In today’s world it is important to keep children in touch with technology. Just this year, my niece and nephew brought home iPads and are expected to read and do homework on a daily basis from a screen rather than a book. They even have assignments where they have to research on the internet work on interactive calendars and assignments. These assignments are made possible because of the enhancement of the internet to Web 2.0 and introduce the interaction and collaboration that also enhance social media.
In a post where a mother feels that Facebook is overtaking her daughter’s life and that she has lost all of her friends. Does she know what her child does while at school and how much they interact there? How about being on Facebook and talking to her friends through chat or messaging? Just because they are not together does not mean that she does not have friends or is not conversing with them on their Facebook walls?
Social Media can positively impact a child’s mental growth. Research by Pediatrics and an article, point out that there are benefits such as collaborating on projects, staying connected with others, and contributing to charity work that is done by children and teenagers that use social media.
I understand that some mothers feel that their children spend far too much time on social media such as Facebook or Twitter but when the World Wide Web introduced version 2.0, it expanded the market to include far more interaction between users of any age. Instead of placing blame that Facebook is ruining a childs life, embrace the fact that this is part of a childs development in today’s world. With email, blogs, Facebook, and all of the other types of online communication possible, children should be able to participate. I am not saying that it needs to overtake their lives or that children should be vulnerable to information that is not age appropriate, but it is enviable that children will need to use social media. There is even a show on television show on the Disney network, entitled Dog with a Blog, where a family dog writes daily about family values in his own blog following each episode. Not all social media is bad and because someone uses social media it does not mean that their lives are ruined. Instead, if this mother could understand the benefits it might enlighten her …. Ironically, this mother turned to the web to post her concerns, why shouldn’t her own daughter?
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