Hi all, EB here! I wanted to talk tonight about a topic that has been an issue in my household and I would love to hear your feed back! So…how young is too young for social media? Where do you draw the line? It’s these questions that my husband and I are dealing with right now with our 10-year-old daughter.
It happened about 6 months when my daughter asked me to charge the iPod so she could use to play games on at her volleyball tournament. Of course I agreed, those tournaments get extremely boring. Like bang your head against the wall boring. I was putting away laundry in my closet when I saw it light up with a notification with a very familiar icon…SNAPCHAT! That’s right people! In my opinion it’s one of the scariest of the social media sites. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s an app you can download that allows you to send a picture to an individual that they can see anywhere from 1-10 sec and then it disappears, not to be seen again. If you don’t have your settings correct ANYONE can send you a picture. This app is huge with the sexting fans. Not that I’m worried about my daughter sending unnecessary photos of her self to others. It’s more of what people could send to her.
Unfortunately the internet is not like it was when I was growing up. I know I’m making myself sound old but it’s the truth. I still remember the dial-up internet just waiting to see what nice people I could talk to in the different chat rooms. It’s back when everything was so innocent and before all the creepers invaded the world-wide web. I went as far as exchanging my home address with two people (one was a boy) to be pen pals. We talked about swimming, how our practices compared to each others and what school was like. Very innocent. But it’s not like that anymore and to be quite honest it scares me to death. I’m not stupid, there will come a time that my daughter will get to enter that world of social media. That’s inevitable. We live in a world of technology but when do you put your foot down?
My daughters friends and her cousin all have iPhone and are all allowed access to these apps. I am in no way looking down at these parents because they are all very kind, sweet people and their children are the same but I just feel that my child should not be exposed to this yet. Am I the only one who feels that same way? Because I’m starting to feel like I am the only one who does. Yes I could monitor what she does and who she communicates with but once a picture is sent on snap chat you have no way to see what was ever sent.
@adabot on @snapchat (Photo credit: adafruit)
So needless to say when I saw this notification pop up on my iPod I freaked out. Who are these people, why is this happening. Once I talked to her and tried to explain how dangerous what she was doing was I was promised nothing like this would happen again. But not 4 months later she downloaded the app on my parents iPad and sent me a picture through Snapchat. All I could do smack my head. Did she really just do that? My daughter is academically very smart but lacks in the common sense department which she proved very clearly when she did that. Needless to say she was grounded when she got home and tried to explain it to her again the dangers. As I was looking through at who was sending her pictures, two names did not look familiar and I asked her about them. Sure enough she had no idea who they were or how they got her screen name. I believed her ( I’m great at catching her lying – it’s a gift of mine I’m very proud of) and then I immediately deleted her account on Snapchat.
I still don’t think she gets it. How far do I go to scare her not to do this? She is only 10. Think back on what you did at 10 years old.
I was a young mother and it still blows my mind on how quickly the web has evolved in such a little time. I guess all I can do is stick to my guns and hope and pray that I have raised her right so that when she gets older she makes the right decisions in life.
Thanks for listening!
♥EB
BTDT Mama 