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Chris McKenna:
Hi, I’m Chris McKenna from Protect Young Eyes. In partnership with Worksighted, we want to bring you a series of short helpful videos so that you can protect your family from online danger. So, let’s just right in.
In a recent video we explored the question ‘what’s the legal age to give a kid social media?’ Another question that parents ask me goes like this, “Hey Chris, what’s the right age to give my kids social media?”. Now whenever a parent asks me that question I lovingly look at them, and I say, “You know what that’s a great question, but it’s actually the wrong one.”. I wish it were as simple as an age where we could just quantitatively say as soon as a kid gets to this age they’re ready. But as you can guess, it’s just not that simple.
In order for me to determine what the right age is for your son or daughter to be ready for social media, I would actually have to have some interaction with him or her. An example of the interaction would look like this, I would walk up to your son or daughter. I would stick out my hand. I would introduce myself, and say, “Hi, I’m Mr. McKenna. Nice to meet you. Who are you?”. Now if your son or daughter doesn’t know how to navigate that exchange, give me a firm handshake, look me the eye, and tell me his or her name then I would say that he or she just is not ready for social media.
In other words, I want kids to know how to navigate the human to human, the face to face, before we put them in situations where they’re trying to navigate relationships screen to screen. This is why we have all of our kids order all of their own food whenever we go out to eat, all the way down to my little guy who’s in kindergarten. I want him to be comfortable knowing how to navigate interactions with other human beings. That’s so important.
That’s just one of the tips that we give in a blog post about what the right age is to give your kids social media. I hope that this information is helpful for you. Please visit protectyoungeyes.com where you can read our blog. You can register for our biweekly parent newsletter. You can also find us on Facebook where we’re constantly providing the most up to date information for parents.
Thank you so much for watching this video. Protect Young Eyes in partnership with Worksighted wish you the very best as you take steps to protect your family today.
