Since yesterday was a subscriber-only podcast, I’m doing another free-for-all Friday Thread! And, because I’m researching another new book chapter and need your help/your stories.
It’s also the LAST reported chapter in the book, which feels like a particular milestone! (This book has 13 chapters, plus an intro and conclusion still to come. Remind me to write shorter books in the future, cool, thanks!) And I saved a big one for last because it’s only about umm, how kids experience anti-fat bias, diet culture, bullying and beauty norm indoctrination on the Internet. And what we can do about it. So, you know, just that little can of worms.
I especially need to hear from parents of tweens and teens:What are you worried about, in terms of what your kids learn about bodies and fat bias online? Did all the revelations about just how much Instagram and Facebook push disordered eating content on kids make you rethink your family’s relationship with screens? Or is it more just like we’re drowning and no one is coming to save us?
Have you found any good in social media, in terms of the conversations it helps you have with your kid? I do often hear from parents of fat teenagers that Fat Instagram can be a real joy and opportunity to expand their definition of beauty to include themselves. (Crystal Maldonado and I also discussed this.) So can we get more of this, please?
If you’re a parent of a younger child or a child not yet on social media: How are you starting to wrap your head around this issue and what questions or concerns do you have, specifically, in terms of how going online might speed up your child’s on ramp to diet culture?
And if you’re not a parent but are a teacher, thinker, consumer of Internet culture, etc—you know I always value your contributions too.
Bottom line, feel free to use this thread to process any and all feelings about the intersections between Internet culture, kids, and fat bias. You can also reply directly to this email if you have thoughts to share privately. I will obtain your permission before quoting from any of these conversations in the book.
As always, please remember that this is an anti-diet, weight-inclusive space. Let’s keep things friendly and follow my Thread Ground Rules.
In addition to being frequently useful for book research, I adore Friday Threads because we are building such a smart, supportive community here—I come away with some new perspective or helpful tip literally every week. Join us!
Quick reminder: My kids are on spring break next week, so I’m skipping the Tuesday essay and the Friday thread to go be vacation-y with them. (We’re headed to Joshua Tree and Palm Springs, hit me up in the comments if you have tips!) You will have a fun Thursday podcast though! And we’ll resume our regular posting schedule on Tuesday, April 19.
My two oldest kids are 13 and 10. We've just decided we do not do social media in this house. I have it for my work, but am trying to figure out how to get off of it completely in the next few years. I do not think everything on social media is all bad! It's been the source of so much good for me! But I do think social media platforms are built with ill intent. So the kids don't have it. My kids - so far - have FAR healthier body images than I did at their age and I credit some of that to how we talk about bodies in our home and some of it to the fact they're not scrolling through fitspo, even inadvertently. I just don't think tweens/teens have the perspective that's necessary to see beyond the world the algorithm serves them., I don't even know that I have that perspective. This doesn't mean we don't do screens or learn from online voices. I am just trying to figure out how to seek them out, instead of being served what an algorithm thinks will make me feel mad, sad, or consumer-y. (Is that a word? no.) Thankfully, social media is seeming less and less cool to some kids. They're disillusioned with the platforms we've built them as they come to understand their actually coded with anti-Black, fatphobic, misogynistic, transphobic bias.
I'm heartened to hear that this is even feasible. I told my son sort of jokingly I won't want him on social media for a long time and sorry/not sorry if I'm a hardass about that and he (9) said "Mom, I don't even want to be on social media."
I once heard from some parent that when their teens are interested in something happening on social media they'll look at it together so that they can discuss it together.
My partner teaches high school and has found that her kids don't understand the ease and huge distortion that filters and photoshop provide. They tend to assume that all images on social media are real and untouched, so my partner has started doing a mini-lesson on how images can be manipulated.
She's also found that boys are highly influenced by seeing the "superhero body" everywhere, but there's little acknowledgment of that and it's harder to reach them. Many girls have had at least a little exposure to feminist thought that gives them a framework to talk and understand why image manipulation is so prevalent. Boys don't.
