Social media reflects problems and opportunities in teens’ world
“What are the rules? Boys asking girls for nude photos,” one mother asked.
“A boy keeps hounding them and hounding them for nude photos.”
It was but one of the difficult situations explored Monday night at Scotts Ridge Middle School, when about 40 parents heard a panel of seven educators and two students discuss social media.
If a girl sent a nude photo, and she was under 16, a boy who received the photo and shared it with his friends could be charged with distributing child pornography, said School Resource Officer Chris Daly.
But just asking another student for a photo, even repeatedly, probably isn’t a crime.
“There is no charge of ‘bullying’” Officer Daly said.
When there’s a troubling situation, he said, a parent-to-parent talk can be more effective than bringing in the police.
A mother had heard concerns that her child’s friend, wanting to be liked, might give in to inappropriate requests on social media.
“As a parent, how do you address that, if you’re told something in confidence by your daughter?” she asked. “It’s happening a lot, apparently.”
Jeff Swiatowicz, assistant principal of East Ridge Middle School, thought parents should tell other parents if they learned something troubling — even at the risk of betraying the confidence of the child who’d told them.
“Students do make mistakes,” he said. “As a parent, sitting on that information is doing more harm than good.”
Parents should imagine if their own kids were in a troubling situation.
“If anybody was doing it to them, you’d want their friends to stand up for them,” he said.
Ashley Adamson, Kids in Crisis counselor, said parents should view worrisome social media behavior in the context of all the other problems they talk about with their teens — or other parents, or authorities.
“These are just things that are happening in life, anyway,” she said. “Girls are being pressured. Boys are being pressured. Setting boundaries.”
Bullying
Amelia Daly, the panel’s eighth grader, said some bad behaviors flourish on social media.
“There’s a lot bullying,” she said.
“It’s true — everybody, I think, has had a part,” she said.
“Bullying, it’s hard to say, you can be a bystander or an upstander — you’re still involved.”
Scotts Ridge Principal Tim Salem said the school tries to teach kids to be “upstanders” when another student is being bullied.
Kids of middle school age — with their impulsiveness, and desire to impress their friends — will forward things on social media without really thinking about the potential effects.
“It’s a tender age. We’ve had some issues with texting and pictures over the years, Salem said.
So the school teaches kids: “Before you show, post or send, pause and process,” he said.
If a situation is really concerning, school authorities usually hear about it.
“We have a very savvy parent community,” Salem said. “If there is an issue bubbling up, and it involves more than one student, it won’t take long before it’s in my office.”
Parents wanted to know school policies concerning cell phones.
Salem said at Scotts Ridge kids are allowed to have phones, but may not use them unless they’re using them under the guidance of a teacher — as part of research for a project, perhaps. Phones aren’t allowed out for social use, even at lunch. At the end of the day, however, when kids are discussing after-school plans with their parents, they may use their phones.
Swiatowicz said rules were similar at East Ridge.
“At the high school, there isn’t one universal rule,” said Ian Locassio, an RHS senior. “It really is up to the teacher and how they want to set up their class.”
Carol Mahlstedt, psychologist and a founder of the town’s Resilience Project, said parents need to keep up with their kids’ social media lives.
“You want all your kids’ passwords,” she said. “You want to be checking the text messages.”
Another important thing is to establish no-screen times — during homework, dinner, and at bedtime.
Parents should make a contract with their kids when they give them a phone or computer, she said, making clear that the parents own the device, allow the child to use it — and can take the device away if it is abused.
“It’s your phone. It’s your computer,” she said. “It’s a privilege.”
Michael Yagid, a science teacher and dean at Ridgefield High School, said social media are tools for communication.
“We need to stop thinking of social media as this separate thing that has its own rules — it’s part of our world,” he said.
The young people already live in that world. Their parents need to get there.
“Social media is how they communicate. It’s not going away. We need to embrace it,” Yagid said.
And it isn’t all bad, as adults tend to worry. Social media can broaden outlooks, assist research, enrich education.
“Our children are growing up where they have access to almost the entire world, in the palm of their hand, 24-7,” he said.
“The Kepler telescope tweets out to us — it’s literally discovering new worlds,” he said.
“Another website, it sends out a line from John Quincy Adams’ diary every day …
“We teach analog citizenship: How do we become positive citizens in our world? We need to teach how to be positive citizens in the digital world.”
“We need to teach our students there’s this global interconnectedness, and it’s a wonderful thing — and it’s a dangerous thing.”
The program was part of Parenting the Selfie Generation, a series of parent workshops organized by the schools, PTAs and various sponsors. The next program, on Jan. 11, is Raising a Strong, Compassionate Child, with Dr. Lisa Miller Ph.D, author of The Spiritual Child, which is available at the Ridgefield Library and on sale at Books on the Common, both among the program’s sponsors.
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