Blog for Internet Safety Speaker, Writer, and Host of the Internet Safety Podcast: Big Mama’s House Podcast – Jesse Weinberger. Welcome parents, teachers, and schools looking for guidance and resources on Internet Safety, Digital Parenting, and Device Use – you’re in the right place.

Beginning with Season 2 – Big Mama’s House Podcast will be a podcast for teens

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It’s taken forever, but season 2 is finally going to be released this week.

Focusing on Teens

I went back and forth for a long time – trying to craft the best possible way to reach a much larger audience. (I can only spend *so* much time traveling before I snap.) After much deliberation, I’ve decided to reformat the podcast.

Big Mama’s House Podcast is now for teens (13 years old and up).

While covering true crime, tech issues, social media issues, bullying, sexting, etc – I’m also going to explore the latest discoveries in mental health, as well as topics exploring the immense amounts of pressure impacting teens.

(Insider info: Based on the episodes already recorded, I can guarantee that you’ll learn something new and laugh along in the process. Some of my guests are the teeensiest bit unhinged. My favorite.)

Useful to parents & schools too

As an added bonus, the teen-centric content will be a useful resource for parents and school districts. If you’re a parent or an educator and you’re not sure how to begin a conversation, feel free to use the episodes as the starting point for “real” conversations.

If you’ve landed in this space as an adult, you’re welcome to stay and participate. Just beware that we’re going to have some stuff to say to you too. Like, don’t ask your kids to put their phones down at dinner, while YOU have yours in your hand. Seriously. Enough is enough

Bottom Line
Season 1’s intended audience is adults and school districts
Season 2’s (and future season’s) intended audience is teens

New York Times Interview: What’s the Right Age for a Child to Get a Smartphone?

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Jesse was interviewed by New York Times columnist Brian Chen.

What’s the Right Age for a Child to Get a Smartphone? (Published 2016)

As more children get phones at 10 and younger, parents face the question of when to allow unfettered access to the internet and all its benefits and perils.

 

 

A sobbing nine-year-old girl admitted to me she’s addicted to porn – this is why we need to tackle online safety NOW – Sun (UK)

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BTW – The editor swapped in UK-friendly phrasing and language and I did NOT choose the graphics that went with the article. 🙂

– Big Mama

 

A sobbing nine-year-old girl admitted to me she’s addicted to porn – this is why we need to tackle online safety NOW

BREAKING down in tears in front of me, a nine-year-old girl struggles to form words as she admits she’s become addicted to porn. The most shocking part is how utterly normal this sort of reve…

Digital content consumption – example: Instagram

 

The digital content our children consume in an almost endless loop comes in a myriad of forms and formats.  In order to illustrate WHAT your child might be seeing, let’s take the example of one of the most popular apps among tweens and teens: Instagram. Chances are if you have a tween or teen using social media, he/she is using Instagram. It was recently voted the most important social platform for teens.

NOTE: Instagram is a social media site where users post photos taken through the app and posted for the user’s “followers”. Unlike Facebook there is no synchronous agreement of “friends” – on Instagram (like Twitter) your account is open to the public for anyone to see what you’ve posted. There is no “agreement” to see each other’s content, unless the user locks their account to private, an option used by only 12% of IG/TW users. 

In your child’s engagement with Instagram (and many other social media sites) – they will see/experience/consume many types of content:

PHOTOS
The actual photo posted by your child; which may or may not be sexual – and can be considered felony child pornography even when the photo is NOT nude, and even when your child has taken the photo of him/her self (parent control: none)

The actual photo posted by another user that your child follows – in other words, photos posted by others which your child is experiencing. These can obviously be sexual, violent, disturbing, etc. (parent control:none)

WORDS
The comments which appear after any photo; which may or may not be sexual, hostile/bullying, threatening (parent control: none)

HASHTAGS

…which your child may use in an effort to categorize their content and makes it easier for other users to sift through hundreds of millions of photographic content.  If your child is searching for “#SexyBoy” – the content she finds may not be what she is expecting. The same is true in reverse when your child tags her photo as “PrettyYoungThing” – which expands the reach of that photo to unintentioned/undesired eyes.  (parent control: none)

PEOPLE
The user accounts which your child chooses to follow; which may or may not be appropriate (parent control: you can snoop and delete follows – which of course presumes that your child will not re-follow when you’re not looking)   – those accounts contain (obviously) their own set of content, comments, etc

The user accounts which follow YOUR child. Your child may have followers from anywhere in the world, literally. Your child may think that he/she is being followed by a 15yo child from a neighboring town when the follower is actually a 48 year old man pretending to be a younger child with the purpose of luring the child into a conversation or an in-person meet. (parent control: none – unless #1:your child keeps their account private and doesn’t switch from private to public, and back like most kids do AND #2:as a parent you go through the list of your child’s followers weekly and ensure that YOU know every single person who is following your child – and you can confirm that you have personally met them in real life