When I have kids, I am somewhat tempted to take the Luddite path and allow only the tiniest access to the internet. I am still not sure how I'm going to navigate this.
That's interesting about boys. As the parent of a boy I have tended not to worry as much as I would with a girl, but it's something to keep an eye on as he gets older.
This reminded me of a good Vox article I had read recently about steroid use as the open secret behind a lot of Hollywood actors' "superhero bodies": https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22760163/steroids-hgh-hollywood-actors-peds-performance-enhancing-drugs It gave me a lot of insights for approaching the topic of muscle dysmorphia with teens - like, those bodies are not the average & definitely not natural!
Fellow mom of a young male child. I appreciate the conversations about masculinity and body image that Justin Baldoni, Liz Plank, and Jamey Heath are having on The Man Enough Podcast.
What my partner has found is it's real hard to tell what's going on with boys--she actually gave a presentation to her district about it and there doesn't seem to be a real smoking gun (that would be apparent to teachers, at least). Boys tend to go down the orthorexia route which is harder to discern from harmless things like enjoying sports, and some of the signs look like typical teenage naughtiness like sleeping in class (she found out one of her boys had a pretty severe disorder because he couldn't stay awake in class--he was waking up at 4AM to work out for three hours before school and not eating anywhere near enough, so he was constantly exhausted).
My 7 and 10 year old daughters got iPads for Christmas, and even though my partner and I have been really diligent about what apps they can use, the ads are so awful. I paid for some ad free versions of apps they like but sometimes, we still see the ads (so frustrating) and I don’t know who to contact. Lots of very graphic, clearly totally fake weight loss ads… and ads for other apps- my 7yo asked for an app where you’re a girl who’s trying to “get prettier” for a guy. Hard pass.
Not a parent! One thing that is always hard about reading about teens and technology is like...how pervasive is the problem, really? I read a really long piece (who knows how long ago, sometime during the panini) about teens and face tuning. And it was terrifying. As someone who didn’t grow up when Instagram was around, I shuttered to think about teen me adjusting my face and body and posting those pictures. Anyway, I think that parents need rigorous guides on how to teach media literacy at different ages. But also, phones provide a lot of opportunities for community, and I don’t see how kids today can grow up without them.
I *do* think there has long been an element of handwringing over the dangers of screen time for kids, and that a lot of our standards are tied up in performative parenting BS. But/And also, the social media piece is an added layer of scary. And, as you say, is a necessary part of engaging with the world now.
also not a parent but I teach university students and I just want to say that I agree that in the ideal parents would guide their kids on social media. I have some students who have been downright scarred by parents (and Sunday school teachers?) talking about the dangers of social media and not actually teaching them to manage it. I don't know what the answer is bc I also remember that piece and being terrified by it
I got Instagram when I was a Freshman in college when it was brand spanking new. And it was so unlike today. I had a series of single photos on there about how my thumb was healing from a run-in with my razor. lol. This is to say, I too, am scared because it's so different than what I even grew up doing.
I wish there were more & better resources online for gender non-conforming youth navigating body image issues. Especially given the current climate around anti-trans legislation at the state level, gender non-conforming and trans kids are as vulnerable as ever, with potentially fewer options to explore safely and value their bodies. The internet might be the only place some youth could ask questions and find community, due to classroom & athletics bans and restrictions on gender affirming healthcare. Once resource I've offered to youth in my life is Scarleteen: https://www.scarleteen.com/tags/transgender
Not a parent myself, just a doting auntie, but I still wanted to weigh in!
I’m a new parent of an almost 1 year old, and I worry how my little girl will see herself once she’s exposed to a lot of the toxic stuff on the internet. I want her to be able to talk to me about what she feels and experiences online. Looking forward to reading everyone’s thoughts. Also…. Virginia, be sure to get date shakes at Shields and visit the Living Desert to feed the lorikeets and giraffes. It’s magical!
