If you decide to give your child access to social media, you’ll want to come up with a plan that outlines expectations for your whole family. Working together to create a plan helps everyone use social media in a healthy way. A good plan can help minimize conflict, support good choices, and address misuse.
Before you sit down with your child to create a plan, you may want to think through social media data collection and check the privacy settings on social media platforms that you and your child are using.
There’s a reason this is called a family plan. Rather than a contract just for your child, consider a plan that covers everyone’s social media use.
Kids wish we would spend less time online. They benefit when we model good habits. So hold yourself accountable to healthy social media use too.
Bullying is a risk on social media. Posts online can be misinterpreted or hurtful. Talk together about how to interact with others online and add those rules to your family plan. Kindness to each other extends to the online world.
List the ways you’ll keep your personal information safe. Make it clear that your child should seek help from a trusted adult if they feel like something unsafe is happening.
Make sure to write down not only what social media your child can use, but when and how they will use it. Consider adding your own limits too. Research shows that children who use social media for more than 3 hours a day double their risk of anxiety and depression. So consider time limits and times of day that screens must be turned off. For example, at night time so that sleep is not disrupted.
Let your child know what will happen if they break the social media use rules you establish. Make sure any consequences are big enough for your child to care, but not so big that you won’t stick to them. For example, taking their device away for a week.
Your plan should change as your child grows in responsibility. Set up a date to revisit the plan. Then keep an eye out for how things are going.
Ready to get started? We have a template you can use with your family.
Riehm KE, Feder KA, Tormohlen KN, Crum RM, Young AS, Green KM, ... & Mojtabai R. (2019). Associations between time spent using social media and internalizing and externalizing problems among US youth. JAMA psychiatry, 76(12), 1266-1273.
Online and video gaming isn’t all bad or all good for children’s mental health. There are things you can do as a family to decide what is important to you around gaming and how to set boundaries and limits on games that you can all agree on.
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