What you don’t know about your child online

Words: Laura Jones

The advent of social media is a double whammy for parents in the digital age, considering that the first iPhone was only introduced in 2007. Recent statistics prove that kids don’t like to talk and share with their parents what happens in the social media space. Three out of four children won’t speak up at all. Dean McCoubrey, Founder of MySocialLifeSA, an organisation of media literacy educators that teaches digital life skills and online safety for children (grades 4 to 11), believes that what we are seeing today is only the beginning of the fallout in the age group born to technology.

Mostly, Dean says, children don’t speak up due to fear of phones being taken away as a consequence. He adds, “Parents often have a hard time believing it, but having no phone divorces a child from their peers and their social groups. It is a complex issue. It runs deep. Often though, it is invisible”.