My kids are 12, 14 and 18. I find myself amused by all the comments by parents saying they don’t or won’t allow their kids to use social media. If kids want social media, they don’t need parental permission or knowledge to get it. All they need is a device, theirs or someone else’s. It all depends on your kid and whether they are willing to follow your rules. My 18 year old got around every parental and school control. I have found that conversations with my 12 and 14 year olds have been far more effective than hard and fast rules. They are also very different kids than the oldest. We have not purchased phones until around age 14 and my kids have always been the last of their peers to get them.
1000%^^. Also allowing acces while monitoring at younger ages is how they learn healthy, safe online practices. It’s not going away (until the apocalypse). It’s like learning to drive - they need supervision at first and lots of conversations and guidance about how to interact with strangers/friends/peers.
Would love to chat with you if you're up for a conversation about this? (Email virginiasolesmith@gmail.com if so; it seems to be the easiest way to connect with folks off thread bc Substack doesn't show me commenters' emails.)
My almost-16-year-old was just telling me today that she has 1k+ followers on TikTok, where apparently she posts skincare and makeup stuff. I honestly don't know wtf to do or think about this. I do know that thinspo/fitfluencers and social media were a big part of what triggered her anorexia as the pandemic began. One of the many benefits of the residential ED program she did last summer was that right before discharge, her therapist sat down w/ her and her phone and they went thru who she followed, whether she had "sick" photos hidden somewhere, whether there were friends she needed to unfollow, etc. It was hugely helpful to have an actual ED professional handle that conversation (and spot the more insidious stuff that wouldn't necessarily have jumped out to me).
This is fascinating and so important. Would love to chat with you more if you're up for a book research interview? (We can change names, etc as needed.) Hit reply to this comment in your email or email virginiasolesmith@gmail.com. Thanks!
As the mom of two boys, I have no idea what to do to keep them out of the mania that is social media. I'm pretty determined to keep them phone-free till 16 and then hopefully give them a "dumb" phone but like with friends and school does that even really matter? I'm concerned about their own body image but I'm also really concerned about the sexualization of girls and the idea that a beautiful girl has to look the way the girls on the internet look. ugh. As someone who got off Instagram at the beginning of the pandemic and only recently got an account again (and only to follow a few people/help out at work) I'm amazed at how quickly the app has changed in the 18 months - 2 years I've been gone. Like, it's not even the same? The rate at which it all changes is truly astounding.
I have three daughters (14, almost 11, and 4). I originally wanted to wait until 13 or 14 for phones, but we moved to an area where most kids get them around the beginning of 5th grade. We live biking-distance from a nice town square and town pool, so the phones allow them to go to those places by themselves at 10 or 11. My two older kids are on Tik Tok and Instagram. One posts mostly art pieces and the other posts about a video game. My worries about diet culture are mainly related to Tik Tok. The videos I’ve seen my older daughter watch often feature very slim and filtered girls. My younger daughter’s Tik Tok feed is mainly cats, so I’m not so worried about hers yet.
These are the questions I think on often. We have decided to not get our kids phones till they are able to drive (so probably at 16) and I'm good with that as of now. My oldest is 9 so we have some time- thankfully. The internet can be a positive place but overall, I think it is negative. I have heard so many stories of teen girls during the pandemic and their struggles with social media and it is so painful.
I don't know what the answer is but I think delaying getting our kiddos phones, setting app controls when they do get phones and doing our best to have good relationship with our kids is the basic strategy for now.
I have a friend whose oldest is 11. The parents of the kids in her friend group have agreed to wait until the kids are 16. It seems like friends not having phones either would help so much with the waiting!
Yes! The friend factor is big. And we've experienced our daughter going to someone's house and they have different technology boundaries than we do and it is uncomfortable.
for what it is worth, I have some friends and their rule for their teenagers is no phones/tablets in their bedrooms at night. so, once it they wander to their rooms for the evenings, phones stay in the kitchen. I don't have kids, but this seems like a healthy guideline to me & so I'm sharing it around in case other folks find it helpful
We have this template in place with our kids now - they are 8 and 4 and don't have social media but do watch stuff or play games on their iPads for an hour before dinner most nights. Screens go away after dinner (and get charged in our mudroom or living room) so I'm hoping that gives us a helpful precedent when they get older and those screens eventually become phones.
