Although I’m a Security Expert, I’ve had a hard time keeping up with how my kid uses social media and what issues arise from it. So, I wanted to write a blog post on what social media looks like to me as a father of a 13-year-old. Read my tips and make your own decisions and rules regarding these things.
Children aren’t helpless, and they may be “digital natives” compared to my generation, but they are still children. They aren’t equipped to recognise or deal with adults who seek to manipulate them. What’s worse, teenagers naturally think that they are.
What is happening on social media
We all know Russia has their “troll farms”, that seek to promote their viewpoints in social media and sow discontent and division among us, but that is just the tip of the iceberg.
- China is spending literally billions of dollars yearly on cognitive warfare, some of which is directed at us and our children. And they aren’t alone; other nations are also spending serious money.
- Different legal and semi-legal “businessmen” are trying to hook us on their apps and platforms by manipulating and exploiting our serotonin pathways.
- Malicious people are seeking to exploit and manipulate us for their own purposes. Monetary gains, predators, drug dealers, and other lowlife characters can operate quite freely.
This is what you are arguing with on social media. See the image below.
An operator can even buy these as pre-packaged products; it’s not that complicated. Some of these farms are talking with our children. So, what can you or should you do?
Educate yourself first about what kind of apps are out there, and what are the potential problems and threats with them.
- Publishing content can be a lot of fun, but I advise adults to supervise what kind of content is being published, what kind of comments appear on social media regarding that content, and how it is affecting your child.
- Sharing profile and personal info. There is probably no need to share too many details with the whole world.
- In-App purchases can lead to hefty bills.
- Social media apps are also a tool for bullying. This can take on many forms, some of which are hard to grasp for most adults.
Raise awareness with your children
Schools are also doing this, but at least with my own kid, they have seriously failed. Here’s a good starting point for these discussions.
You need to discuss it at an appropriate level and then come back to the topic later as they get older.
Let’s look at a few common apps
- Snapchat: Even if you don’t use Snapchat yourself, I highly recommend that you try to understand how your kids are using it. In Snapchat, you can share the profile and location, and people make “friends” with strangers they have never met. It is very clear that there are predators in the app. It has an age rating of 13 years for a reason!
- TikTok: A gift from China. It’s peculiar that they are giving it to us but have banned its use inside China. Also, about 20 other countries have already banned or restricted it. There have been articles about “TikTok challenges”, where people are encouraged to do something dangerous or even lethal, and young people have died. But addiction to the content on the platform is a nuisance in itself, and especially kids tend to take a lot of “truths” and influences from the content on the platform.
- WhatsApp: This is somewhat mandatory at some point. So many school and hobby activities are run in WhatsApp groups. The app itself isn’t that dangerous – you can share location with people, which is handy when you need to meet someone, but you can set a restriction for that, and it will stop after one or eight hours. However, did you know that WA is now also a place to publish content, and you can establish “channels” there? And not surprisingly, these are targeted by abusers.
- YouTube: If your kid wants to create new channels on YouTube, monitor and discuss what kind of content is appropriate and check the comments and messages on the platform. Otherwise, unsupervised use of YouTube means getting exposed to disturbing content at a young age. No matter how much they try to censor and monitor the content, there’s always stuff that goes through the cracks and isn’t appropriate for young people. There’s also a ton of very good content, certainly.
You may set screen time or other rules, but there will be workarounds. I think it is better to accept this than try to forcefully control and monitor the devices and access of older kids. As the kids get older, they have a right to privacy and that should be respected.
AI will make this worse
AI will be a great enabler for more predatory behaviour. Deep fakes have already supercharged bullying, since it is now so easy and straightforward. So-called conversational ads will come to us all, but children are especially vulnerable once these get embedded in their apps and platforms. They may not realise that they are having a “conversation” with a bot that wants to manipulate them. While advertisements targeted at children may be legally banned in some countries (like Finland), that won’t stop this development.
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