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Key points
- Some students have been criminally charged for partaking in Tik Tok challenges.
- Children’s prefrontal cortex of the brain, responsible for impulse control, doesn’t fully develop until they are in their 20s.
- Teach kids to pause before posting, asking these three questions: Will this hurt someone? Why am I posting this? Will I regret this later?
You may have seen some of the recent Tik Tok challenges, such as slapping a teacher across the face, stealing a school toilet, or kissing a friend’s boyfriend or girlfriend. These challenges are disturbing and alarming to many, especially parents. Some students have been criminally charged for partaking in a challenge, and TikTok has attempted to remove videos and hashtags associated with the trend.
However, social media and the problems that accompany it aren’t going anywhere. Keep in mind that social media has provided many benefits for children. It helped them have opportunities for social engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes news information, opportunities to be part of a group, to exercise, dance, and just have fun.
But with the good comes the bad, which includes overuse, cyberbullying, and copying criminal behaviors, to name a few. To keep our kids emotionally and physically safe ground, there have to be rules and boundaries for social, just like on playground media. So how do we talk to our kids about something like partaking in a Tik Tok Challenge?
An initial reaction may be to take social media away from your child, punish or reprimand a child before finding out the motivation for action. However tempting it may be to become a social media police, a different approach may be more successful.
Listen – Listen before you discipline.
Ask your child what they think of these challenges. Be sure not to interrupt or be judgmental. You can determine the motivating factors for these behaviors, whether to fit in, humor, or insecurity.
Discuss Consequences – Give examples of cases on the news and let it be known that there are consequences to such actions, even if it’s a joke. It’s not the intent but the impact on others that matters.
Suggest to Pause Before You Post – Ask these three questions:
- Will this hurt someone?
- Why am I posting this?
- Will I regret this later?
Our children’s prefrontal cortex of the brain doesn’t fully develop until they are in their 20s. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for reasoning. Therefore, a child’s ability to control impulses is much lower than adults. It’s important to remember that when speaking with your child.
Raising our kids’ emotional intelligence is a way to make them more empathetic and kinder, humans. Emphasizing that these behaviors can hurt another person or asking how they would feel if this happened is a way to personalize the behavior.
It’s easy to get caught up in likes or shares and the game of popularity, but we must remind ourselves that social media isn’t necessarily the enemy. Still, instead, it’s how we interact with it. Modeling responsible social media etiquette is also key.
Although this may be just a trend, we can all learn from the Tik Tok challenges and start to pause before we post asking the three key questions above. We may realize, some things are just not worth posting.