When I think about phone usage for my kids (who are too young to have to worry about this just yet), I think about the smart way my cousin approaches it. It's like DOR for technology (but still imperfect, like DOR). I was at their house when their tween went to get ready for bed, and they reminded her to put the "house phone" back in its spot before she left.
The house phone is an old iPhone that has charging station on a side table in their living room. They explained that as working parents whose daughter got home from school before them, they needed her to have access to a phone in case of emergencies, but didn't want her to own a cell phone. So the phone lives on this charging dock, and she has access to it when they're at home, but it doesn't go into any other room with her. Her parents have access to it as well. They noted that since there are some natural limits around the phone (the parents decide where and when it's used, and what apps are put on it), she really doesn't tend to "binge" the phone. In fact, she was headed off to her bedroom to read for a bit before bed when I was there.
The later the night got, her parents showed us all the text notifications that were showing up on the phone from her friends. It got to be 11-12 at night, and the phone was still blowing up. They said it often continues into the wee hours of the morning. I thought it was a really smart way of making sure your child isn't staying up all night doing who knows what on their phone, while still helping them learn about healthy limits and listening to what their mind/body is telling them to do around technology - sure, it's fun to text with friends or go online, but it's also fun to go read a book and get enough sleep. As for diet culture, the parents were able to monitor content a lot better with the phone being out for the whole family, instead of belonging to the tween only.
Apr 11, 2022·edited Apr 11, 2022Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith
I would love for you to do an episode about ADHD and ED. Every single ADHD article talks about food w/r/t treatment. Rejection sensitivity also plays a tremendous role in susceptibility to ED. Again, very hard to find resources or info on the comorbidity of ADHD and ED and how they feed each other (sorry, terrible pun).
Also: I believe unhealthy social media use is a symptom, not necessarily a trigger. In my experience, a child who is not vulnerable to ED will not go down those rabbit holes. Peer and social pressure are still the main triggers, along with poor self image and/or OCD and/or ADHD. Keeping an eye on the kinds of shows my son watched (eating contests, baking/cooking shows, Joe Rogan and all his toxic masculinity, etc.) helped me understand where he was mentally.
There isn’t enough support or expertise around athletic, cis-boys who develop ED. My son was orthorexic/bulimic before Covid and there was no residential treatment center that seemed like the right fit, nor would he have been accepted, because he wasn’t underweight enough, although he was very unhealthy. Luckily we found a brilliant therapist who was an expert in Maudsley/FBT approach and covid lockdown was actually the exact right scenario for implementing it. He is healthy, muscle-bound and happy now!
I feel like we can't have the kids on the internet conversation without having the porn conversation. And I think porn access is strongly related to (naked) body norms which are so damaging. My kid is young, so I'm just in the knowledge gathering stage and reading everything I can to prepare.
My kiddo isn’t quite 4, so we have some time, but I don’t know how we’ll navigate this as he gets older. As a former awkward/bullied kid, I’m relieved that I grew up without the added pressures of social media, but I did stumble onto a bunch of pro-ana/pro-ed Livejournal communities as a teen (and spent a lot of time there), and my parents to this day have no idea. So I’m aware that we can’t control or even necessarily monitor everything our kid does online. (Fwiw, I was using a family computer in the living room, heavily monitored, and I still found all kinds of ways to explore things that would have appalled my parents.)
Someday I’d like to help my son use the Internet to find art and good writing and justice movements and new ideas and safe places to learn more about himself… but I know we’ll also have to teach him about all of the shit he’ll need to wade through to get there, and the way that images (in formal advertising and the ‘native’ advertising of social media) can make you believe really insidious things about yourself that aren’t true.
I want to help him define and shape his values in a way that allows him to remain true to them in real life *and* the metaverse - I think that’s what I’m saying.
I have so many thoughts to share, but I'll focus on one of the sneaky ways that the internet exposes kids to fat phobia: advertising. So the fun cooking or dance video (or, really almost any content) on YouTube your kid watches may start with an ad for a weight-loss company. Ugh.
