Should you cancel kids’ social media over images from Hamas attack?
Schools and community groups in Israel have recommended parents delete their children’s social media accounts to protect them from seeing gruesome images of the ongoing violence since the Hamas attack last week. That advice has spread to other countries, including the United States.
While using age-appropriate tools like filters is a good idea, pulling the plug on all social media is likely not the best advice, experts told the Deseret News. Several warned that could even drive youths to seek out the very thing parents are trying to shield them from.
Almost unanimously, experts consulted for this story recommend holding off on making that decision until you first talk to your child about what’s happening in the Middle East and what the child might see, what they already know and their reactions.
“I don’t ever agree with avoiding a hard topic, image or discussion,” psychologist Jenny Howe, owner of Jenny Howe Consulting in Farmington, Utah, told the Deseret News. “I think we can monitor our children’s content without prohibiting exposure. I think we run into issues when we avoid the honest discussions about violence. If we prohibit access without conversation, we employ fear.”
For many parents who have children with social media accounts, the question of how to protect their children from exposure to extreme violence is not academic. As ABC News reported Wednesday, “As the conflict in Israel has continued to grow, more and more of the devastation is being shown on social media, from news outlets to individual accounts. The hashtag #Israel has more than 25 billion views on TikTok and more than 18 million posts on Instagram.”
Meanwhile, social media companies have generally pledged to boost their efforts to police violent images. For instance, NBC News reported that “TikTok, which has community guidelines barring violent content, plans to add another layer of protection to the platform amid the conflict, including additional moderation resources, blocking hashtags that promote violence and proactive fact-checking around misleading narratives, according to a spokesperson for the Chinese-owned service.”
But even pictures from well-respected news sources can be very disturbing.
And gruesome images are getting past some of social media companies’ algorithms, “so youths are seeing the images and they are going to hear about the violence,” said Don Grant, a Los Angeles-area psychologist, author and researcher, who specializes in technology’s impact on mental health. Among other titles, Grant chairs the American Psychological Association’s Device Management and Intelligence Committee.
Experts say a child’s age, maturity and personality matter when it comes to the potential impact of what they see and hear. And even though younger kids aren’t supposed to be on social media, Grant added, “that ship has sailed and sunk” for some kids.
Grant said he would support a pause on social media and trying to block some posts while parents talk about legitimate news sources and what their children might see and hear. There’s no question, he told the Deseret News, that “these kids are going to see things they do not need to see.” He said exposure to graphic images can be “dysregulating and traumatizing.”
But simply turning off social media is fraught — and probably not even a realistic option. “How do you tell a teen he can’t be on Instagram when that’s his social life?” he asked. And children will see the images elsewhere, so talking about it is crucial.
“I think parents should limit but not eliminate social media,” said Wyatt Fisher, a psychologist and marriage boot camp leader in Boulder, Colorado. “Kids need to have some exposure to world events without too much to the point of overwhelm. In addition, it’s important for parents to discuss with their kids what’s happening in Israel so they have a place to discuss their thoughts and feelings and to hear their parent’s perspective on it as well.”
Advice that banning social media is not the answer does not mean parents shouldn’t use every tool available to limit what children see, Howe said. ”Hopefully there are filters on younger children’s phones that prevent extremely violent content.”
A child you know
Howe’s advice to parents includes being a role model in terms of their own news coverage consumption. She said to “help our kids understand the complexity of the world and issues. We want to present them with information to make their own moral and informed decisions and encourage dialectical thinking about difficult issues.”
Would the advice be different if she were talking to families where the conflict is occurring? “I think the advice is standard across the board — sadly, there are copious amounts of violent videos on the news and online daily,” Howe said. “That being said, I’d reaffirm to Jewish children their safety and protection.”
Beverly Hills psychotherapist Fran Walfish, author of “The Self-Aware Parent,” thinks the situation is different for kids in Israel than for those in America. “We are far away. In Israel, I think it’s appropriate for parents of young children to shield them from some of the visual images, the atrocities,” she said.
She noted that legitimate news sources are “careful” about censoring violence, but even then images can be very disturbing.
