Children, Cell phones and social media

If your child has a cell phone, personal email address, social media account or internet-enabled device, we strongly encourage you to:

• Consider when it is actually essential for your child to receive a smartphone. More and more families are waiting to give students a smartphone. In the early Middle School years, a flip phone can suffice if your child needs a quick way to communicate with you.
• Set family rules for dictating when and where devices are used, including removing devices from bedrooms in the hours before sleep and not allowing them at the dinner table.
• Ensure that appropriate privacy measures are taken across all platforms.
• Regularly monitor your child’s text messages and social media presence. Nothing your child writes/posts in the virtual world should be something they don’t want you to see.
• Our children have a hard time really understanding that nothing online is truly private. While students crave a space for speaking intimately with friends, they also sometimes need guidance in learning how to be their best selves. For example, arguments over text or social media can quickly become very divisive. Talk to your children about how to discern when speaking in person is a better strategy than using a digital platform.
• Talk about the importance of privacy, kindness, exclusion, sharing and peer pressure as it concerns online communications. Our children need help understanding and navigating these dynamics. Don’t wait until there is a problem.
• Remind your children (often) that photos of themselves and others should be regarded with special respect and care, not distributed without permission. Photos ought to be thoughtfully sent to friends and/or posted with consideration paid to how the photos appear and, in the case of a group photo, how not being in the photo might feel.
• Review street safety as it relates to devices, including the danger inherent in crossing the street while texting, the importance of staying alert while traveling home and the need to be discreet while using devices in public spaces.
• Communicate with other parents to support one another. Let them know if anything feels uncomfortable or inappropriate.

More Resources:

• The Child Mind Institute: Media Guidelines for Kids of All Ages
• Janell Burley Hofmann’s Cell Phone Contracts
• Psychology Today: Why Social Media is Not Smart for Middle School Kids
• Jean Twenge in the Atlantic: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation
• Ted Radio Hour: Attention Please
• Wait Until Eighth

From the NYC Friends School Parent Memo- Thank you Laurie Jakobsen