John-David

It has been a pretty big week in the news for social media. The U.S. and an other governments are either pushing cases forward or considering pushing cases forward against Google (or Alphabet). The TikTok ban is still looming large in the U.S., it will go into effect in 5 days without intervention from either the executive or judicial branches. And Facebook has changed the way they are handling information on their platform. (I’m actually not sure at present if this affects Facebook or both Facebook and Instagram.) If you don’t want to read the why, you can skip to bottom to find the three questions I hope you will consider with your kids this week.

These issues are all wrapped up in political issues. My goal is to stay out of the politics of it and to hopefully reveal an opportunity for parents to have a healthy conversation. I think there are some big parenting opportunities here and I hope that as a church our families will capitalize on these opportunities.

Let’s start with the big one and probably the only one to which teenagers are paying attention: TikTok. TikTok currently has 170 million users in the U.S., with a population of 335 million, that means that just over 50% of Americans have a TikTok account. Even factoring in the ones like me who have not logged in to their account in a couple of years, it is a massive following. The best numbers that I have found show that 63% of teens report using TikTok and 57% report using it daily. 17% of teens self-reported using it “almost constantly.” Whether or not your kid has TikTok, it is influencing the world around them.

So with a looming ban, what conversations can parents have with their teens? First, I would encourage you to talk to your kids about their data. Maybe don’t use the word data. Talk to your kids about their digital footprint. What information does TikTok (or any other app) know about them? My maps app knows where I live and roughly when I will be going to and returning home from work. I didn’t give it that info specifically, but it has it.

The information that these companies have, where is that information? Does it matter? Have some real conversation with your teens about this issue. When modern politician on both sides of the political aisle are concerned about how a company is using the data they have, it’s probably worth paying at least a little bit of attention.

Take this opportunity to talk about an issue that affects them; if not them personally, it affects their friends and their world. Help them become more conscientious digital users. I was talking to our students the other day about pictures on social media and how those pictures take up physical space somewhere. It blew some of their minds to think that there was a physical drive somewhere in the world that was storing that picture of their dinner from the other night. Where is that picture stored and how is it used? Do they know? When you use messenger (iPhone) to send a picture, that picture is probably backed up on a drive somewhere (other than your phone). Do they know where or for how long?

TikTok processes 272 videos per second… Per SECOND. Users are uploading 16,000 videos a minute, or 34 million videos a day. Users are spending an average of 90 minutes a day on the platform. How does that much information affect the way you think? Has your student considered it? Have you? If they post a video, who can see it? Are they sure they know who can see it? What information could someone watching that video learn about them? What information could a company using AI learn about them through that same video? Is geographic information included on the video they posted? Are they sure?

This is a great chance to talk about the platforms themselves rather than just about the influencers on these platforms. It is important to teach kids to critically consider where their information is stored and how it is used.

Which brings me to the Facebook news. Facebook is completely revamping the way they proof posts. Again, I’m not going to get into the politics of it, but they are moving to a Twitter style community notes model. As I understand it, Community Notes are essentially a note that people can add to a post that is misleading or appears false. If enough people rate that note, the note will become more visible. Essentially, it is crowdsourcing the proofing process rather than relying on an internal team to delete, edit, or mark posts containing questionable information.

Many people think this system protects free speech. Again, not going into the politics. What opportunities does community notes offer your kids? How does it change how they interact with posts and videos that are posted? It gives them the opportunity to dive deeper into opinions on the topic but it requires more effort. Again, being a conscientious consumer requires effort, regardless of your opinions.

Below are my three questions. I have included some questions to go deeper with each of the 3 main questions. I hope these are helpful for families Here are three questions I would encourage you to discuss with your kids if they are on social media (if they are not, maybe rework the questions to get them to think about choices they might make someday):

1. Why did you choose to get on this particular platform? (Insta, Snap, TikTok, etc…)
2. What do you look at on this particular platform?
   • What do you choose to see?
   • What do you see that you that you did NOT choose yourself?
3. What do you post on this platform?
   • What do your posts on this platform tell others about you?
   • What do your posts on this platform communicate about your values?
   • How might other people or companies use what you are posting on this platform and are you okay with how they might use your content?

I want to add a last minute note. The reason I added the second subquestion for question 2 is the reason I no longer use TikTok. The content that I chose could be funny, it could be entertaining, it could even be educational. But the content that I was exposed to that I did NOT chose could be very dangerous for me spiritually. I was regularly seeing veiled adds for porn and OF pages (Only Fans). It was a temptation that I could live without and I made the deliberate decision not to continue exposing myself to those things.