And speaking of YouTube...the "autoplay" feature (where it automatically starts playing a video the algorithm thinks you'll like) can be really tricky. Without ever having to *choose* to see a video about changing your body or restricting food, a child can be exposed to this content within a few minutes. I worked with a family whose child developed an eating disorder after getting sucked down some despicable "pro-ana" content that popped up as suggested videos after some cooking how-tos. Scary stuff. I believe there is still a way to toggle off that auto-play feature.
My son starts middle school this fall. We don’t intend to allow social media until high school. Middle school seems to be where it’s worst. He does have a Gizmo watch for calling us. Sixth grade will include a mandatory digital literacy class, which is encouraging.
My two oldest kids are 13 and 10. We've just decided we do not do social media in this house. I have it for my work, but am trying to figure out how to get off of it completely in the next few years. I do not think everything on social media is all bad! It's been the source of so much good for me! But I do think social media platforms are built with ill intent. So the kids don't have it. My kids - so far - have FAR healthier body images than I did at their age and I credit some of that to how we talk about bodies in our home and some of it to the fact they're not scrolling through fitspo, even inadvertently. I just don't think tweens/teens have the perspective that's necessary to see beyond the world the algorithm serves them., I don't even know that I have that perspective. This doesn't mean we don't do screens or learn from online voices. I am just trying to figure out how to seek them out, instead of being served what an algorithm thinks will make me feel mad, sad, or consumer-y. (Is that a word? no.) Thankfully, social media is seeming less and less cool to some kids. They're disillusioned with the platforms we've built them as they come to understand their actually coded with anti-Black, fatphobic, misogynistic, transphobic bias.
Meg, I would LOVE to chat with you more about this... will text you later. Thank you for sharing! This is such helpful perspective!
I'm heartened to hear that this is even feasible. I told my son sort of jokingly I won't want him on social media for a long time and sorry/not sorry if I'm a hardass about that and he (9) said "Mom, I don't even want to be on social media."
I once heard from some parent that when their teens are interested in something happening on social media they'll look at it together so that they can discuss it together.
The teens today give me so much hope!
My partner teaches high school and has found that her kids don't understand the ease and huge distortion that filters and photoshop provide. They tend to assume that all images on social media are real and untouched, so my partner has started doing a mini-lesson on how images can be manipulated.
She's also found that boys are highly influenced by seeing the "superhero body" everywhere, but there's little acknowledgment of that and it's harder to reach them. Many girls have had at least a little exposure to feminist thought that gives them a framework to talk and understand why image manipulation is so prevalent. Boys don't.
When I have kids, I am somewhat tempted to take the Luddite path and allow only the tiniest access to the internet. I am still not sure how I'm going to navigate this.
GREAT point about boys.
That's interesting about boys. As the parent of a boy I have tended not to worry as much as I would with a girl, but it's something to keep an eye on as he gets older.
There was a good NYT article about “bigorexia” in boys recently. Great read. (Annoying paywall! Sorry) https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/05/style/teen-bodybuilding-bigorexia-tiktok.amp.html
OOH, thank you for this.
This reminded me of a good Vox article I had read recently about steroid use as the open secret behind a lot of Hollywood actors' "superhero bodies": https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22760163/steroids-hgh-hollywood-actors-peds-performance-enhancing-drugs It gave me a lot of insights for approaching the topic of muscle dysmorphia with teens - like, those bodies are not the average & definitely not natural!
Fellow mom of a young male child. I appreciate the conversations about masculinity and body image that Justin Baldoni, Liz Plank, and Jamey Heath are having on The Man Enough Podcast.
Thanks for sharing these resources!
What my partner has found is it's real hard to tell what's going on with boys--she actually gave a presentation to her district about it and there doesn't seem to be a real smoking gun (that would be apparent to teachers, at least). Boys tend to go down the orthorexia route which is harder to discern from harmless things like enjoying sports, and some of the signs look like typical teenage naughtiness like sleeping in class (she found out one of her boys had a pretty severe disorder because he couldn't stay awake in class--he was waking up at 4AM to work out for three hours before school and not eating anywhere near enough, so he was constantly exhausted).
