.  Spot check occasionally.
    • Intervene only when necessary. Speak to your child about their digital communication only when you see that something they are saying is exposing your child to risk or hurting others.  Address it privately, calmly, respectfully, and suggest what might be a better strategy. 
    • Do not let any monitoring of digital communication substitute for talking with your child.
    • Talk with children about their digital communication activities.
  • Set guidelines about when digital communication will be permitted.
    • Consider prohibiting digital communication while spending your valuable time driving children to activities, during family meals, during homework time, and certainly during the night.
    • Be mindful of how digital communication may be interfering with your child’s sleep. Establish the routine that computers are turned off at a certain time, and phones spend the night outside of children’s bedrooms.  Offer to charge their phones overnight, or set up a family charging station where all communication devices are turned off and plugged in for charging at a certain time every evening.
  • Model constructive, respectful, reasonable use of digital communication yourself.
  • Value the opportunity to shape your child’s digital communication for the rest of their lives.
  • Remember that nothing about digital communication is inherently negative. All of these communication technologies can be used in positive ways.  Digital communication will be a way that your child can maintain contact with you as they go out into the big, wide world. 
  • Digital communication has transformed all of our lives. Youth are the creators and the leaders in this new arena.  

Marion K. Underwood, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences,Professor of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, underwood@purdue.edu

Additional Resources

boyd, d.  (2014).  It’s complicated:  The social lives of networked teens.   New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

#BeingThirteen:  Inside the Secret World of Teens, a documentary about how 13-year-olds use social media, Anderson Cooper 360, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-9LtTtkg04&t=45s 

Common Sense Media – https://www.commonsensemedia.org/social-media