Nowadays, phones play a huge role in our lives. Just how many times have you told your kids to “Put down your phone!”? It’s true, teens basically live on them, using them to order food, study new vocabulary, chat with a friend, and even just scroll through Instagram when we’re bored. “I’m probably on it 60% of the time I’m awake.” 16-year-old Kyiesha M. says.

But although phones can be distracting, I believe that they can actually help teens socially, academically, and also raise their awareness of the world.

First of all, phones are essential for staying in touch with our friends and loved ones. We all know that notification sound, where your phone lights up and it shows that someone has replied to your last text. And you’ll probably drop everything to pick up your phone to type a reply. But didn’t you just see that person at school today? In this situation, maybe phones are over-used. However, they are essential for keeping up long-distance friendships that you wouldn’t want to fade. As 15-year-old Stella S. says “since I’m from Korea, it’s hard for me to communicate with my Korean friends, but social media allows me to keep in touch with them.”

When it comes to academics, many parents believe that phones are actually distracting you from achieving better grades. But this isn’t completely true, as some students use their phones to memorize and take down vocabulary for their next test. As Kenji K. says, “I can look things up and use WeChat to ask my classmates questions regarding a task.” These smart actions with social media can actually help teens in their studies.

What about current affairs? Some people believe that students are too involved in their phones to know what’s going on in the outside world. On the contrary, Michelle Z. says that “looking at the People’s Daily official account on WeChat can raise my awareness of things happening around me since I don’t have time to watch the news on TV”. Since we are living in a busy city, why not use time on the metro to scroll through your phone to look at the news?

Even though I believe we’re living in a time where phones are generally good for teens, there are still problems associated with constantly staying on your phone. Linda H. admits that “even though I use it to study, social media apps do distract me and cause me to procrastinate a lot.” And Alex C. points out that “there is also some fake news out there which can confuse us.”

So what should you do? Set stricter phone limits or let your teens stay on it regardless? Actually, this is where parents come into the mix. With the help of an adult who knows more about the world than you, they can provide you with the reliable news accounts and also help you structure your screen-time, with a password you don’t know, so you can stay on track while actually studying with the help of your phone. You don’t have to quit all of your social media, but instead, use it in a smart way to benefit you.

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This article appeared in the beijingkids 2020 August issue

Newsflash: parenting is a real challenge. Whether you are raising five-year-olds who don’t yet understand anything or teenagers who are going through a rough adolescence, parenting is a full-time job, and a hard one at that. There’s no such thing as a perfect parent, but in my opinion, there are some principles that every parent should follow.

Trust

A child, no matter the age, wants their parents to be somebody they can confide in, somebody they can express their true feelings and sort out their problems with.

Knowing that your child can trust you is a huge accomplishment. If a parent doesn’t succeed at becoming their child’s best friend, things can get pretty difficult, and I’m speaking from personal experience. The child will probably begin to sneak and lie about certain things in hopes that the parent won’t care about what’s really going on. If you, as a parent, continually make promises and fail to keep them, your child will start hiding things from you. And when your kid tells you that something is a secret, they mean it. You should also celebrate the moment because that means they trust you enough to keep the secret. If they send you a video of them singing for example, and specifically tell you not to send it to anybody else, it’s pretty clear they won’t want you posting it on your WeChat Moments.

It’s the same the other way around. If you keep distrusting your child, regardless of whether they’ve given you a reason to or not, they’ll start feeling annoyed and depressed because their own parents don’t even believe them when they say something. Sooner or later, the child will begin to get into more and more trouble which is stressful for everyone. Nobody wants this for their child or family, so being there for your kid and becoming their accountable friend is one of the best things a parent can do.

Room to Grow

Parents have to let their children have space for themselves, and respect their thoughts and privacy, even if they disagree with them. Of course, this rule doesn’t apply if whatever your child is doing or thinking is actually dangerous or harmful, but if parents keep poking their noses into their children’s personal thoughts, then they have a very good reason to tell them that it’s “none of your business.” When it comes to social media, you will probably be able to see everything they post unless they block you. Sometimes they don’t care because they’re just sending pictures of them and their friends having a good time. But on other occasions, they are sending things that they only want their friends to see: personal things. Being an 11-year-old myself, I know that parents tend to ask their children about what they’re posting, why they’re posting it, and lecture about the consequences of the posts. They do that without realizing they’re not respecting their child’s privacy, and that they really are poking their noses into things that don’t concern them. So if you want to have a good relationship with your child, you will need to learn to respect them for their choices and actions.

Right and Wrong

Many parents think that everything they do is for their child’s own good, and most parents support their kids if they think it’s the right thing to do. But then again, different people have different perspectives regarding the meaning of the word ‘right’. The child’s idea of the right thing to do might not be the same as their parents’. Because of this, some parents think they’re supporting the kids and influencing them to do what’s right, but actually they might be stopping their dreams. On the other hand, parents will also often guide their kids in their choices, because they have more experience than us children, and that’s fine because it’s true.

Celebrate the Wins

Whenever your child achieves something, no matter how big or small, don’t hesitate to congratulate them and perhaps even give them presents and rewards. This will make them more determined to achieve even greater things. When your child fails, don’t scold them and make them cry. Instead, comfort them and try to see why they failed, then help them improve so they won’t fail again.

Show Don’t Tell

Most importantly of all, be a good role model for your kids. Lead by example. You should not show kids any bad things they shouldn’t do. For instance, it’s common sense that children are not supposed to fight, but if their parents are fighting in front of them, they will be influenced into thinking that it’s okay, when it’s not. Your kids always look up to you and try to do the things that you do, so setting a good example for your kids is a very important part of being a good parent.