My 7 and 10 year old daughters got iPads for Christmas, and even though my partner and I have been really diligent about what apps they can use, the ads are so awful. I paid for some ad free versions of apps they like but sometimes, we still see the ads (so frustrating) and I don’t know who to contact. Lots of very graphic, clearly totally fake weight loss ads… and ads for other apps- my 7yo asked for an app where you’re a girl who’s trying to “get prettier” for a guy. Hard pass.
Bleh.
Not a parent! One thing that is always hard about reading about teens and technology is like...how pervasive is the problem, really? I read a really long piece (who knows how long ago, sometime during the panini) about teens and face tuning. And it was terrifying. As someone who didn’t grow up when Instagram was around, I shuttered to think about teen me adjusting my face and body and posting those pictures. Anyway, I think that parents need rigorous guides on how to teach media literacy at different ages. But also, phones provide a lot of opportunities for community, and I don’t see how kids today can grow up without them.
I *do* think there has long been an element of handwringing over the dangers of screen time for kids, and that a lot of our standards are tied up in performative parenting BS. But/And also, the social media piece is an added layer of scary. And, as you say, is a necessary part of engaging with the world now.
Yeah it feels like a scary thing to navigate, especially when you didn't grow up with it.
also not a parent but I teach university students and I just want to say that I agree that in the ideal parents would guide their kids on social media. I have some students who have been downright scarred by parents (and Sunday school teachers?) talking about the dangers of social media and not actually teaching them to manage it. I don't know what the answer is bc I also remember that piece and being terrified by it
I got Instagram when I was a Freshman in college when it was brand spanking new. And it was so unlike today. I had a series of single photos on there about how my thumb was healing from a run-in with my razor. lol. This is to say, I too, am scared because it's so different than what I even grew up doing.
I wish there were more & better resources online for gender non-conforming youth navigating body image issues. Especially given the current climate around anti-trans legislation at the state level, gender non-conforming and trans kids are as vulnerable as ever, with potentially fewer options to explore safely and value their bodies. The internet might be the only place some youth could ask questions and find community, due to classroom & athletics bans and restrictions on gender affirming healthcare. Once resource I've offered to youth in my life is Scarleteen: https://www.scarleteen.com/tags/transgender
Not a parent myself, just a doting auntie, but I still wanted to weigh in!
Thank you for this!
I’m a new parent of an almost 1 year old, and I worry how my little girl will see herself once she’s exposed to a lot of the toxic stuff on the internet. I want her to be able to talk to me about what she feels and experiences online. Looking forward to reading everyone’s thoughts. Also…. Virginia, be sure to get date shakes at Shields and visit the Living Desert to feed the lorikeets and giraffes. It’s magical!
Oooh thank you for the tip!
My kids are 12, 14 and 18. I find myself amused by all the comments by parents saying they don’t or won’t allow their kids to use social media. If kids want social media, they don’t need parental permission or knowledge to get it. All they need is a device, theirs or someone else’s. It all depends on your kid and whether they are willing to follow your rules. My 18 year old got around every parental and school control. I have found that conversations with my 12 and 14 year olds have been far more effective than hard and fast rules. They are also very different kids than the oldest. We have not purchased phones until around age 14 and my kids have always been the last of their peers to get them.
1000%^^. Also allowing acces while monitoring at younger ages is how they learn healthy, safe online practices. It’s not going away (until the apocalypse). It’s like learning to drive - they need supervision at first and lots of conversations and guidance about how to interact with strangers/friends/peers.
Great point.
Would love to chat with you if you're up for a conversation about this? (Email virginiasolesmith@gmail.com if so; it seems to be the easiest way to connect with folks off thread bc Substack doesn't show me commenters' emails.)
