Dear Broanne,
We have two teenage daughters who spend a lot of time on social media. We know about Facebook and Twitter, but what else is there, and what do we need to know?
Stumped by Social Media
Dear Stumped,
We love social media. It connects us to our friends and lets us share ideas and thoughts that we might not normally share. But there are drawbacks if it’s not used properly. Some teens use it for online bullying, and it can hurt teens’ self-esteem if they take it too seriously. We all wait to see how many likes we get for pictures we post.
Here is a guide for parents on the most up-to-date social media apps.
Snapchat is a mobile app that allows users to send and receive “self-destructing” photos and videos. Photos and videos taken with the app are called Snaps. The sender determines how many seconds (one to 10) the recipient can view the Snap before the file disappears from the recipient’s device.
Vine is a video-sharing app that lets you film short, separate instances that can be linked together for a total of six seconds. Each short video plays in a continuous loop, and is viewable directly in Twitter’s timeline or embedded into a web page.
Instagram is an online mobile photo-sharing, video-sharing and social networking service that enables its users to take pictures and videos, and share them on social networking platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Flickr.
Teens don’t like parents “creeping” them, but we know they have to. Talk to your child and work out a plan together that you both feel comfortable with. For example, sit down one day each week and look at social media together so you can talk about what is appropriate.
As teens, we understand that you might get mad or upset about pictures we like and post. We want to talk to our parents and help you understand our social media world. Next issue, we will be sharing stories of our peers do’s and don’ts for parents on social media.
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