Social Media and our "Under 13's"

This week I am presenting a special session targeted specifically to our Year 5 & 6 parents. I believe running sessions just before holiday breaks is the best opportunity for us to support our community because soon as the girls go on holidays they have time to while away their days online. 

Earlier in the term at a general Social Networking session held for ALL parents we had a very small turn out from this cohort of parents and I think it's because they are in denial. They have all banned their daughters from using Facebook until they have turned 13 but it's not Facebook that worries us. Last week I went and spoke to the Year 6 students and we chatted about social media and I told them about all my accounts and how I use them for specific outcomes, I then asked them to raise hands if they use:

         SnapChat?  Almost ALL                                                                      

                       Facebook?  NONE (I felt so old!)

                 KIK Messenger? Almost ALL

       Instagram? Almost ALL

Next I showed them the wad of paper that is the printed version of the user agreement that that they agreed to when signing up for their Snap Chat and Instagram accounts. "How many of you read all of this?" A few hands went up. "How many of you understood it?" A few hands went up again. I read the first few paragraphs of each, where it clearly states the user must be 13 years of age or older and asked, Now how many of you are 13?" No hands! I always explain to the girls that I have no intention of asking them not to use social networking sites but that when they all turn 13 I will be back to see them again offering workshops on how to best manage each application, how to set the privacy settings, how to block people and use the technology responsibly. 

Now my philosophy is around educating the students on how to best use the technologies available to them and alongside that they also need support from their parents as well as their teachers. I invite parents along to see what these apps are, to see how their children are using them, to see the pitfalls and how to protect their children from them. I encourage all parents to download SnapChat, Instagram and KIK and not necessarily to participate but as a way of monitoring the ways they are being used.

There was a timely piece about this exact topic yesterday in The Age newspaper, a must read for EVERY parent: 
http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/hometech/how-to-effectively-monitor-your-children-online-20130319-2gbxn.html