My almost-16-year-old was just telling me today that she has 1k+ followers on TikTok, where apparently she posts skincare and makeup stuff. I honestly don't know wtf to do or think about this. I do know that thinspo/fitfluencers and social media were a big part of what triggered her anorexia as the pandemic began. One of the many benefits of the residential ED program she did last summer was that right before discharge, her therapist sat down w/ her and her phone and they went thru who she followed, whether she had "sick" photos hidden somewhere, whether there were friends she needed to unfollow, etc. It was hugely helpful to have an actual ED professional handle that conversation (and spot the more insidious stuff that wouldn't necessarily have jumped out to me).
This is fascinating and so important. Would love to chat with you more if you're up for a book research interview? (We can change names, etc as needed.) Hit reply to this comment in your email or email virginiasolesmith@gmail.com. Thanks!
As the mom of two boys, I have no idea what to do to keep them out of the mania that is social media. I'm pretty determined to keep them phone-free till 16 and then hopefully give them a "dumb" phone but like with friends and school does that even really matter? I'm concerned about their own body image but I'm also really concerned about the sexualization of girls and the idea that a beautiful girl has to look the way the girls on the internet look. ugh. As someone who got off Instagram at the beginning of the pandemic and only recently got an account again (and only to follow a few people/help out at work) I'm amazed at how quickly the app has changed in the 18 months - 2 years I've been gone. Like, it's not even the same? The rate at which it all changes is truly astounding.
I have three daughters (14, almost 11, and 4). I originally wanted to wait until 13 or 14 for phones, but we moved to an area where most kids get them around the beginning of 5th grade. We live biking-distance from a nice town square and town pool, so the phones allow them to go to those places by themselves at 10 or 11. My two older kids are on Tik Tok and Instagram. One posts mostly art pieces and the other posts about a video game. My worries about diet culture are mainly related to Tik Tok. The videos I’ve seen my older daughter watch often feature very slim and filtered girls. My younger daughter’s Tik Tok feed is mainly cats, so I’m not so worried about hers yet.
These are the questions I think on often. We have decided to not get our kids phones till they are able to drive (so probably at 16) and I'm good with that as of now. My oldest is 9 so we have some time- thankfully. The internet can be a positive place but overall, I think it is negative. I have heard so many stories of teen girls during the pandemic and their struggles with social media and it is so painful.
I don't know what the answer is but I think delaying getting our kiddos phones, setting app controls when they do get phones and doing our best to have good relationship with our kids is the basic strategy for now.
I have a friend whose oldest is 11. The parents of the kids in her friend group have agreed to wait until the kids are 16. It seems like friends not having phones either would help so much with the waiting!
Also hoping to make a pact with my kids' friends' parents...
Yes! The friend factor is big. And we've experienced our daughter going to someone's house and they have different technology boundaries than we do and it is uncomfortable.
for what it is worth, I have some friends and their rule for their teenagers is no phones/tablets in their bedrooms at night. so, once it they wander to their rooms for the evenings, phones stay in the kitchen. I don't have kids, but this seems like a healthy guideline to me & so I'm sharing it around in case other folks find it helpful
We have this template in place with our kids now - they are 8 and 4 and don't have social media but do watch stuff or play games on their iPads for an hour before dinner most nights. Screens go away after dinner (and get charged in our mudroom or living room) so I'm hoping that gives us a helpful precedent when they get older and those screens eventually become phones.
When I think about phone usage for my kids (who are too young to have to worry about this just yet), I think about the smart way my cousin approaches it. It's like DOR for technology (but still imperfect, like DOR). I was at their house when their tween went to get ready for bed, and they reminded her to put the "house phone" back in its spot before she left.
The house phone is an old iPhone that has charging station on a side table in their living room. They explained that as working parents whose daughter got home from school before them, they needed her to have access to a phone in case of emergencies, but didn't want her to own a cell phone. So the phone lives on this charging dock, and she has access to it when they're at home, but it doesn't go into any other room with her. Her parents have access to it as well. They noted that since there are some natural limits around the phone (the parents decide where and when it's used, and what apps are put on it), she really doesn't tend to "binge" the phone. In fact, she was headed off to her bedroom to read for a bit before bed when I was there.