Parenting in the best way possible is very difficult, and it will require a lot of different qualities. This short article is only a stepping stone on being a better parent to your kids, which is just my advice, but I hope that all parents and kids will try to improve themselves so that the entire family can be happy!

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This article appeared in the beijingkids 2020 August issue

If you have a running internet connection and don’t live under a rock, chances are you part of at least one social network. So the question is not if to use social media, but how. And more to the point, how should we be protecting the privacy of our children, who (but should) have control over what we post about them.

Naturally, as parents, we take precautions to protect our children: We endlessly caution them on ‘stranger danger’, online safety, and how to be alert for people with bad intentions. I monitor my daughter’s Amazon Fire tablet and iPad like a hawk, controlling everything she’s watching and everyone she may be chatting with.

When it comes to social media, most of us post pictures on our social media accounts and we shouldn’t necessarily apologize for this. We are adults and we take these conscious choices about what we post. But when it comes to children of non-consent age, a line has to be clearly drawn.

With our first daughter, I’ve been guilty in the past about posting pictures of her on my own social media account. I shared and updated baby bump pictures, our birth announcement, holidays, her first-year party, and other pictures. Until one day, I was ‘digitally kidnapped’, an experience that totally changed my perspective on social media. I was with a mama friend in Belgium, who wanted to view a picture on my Facebook account. She opened the app, then asked me “which of my two accounts” to view. “Two accounts?” I asked, puzzled. There it was – a clone of my account, down to the name and almost all of the pictures I’d ever posted. Someone was impersonating me on Facebook.

The ‘kidnapper’ had used all of the pictures of my daughter, and strangers were liking and commenting on them. I could hardly believe what I was seeing. Needless to say, I promptly reported the account to Facebook and it was closed. But that was enough for me to ask myself what the heck I was thinking in the first place, posting pictures of my child who had no clue some random people were viewing her pictures.

I closed my Facebook account and for a while, I went off social media completely (and what a really quiet nice time that was). I’ve since gone back on a few social media platforms but I use them strictly for professional reasons and I don’t post pictures of my children.

A picture is worth a thousand words, but does every moment of your life really need to be shared online?

Four good reasons not to share pictures of your children online

• Posting specific information about your child online, like their full name, age or school puts them at risk of being kidnapped. If a stranger knows all this information, it will be easy for them to locate your child.
• There are many cases in which innocent photos and videos have made their way to explicit adult-oriented, pornographic sites. Furthermore, with today’s technology, reality can be distorted. Most of us have seen the deep-fake pictures and videos that are so high tech you can’t tell what’s real anymore. Imagine your child’s face being superimposed on another person’s body… the damage is done.
• You may think that your account is set to private or to only-friends makes it safe but this doesn’t prevent those pictures you share being re-distributed amongst friends of your friends’ friends.
• Finally, some believe that Flaunting your family and its supposed perfect-ness to all and sundry may attract wrong “energy”, which actor Priyanka Chopra describes as the Evil Eye. “Beware of it and if possible, take care of your precious ones, or else someone out there is waiting to be in your place”.  Remember, social media fame is like being rich in Monopoly. There’s nothing real about it.

It’s little wonder that the possibility of kids being able to sue parents for having shared their image without their consent is becoming a real prospect.

Ways to share images safely

If you really desperately want to share pictures of your children, here are a few tips to doing it safely:

• Create a private album on a cloud drive and share it with only trusted family and friends, ensuring they know not to distribute the photos anywhere else.
• If you share on social media, don’t share your location.
• Although this is not a sure way to avoid pictures ending up in the wrong hands, try to set up your privacy controls before you share pictures so you can limit who can view the pictures.
• Avoid posting pictures of your children in bathing suits or in the bath tab, even on accounts you think are for only “friends and relatives”.

This isn’t limited to Instagram and Facebook, but includes all kinds of social networks including WhatsApp and WeChat. I recently got a WhatsApp message from a relative who had set her profile picture to a pic of my daughter. When I asked her where she’d got the picture and why she had it on as her profile picture, she jovially announced she had taken a screenshot of it when I had it on as my profile picture. Now her friends and their friends could easily do the same and I had absolutely no control over it.

Social networking sites and tech companies must take a big portion of responsibility and blame for nefarious online activities, as do legislators. Although they do their best and employ hundreds of people to review content to make sure it is safe, it’s still alarming how much heinous content gets through the cracks.

This isn’t about preventing anyone from posting anything online about their children. It’s to educate yourself and your children about the darker side of social media and take some necessary steps in ensuring online safety for your family and loved ones, especially the young ones. Technology is an amazing thing and the power of social media, when used correctly, is undoubtedly hugely beneficial to individuals and companies.

So, the next time you are ‘oversharenting’ (oversharing about your children on social media) or cross-posting (posting the same pictures simultaneously on your different social networking platforms) pictures of your adorable chubby cheek cutie, you may want to rethink … not everyone is looking at them with the same lens.

These days, instead of spending hours posting pictures of my kids on social media, I dance with them like no one is watching, because frankly, no one is watching: everyone’s busy on their phones, posting on social media.

Pearl Kasujja-Van de Velde is a dual Ugandan/Belgian national, a mother to two amazing girls, a wife, and a storyteller. To get in touch, visit her website at www.pearlkasujja.com.

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