The immersion of people in social media and other forms of media around the world has positive and negative effects. The different forms of media entertain, teach and inform. The negative effects of media immersion are distractions, lack of focus, and encountering harmful content from the media. It is therefore, important to know parenting tips for social media use.
Common Sense Census reports that American tweens spend an average of six hours a day immersed in media while teens spend about nine hours. Here are some important tips from Yahoo Parenting:
1. Setting limitations
Setting limitations for media use is a great way for parents to manage media use for their kids. Setting limitations on the amount of time in using media or setting a schedule is an effective method in preventing children in becoming distracted and irresponsible.
2. Finding great media content
There are too much harmful and dangerous content to be found in different forms of media. Parents are responsible for helping their children find safe, educational, and useful content from the media. Parents are also responsible for keeping their children away from malicious and damaging material especially from the internet.
3. Practice responsible time management
Kids need to learn how to focus on one task at a time and avoid multi-tasking. Multi-tasking and lacking focus can bring down the quality of work and might even result in not finishing the work at all. Parents should teach children both the appropriate and inappropriate time to immerse themselves in media.
4. Become good role models
Parents can effectively teach their children in the proper use and management of different types of media by practicing what they are preaching. The children will learn how sincere and authentic you are about the rules and guidelines on media use if they see you following them as well. The other parenting tips about how to properly manage social media use for kids will be useless if the parents will not lead by example.