Experts agree that parents typically know their children best. And any approach to protecting them from what’s going on in the Middle East — or other disturbing events — should keep that child’s individuality in mind.
”Depending on your child’s age and their sensitivity, especially if there’s a history of anxiety or depression, I would suggest either deleting or temporarily disabling their social media accounts. I’m very concerned about young children and the effects of trauma and PTSD on developing brains,” Sanam Hafeez, a New York City neuropsychologist and director of Comprehend the Mind, told the Deseret News by email.
The question is impact, said Grant: What kind of fear, what kind of trauma youths experience and what they are thinking.
Walfish believes parents have to consider a bunch of factors before radically going in and deleting social media accounts. First is the age of the child. “Parents have more of a right to protect a child under the age of 12 than an adolescent,” she said. “The things I would want parents to consider are the age of a child and the temperament and general state of the child. Some are wired to be anxious. Some are calm, some aggressive, some more passive.”
In a world with global news and social media connecting communities thousands of miles apart, this issue has arisen before and likely will again. Asked a similar question when Russia attacked Ukraine, Sam Goldstein, psychologist and adjunct assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Utah, said that understanding a child’s developmental age is crucial to having the right conversation.
“You can do more harm by trying to talk to a 6-year-old about stuff they don’t understand — or trying to talk to a 15-year-old like they are 6 years old,” he said.
Goldstein, co-author of “Raising Resilient Children,” said it’s a good idea to ask children if they’ve heard about the disturbing event. “Rather than waiting to start a conversation, find out what they already know,” he said, and correct inaccurate information if it’s not too complicated. “Sometimes you just have to say, ‘I don’t think that’s right.’”
According to Grant, parents should tailor conversations to the child when talking about what’s happening and the implications.
Of utmost importance, experts agree, is a parent-child relationship that is built on trust.
“I am always against parents coming in and doing anything radical like deleting social media without first having a talk with their kids of any age — especially teenagers — and asking questions,” said Walfish. “Rather than shoving information down the throats and minds of their kids, be curious, open-minded, ask questions: What have you heard? What have you seen? What are your thoughts about what’s going on? Do you have an opinion or side you’re taking?”
Related
She said a parent with three kids might hear three very different reactions and opinions. But to simply delete social media accounts “bypasses the opportunity to establish and solidify open paths of communication” that are needed between parents and their children for other issues, too, including drug use or sex, among myriad others.
“It’s an opportunity to not just assume kids need over-protection, but to know your child,” Walfish said.
Seeking a different approach
Taking away social media can lead to rebellion. And youths will find a way to access it anyway, said Grant. If they hear friends talking about it, they will want to see it. Another issue that’s really salient to the decision, Grant notes, is that “this situation could go on a long time.”
He does agree that parents should block what they can and address it in an age-appropriate way. Taking social media away alone is not the right thing, he said.
“Say what we say to kids about anything. We warn them about all kinds of things; it’s the best we can do as parents. Look both ways, be careful with this,” Grant said.
“Knowing we care, sending the message they can talk to us about it — if we have an open conversation now, the hope is that if they do go around us, they still know they can talk to us about it. If you invited them to do so and listened to them ... that opened the conversation.”
Let kids help design a solution
Grant recommends asking kids what they suggest in terms of limiting exposure to violence and other disturbing news. “Let them come up with an idea about how to keep themselves regulated and protected. ‘Here’s the situation; it could be graphic and upsetting. What do you think we should do?’”
He said to invite children to help strategize, “because who knows how long this is going to go on. There is no ideal solution to this.” There’s also no way to tell one’s child how long the social media would be taken away, Grant noted, adding that’s the first question a child would ask.
A parent could point out that some parents are protecting their children by removing social media. “What do you think?” Walfish suggests asking one’s child. “Is that something that would help you? Talk about it collaboratively, teaching the child to learn self-care — what’s best for me.”
She said she is glad the issue has been raised. “The takeaway is it’s an opportunity to build on the parent-child alliance, rather than pushing your kids further away and them not talking to you.”
However a child responds, she said to have compassion for anything he or she is feeling.