NUMBERS/VALUE
The raw number of followers your child has Most tween and teens derive some level of self-worth by the actual number of likes, shares, and followers he/she has on any given social media site. Tweens and teens are keenly aware of the social pecking order which has been oh so conveniently quantified by social media engagement. (parent control: none except for #5 note above)

LOCATION/MAPS
Your child may intentionally or accidentally tag the location where a photo was taken through the Instagram platform. That location becomes a literal dot on a map to your home, your child’s school, or wherever else the photo was taken. Your children know that tagging a location results in MORE photo views, MORE photo likes, and MORE comments. In fact statistically – Instagram posts with location data result in 79% higher engagement. (parent control: none. Location is assigned by the user on a photo-by-photo basis)

VIDEOS
Instagram now allows you to shoot up to 15 seconds of video for distribution in the same way as photos. This puts your child in the position of potentially being the subject of the video (whether they know it or not) AND/OR becoming the consumer of the video that someone else may post. Obviously the huge risk here is extremely graphic sexual or violent content. (parent control: none)

!!!! PRIVATE MESSAGING aka “Instagram Direct”
Any Instagram user can private message ANY OTHER Instagram user whether or not the account is private and whether or not the sender officially “follows” the intended receiver. That private message can include either a photo or a video. Just to be clear: ANYONE can send your child videos or photos regardless of their privacy settings. Conversely, your child can send ANYONE photos or videos of themselves (privately) without knowing the receiver and without the receiver first following your child’s account.

The risk for sexual predation and sexting here is huge. The two aspects which contribute to this are the privacy factor and the ability to send to anyone. This kind of “isolated” communication between individuals (especially with strangers) is precisely the sort of scenario which parents should seek to avoid at all costs. (parent control: none)

 

BOTTOM LINE

Most social media platforms or apps like Instagram are an all-or-nothing proposition when it comes to content exposure. As a parent you don’t have the ability to cherry pick permissions or settings. You cannot, for example, as a parent turn off your child’s ability to add locations to images from the settings screen of the app. It’s all or nothing: either you use the app WITH the geolocation option in place or you don’t use the app at all.

In this sense – as a parent you are either accepting the possibility that your child will consume every kind of content listed above with little to no ability to control what your child sees….or you don’t allow your child to use Instagram at all. Those are your only two choices.

As parents, all we can do is continue to engage with our children and with each other. If you learn something new, here or anywhere else, share it with your friends. Share the knowledge and the support with the global community of parents.

We’re all in this together.

– Big Mama

Parents: What Is Your Child Seeing Online?

Where I am today

I regularly travel all over the United States and I meet with children (ages 8 to 18) face-to-face and they tell me what their real digital lives look like. The conversations I’ve had with your children tend to take me to the underside of the giant rock that is their digital lives.

In one particularly tragic national news story, an 18yo girl has been charged with manslaughter after encouraging her 18yo male friend to commit suicide. She guided him through the process…he texted her on his way to his planned suicide and said that he didn’t think he could go through with it. She encouraged him to get back in the car and carry out the plan. Right after he committed suicide she started posting on social media about how much she loved him…and created an online page in his honor.

This tragic and heartbreaking story highlights the ever present need for parents to really know where their children are traveling within the digital sphere, who they are speaking with and what they are saying.

I have no idea what would have helped in this horribly sad case. Here’s what I do know: I have never seen a case made worse by parents being more aware of what was happening. I have never seen a case where a law enforcement officer has reported a crime becoming WORSE because mom and dad were engaged or because mom and dad chose to limit their child’s digital access.

Parenting is exhausting

A 6th grade student in one of my recent presentations told me (and his entire grade) that he was tired of his mother giving in to his little brother. Apparently, the younger sibling frequently misbehaves by breaking the digital rules created by mom and dad. Rather than “sticking to the consequences” (the child’s words, not mine) his mother is prone to backsliding and giving in after being worn down by the younger sibling’s constant whining and complaining. The entire room began laughing at this boy’s imitation of the young brother’s whining: “pleeeese, pleeeeese, puuuuuullleeeeeze”. Through the joke I could hear his discontent- this child is clearly a rule follower and he was angry with his mom.

I tried to explain that parenting is like rubbing your knuckles against a cheese grater while being swarmed by bees.  And that’s on a good day.

I’m here to help, and I don’t hate technology

I’m here to (try and ) help you simplify the process of safe digital use. I don’t hate technology…..just the opposite. I LOVE technology – I’m a programmer by trade and I actively try to encourage my student audiences to consider technology careers. I firmly believe that technology can give us the tools to CREATE rather than destroy

…and then there’s the dark side.

