What Age Should Your Child Have Access to Social Media?

Ever wondered at what age your child should have access to social media?
Let’s start by summarizing what social media is: online platforms that allow users to share content and interact with each other in various ways.

Popular Platforms Among Children

Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and others.
Every parent has different opinions on when it’s appropriate for a child to use social media, and we agree that it depends on the situation.

Understanding Your Child

First, consider your child’s personality:

• Is your child stubborn?
• Is your child very naive?
• Is your child shy or open?
• Does your child have many friends?
• Is your child clever?
• How does your child handle pressure?
• Does your child talk a lot?
• Is your child prone to lying?
• Is your child testing boundaries?
• Does your child have trust issues?

This isn’t meant to insult any child; every personality has its strengths and weaknesses.

Parents’ Living Situation

Next, think about the parents’ situation:

• Do you understand the dangers of social media?
• Do you have time to learn about it?
• Do you have time to teach your child about these dangers?
• What is your relationship with your child? Do they listen to you?
• Are you willing to invest time in this?
• Can you monitor their devices?
• Are you able to notice changes in your child’s behavior quickly?

There’s no judgment here—some parents work full-time and prefer to spend quality time with their children rather than focusing on social media. Some may not be familiar with platforms like Snapchat and TikTok. These factors are important to consider, and there’s no right or wrong answer.

Dangers

This is a serious topic, but from what we’ve seen at events, the biggest danger is:
Adult men contacting children on social media to obtain inappropriate pictures.

Here’s how it typically works:

1. Parents Share Information: Adults collect information about children from social media posts by family members (tags, birthdays, sports, school, hobbies, clubs, friends, thoughts).
2. Creating Fake Profiles: They create fake profiles to achieve their goals. Examples include:
   • A female profile to befriend your daughter.
   • A female profile to flirt with your son.
   • A male profile to befriend your son.
   • A male profile to flirt with your daughter.
   • Multiple profiles (group chats) pretending to be a football player or cheerleader.
3. How They Operate:
   • They usually manage many profiles and add friends from their targets’ social circles to appear legitimate.
   • They use collected information to build trust (e.g., “Happy birthday,” “How’s your hobby going?”).
   • To gain further trust, they sometimes send fake inappropriate pictures to make the target more comfortable sharing similar images.
   • With today’s AI, they can also create fake images with your child’s face and use these threats from the start to manipulate the child.
   • If a target doesn’t respond, they create new profiles and try again.
4. Goal:
   • Their aim is to get a single inappropriate picture to use as leverage, threatening to publish it or send it to parents or teachers to coerce more images.
5. Facts:
   • They continue their activities until caught by law enforcement. Many victims remain targets even after significant time has passed.
   • Perpetrators have no specific type; they exploit younger, more impressionable children more easily.

What You Can Do as a Parent

Here’s what you can do:

• Communication: Have open, calm conversations with your child. Build a strong bond so they feel safe sharing their experiences with you before things escalate.
• Monitor Devices: Trust is important, but monitoring is crucial. Children can be easily manipulated by experienced predators.
• Limit Information Sharing: Avoid sharing personal details about your child online.

So, at what age is it appropriate for a child to use social media?

At Charity for Balkan Children, we believe it’s best to delay social media use for as long as possible. The more parents share this view, the easier it will be for children to maintain friendships without social media.

We also work to create better playgrounds in the Balkans to help keep kids engaged in offline activities.

If you’d like to support our cause, please share our website, blog post, or consider donating. We would greatly appreciate it.

*Kindly be informed that the Charity of Balkan Children will only distribute licensed and purchased pictures of children. We ensure that pictures of children involved in our projects remain hidden, just as we have done with our previous project here.

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