The later the night got, her parents showed us all the text notifications that were showing up on the phone from her friends. It got to be 11-12 at night, and the phone was still blowing up. They said it often continues into the wee hours of the morning. I thought it was a really smart way of making sure your child isn't staying up all night doing who knows what on their phone, while still helping them learn about healthy limits and listening to what their mind/body is telling them to do around technology - sure, it's fun to text with friends or go online, but it's also fun to go read a book and get enough sleep. As for diet culture, the parents were able to monitor content a lot better with the phone being out for the whole family, instead of belonging to the tween only.
I would love for you to do an episode about ADHD and ED. Every single ADHD article talks about food w/r/t treatment. Rejection sensitivity also plays a tremendous role in susceptibility to ED. Again, very hard to find resources or info on the comorbidity of ADHD and ED and how they feed each other (sorry, terrible pun).
Also: I believe unhealthy social media use is a symptom, not necessarily a trigger. In my experience, a child who is not vulnerable to ED will not go down those rabbit holes. Peer and social pressure are still the main triggers, along with poor self image and/or OCD and/or ADHD. Keeping an eye on the kinds of shows my son watched (eating contests, baking/cooking shows, Joe Rogan and all his toxic masculinity, etc.) helped me understand where he was mentally.
There isn’t enough support or expertise around athletic, cis-boys who develop ED. My son was orthorexic/bulimic before Covid and there was no residential treatment center that seemed like the right fit, nor would he have been accepted, because he wasn’t underweight enough, although he was very unhealthy. Luckily we found a brilliant therapist who was an expert in Maudsley/FBT approach and covid lockdown was actually the exact right scenario for implementing it. He is healthy, muscle-bound and happy now!
So glad to hear he's doing better!!
I definitely want to write more about ADHD and ED - stay tuned. And this is an excellent point about symptom vs trigger.
I feel like we can't have the kids on the internet conversation without having the porn conversation. And I think porn access is strongly related to (naked) body norms which are so damaging. My kid is young, so I'm just in the knowledge gathering stage and reading everything I can to prepare.
My kiddo isn’t quite 4, so we have some time, but I don’t know how we’ll navigate this as he gets older. As a former awkward/bullied kid, I’m relieved that I grew up without the added pressures of social media, but I did stumble onto a bunch of pro-ana/pro-ed Livejournal communities as a teen (and spent a lot of time there), and my parents to this day have no idea. So I’m aware that we can’t control or even necessarily monitor everything our kid does online. (Fwiw, I was using a family computer in the living room, heavily monitored, and I still found all kinds of ways to explore things that would have appalled my parents.)
Someday I’d like to help my son use the Internet to find art and good writing and justice movements and new ideas and safe places to learn more about himself… but I know we’ll also have to teach him about all of the shit he’ll need to wade through to get there, and the way that images (in formal advertising and the ‘native’ advertising of social media) can make you believe really insidious things about yourself that aren’t true.
I want to help him define and shape his values in a way that allows him to remain true to them in real life *and* the metaverse - I think that’s what I’m saying.
Ugh this image of using the family computer in the living room and still finding the pro-ana LiveJournals... totally believe it, totally chilling.
I have so many thoughts to share, but I'll focus on one of the sneaky ways that the internet exposes kids to fat phobia: advertising. So the fun cooking or dance video (or, really almost any content) on YouTube your kid watches may start with an ad for a weight-loss company. Ugh.
And speaking of YouTube...the "autoplay" feature (where it automatically starts playing a video the algorithm thinks you'll like) can be really tricky. Without ever having to *choose* to see a video about changing your body or restricting food, a child can be exposed to this content within a few minutes. I worked with a family whose child developed an eating disorder after getting sucked down some despicable "pro-ana" content that popped up as suggested videos after some cooking how-tos. Scary stuff. I believe there is still a way to toggle off that auto-play feature.
Great points and UGH.
My son starts middle school this fall. We don’t intend to allow social media until high school. Middle school seems to be where it’s worst. He does have a Gizmo watch for calling us. Sixth grade will include a mandatory digital literacy class, which is encouraging.