It would be disingenuous to present only half of the story. My goal is to provide parents with a complete picture and to give you the tools to customize a safer digital environment for your family.

Long term social implications of digital immersion

I’m working on a series of articles on the long-term effects of immersive digital use on a young person’s brain, combining the neurological perspective and the psychosocial implications and potential outcomes. I’m currently researching everything from “email apnea” (the human phenomenon of holding your breath when checking for new email or refreshing a page for social media notifications) to the fact that children are becoming desensitized to any and all provocative stimulus. We know that the brain undergoes physical changes as a result of long-term and consistent digital use. We may just be evolving human civilization right out of “deep thinking” and “critical analysis”. This is my biggest long-term fear about digital overuse.

(See RESOURCES: Read NPR’s article on the teen brain. )

If we pull back way before the precipice of physical brain changes and discuss what passes for ordinary content consumption among American teenagers we find that the average American teenager is consuming ELEVEN hours of content per day. Per DAY!! Which brings us to the next most obvious question – WHAT are they watching/consuming?

Digital content has no global or systemic rating scales or filtering systems. And I’m not suggesting that there should be – it would be impossible to implement and would result in absurd unintended consequences. Web filtering and enforcement is our responsibility as parents; and not the responsibility of your child’s school, his teachers, local law enforcement, content producers, or app developers. This is not Instagram’s job or Facebook’s job, this is OUR job as parents. If you don’t want the job, then your child should NOT have unlimited, un-monitored access to a web-enabled device. Easy peasy.

Hypersexualization of Children

In terms of the “what”, our children are living at the absurd end of every content severity continuum. For sex – on the softer end of that we have a consistent message which hypersexualizes young children and exposes them to highly sexualized content at extremely young ages including: sex in video games, commercials, clothing styles, and movie/music content.

(See RESOURCES:  Article on which celebrities encourage good body image. )

The extreme hypersexualization of children in mass media and in online content has normalized a digital environment where the new age of onset of consumption of porn is 8yo, and the new age of onset of pornography addiction is 11yo.

At the most severe end of that continuum, your children have easy access (3 clicks or less) to every flavor of pornography known to exist (including on Twitter, Instagram, Vine, and SnapChat). Dozens of children have personally told me that someone has shown them rape fantasy porn or some other form of fetish pornography. These children are consistently as young as the 3rd and 4th grades.

What does this mean to your children? It means that they are becoming desensitized at young ages to overt displays of graphic sexuality including violent and aggressive sex acts. Studies show (clearly) that children who are actively engaged online at younger ages, have a much higher tendency towards sexual precocity, and that they are having actual sex at younger ages.

Violence Desensitization

The same goes for violent content – and I’m not including video games or even violent movies. Movies and video games with content or film ratings at least have an inherent method for parental filtering. If as a parent you say “No M: Mature video games” and you enforce the rule, you have created an actionable plan for your family.

(See RESOURCE: Common Sense Media) 

On the more benign end your children are probably watching moronic (albeit hilarious) shows like Jackass which display a systemic disregard for human pain. As an added layer of ick, we see the now common reality show phenomenon where behaving in the most outrageous way possible is a means to fame and fortune. Which actually has worked in making a great many people without any discernible talent extremely wealthy ala: Any-Given-Kardashian.

On the most dangerous and damaging end of that violent content continuum we have stories (like the one listed above) where children are showing their desensitization to violence in the most horrific and heartbreaking ways. There have been multiple stories recently of children who have scheduled a street brawl and then the altercations have been videotaped. Just recently two teenage girls scheduled a fist fight, and midway both girls were shot by spectators with guns – it was all on video, and then uploaded to YouTube. In another recent case a 14yo boy who was the sister of one of the fighters was shot multiple times in the face – he was only standing on the sidelines of the fight videotaping via his phone.

In addition (as the story above shows) the suicide of children has become a normalized (if tragic) part of the fabric of our lives. Many of the children who die by suicide are using social media tools in an attempt to somehow immortalize themselves via suicide-note videos and blogs. This content is going viral – and the cycle feeds on itself.

And along the way our children are watching all of this – taking it all in, and allowing it to form who they become as people.

Bottom Line

We can’t set limits unless we understand what we’re limiting, in a granular way. Is it specific content, specific platforms, features within a platform? All of the above, probably. The point is that this requires analysis, discussion, and consideration. Each one of your children will probably require different permissions based on their interests and general level of obedience and willingness to break the rules.

But you’re not going to be able to do this alone. This is an all-hands-on-deck scenario and I’m here to help. But really, we’re all in the soup together. I’m here to help if I can.

Be Fierce. Be Unafraid.

-Big Mama

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