Parents of teenagers have surely heard of TikTok. Your children are probably among the 1 billion users you have around the world. And, perhaps, you know that dancing videos are uploaded to this platform. What you may not know is that this social network allows you to spread images to hundreds of thousands of people, even if you only have a handful of followers. It is also possible that they know of the existence of Snapchat, but will they know, for example, that you can know the real-time location of friends on this platform if they have their mobile GPS activated?
In Spain, it is legal to have an account on most social networks from the age of 13. The debate about how healthy it is for young people of that age to be intensive users of these platforms has been exacerbated in recent weeks in the heat of an investigation published by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) who, citing internal documents from Facebook (owner of Instagram), concluded that this network of photos is toxic for many adolescents. Within days, the company abandoned its project to create a product just for children, which had been criticized by children’s advocacy associations and legislators.
EL PAÍS has consulted half a dozen experts if it is inevitable that this phenomenon is detrimental to the youngest and what parents can do about it. Everyone agrees that networks are not inherently harmful. The specialist in Clinical Psychology Luis de la Herrán uses the metaphor of the knife to explain it: “In itself, this tool is not bad, you just have to learn when and how to use it.” For this reason, parents or guardians must accompany adolescents until they are mature and have the necessary resources to “deal with an environment that can be hostile.” The list of dangers would be unlimited, but it is within the reach of parents to reduce the risks.
First of all, it is important that parents limit the pages and networks that children can access, that they limit the time of daily use and that they avoid having devices with an internet connection in their room at night, in addition to take a look at what they post. To set the time limits, you can use the Family Sharing settings on Apple phones and, on those with an Android operating system, the Family Link application. There are some apps for parental control like Qustodio, Kids Place or Confidant, which have some free features. With them you can program schedules, set a password so that they do not access certain functions or block content. Of course, its use could put the privacy of the minor at risk.
No strict markings
“It is impossible for your adolescent to control himself solely by divine inspiration,” leaving them to their own free will “would be like giving a Ferrari to a person who has just obtained a license,” explains De la Herrán. “Children commit irresponsibility in the face of difficult parental control, ” laments lawyer Jesús Odériz Echevarría. However, that supervision should not turn into strict marking. Raquel Pérez Bandera, a lawyer for Civil Four, explains that “a minor over 14 years of age has full freedom to give their consent on the networks and can handle them however they want. If there were strict controls on them, we would violate that right, unless they were the object of a crime or were committing it. ”
Ideally, minors gradually become familiar with the digital environment in general and with networks in particular. On a recent article published in The New York Times, the popularizer Devorah Heitner, author of the book Guiding children in the digital age, suggested that instead of blasting a smartphone for a child to download multiple apps, it could start by texting a friend on a shared family device, allowing them to join networks later when their degree of maturity and his personality advise it.
Graciela Padilla, director of the magazine Investigaciones Feministas and a doctor from the Complutense University of Madrid, is in favor of parents also opening accounts on the social networks used by their children. ”Parents millennials [nacidos a partir de 1981] we still get to be in those networks, we know what there is and we know its dangers, but, as soon as we pass to parents baby boomers from now on, they have no idea, ” he explains. This specialist in social networks ensures that, as a mother, she consults the TikTok application every day to be aware of what is going on.
Another requirement that experts consider essential is that the accounts are kept private. That is, to consult and interact with them, you have to expressly request it. In most networks, the profiles of minors are private by default, but the settings can easily be changed, making these accounts a potential target for stalkers from all over the world. “There are no longer borders as such,” explains Lieutenant Daniel Moreno, from the Women-Minor Team of the Technical Unit of the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard. And Padilla also insists on that idea: ” I see girls showing their navels, with very long nails like Rosalía, heavily made up … And a dilemma arises: the girl thinks she is happy and free, but the second she is not only seen by her surroundings, also people in Manila or Kathmandu ”.
Moreno emphasizes precisely the need to speak with minors to explain the danger of behaviors that adolescents perceive as harmless. “They do a lot of exposure of their privacy and that involves more risks; Hence, awareness-raising and prevention work is very important, ” he says. In this dialogue, it is important to make sure of something that seems very obvious, but that, with the proliferation of very sophisticated tools, is becoming less so: that children differentiate the virtual world from the real one, with what that implies. “Editing the videos and photos is a risk because it comes to present something so different from the real thing that there is a danger of not understanding that it is only a fantasy,” explains De la Herrán.
The investigation of WSJ concluded that for a third of the girls who felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel even worse. “The longer they are exposed to false models that do not correspond to reality, the greater the risk that they will become depressed or have anxiety and sadness,” explains the psychologist. Experts consider, therefore, that families should pay special attention to the appearance of these symptoms, in addition to promoting healthy habits (such as not spending too many hours on these platforms) and enhancing their critical spirit.
Problems with networks usually emerge in adolescence, but sometimes they happen earlier. If a child under 13 were to open an account (making up a false age), the parents could demand that the company delete it. Companies, as in the case of TikTok, offer the option of requesting the user to be blocked and the content removed, but lawyer Odériz Echevarría insists that, even so, the platform could face legal consequences for not having detected it.
The platforms preferred by minors
In order to carry out these recommendations, it may be useful to know the basic functions of the most popular social networks and platforms among minors in Spain:
TikTok
What is it: Platform in which short videos accompanied by music are the protagonists. The most common is that users share dances, but there is no content limitation beyond the duration.
Minimum age: 13 years.
Privacy: Public accounts are more common than private ones, but, if you are under 16 years old, TikTok directly creates a private account, although the next second the child can change the settings and make it public. Between 13 and 15 years of age, the option to download videos from your profile is disabled, but not to recommend your account to other users (if they have made it public). The algorithm does not discriminate based on popularity and recommended videos can reach the other side of the planet even if they do not have any ‘likes’.
Inside the app: There is advertising.
More tips: https://www.tiktok.com/safety/es-es/guides/
What is it: It is an image platform, although there are also videos, live connections and private messages, in addition to so-called stories (images that remain for 24 hours and can be addressed to all followers or only selected friends).
Minimum age: 13 years.
Privacy: The account can be public or private. It is common for users to opt for the private option, which limits messages from strangers to a request that the user must specifically accept.
Inside the app: There is advertising both in the permanent publications and in the stories and through both options a purchase can be completed. Recently a specific section has been developed, with the same prominence as user publications, intended only for purchases.
More tips: https://help.instagram.com/154475974694511
Snapchat
What is it: Video and photo platform, especially designed for selfies for close friends and family.
Minimum age: 13 years.
Privacy: It includes the option to locate friends on a map and in real time. Only selected friends can see the location, if chosen by the user. The option to contact is available to both friends and other users of the platform. There is also the possibility of creating a public profile (and of sending images to the global map of the platform), but only those of legal age can activate the option.
Inside the app: There is advertising.
More tips: https://assets.ctfassets.net/gqgsr8avay9x/60HGeq7lGysoFlH8bucYUs/0b28b4cd6f0422c79687e981a1373c32/ParentGuide_2021_es_ES.pdf
Youtube
What is it: It is the main video platform and the application most used by minors: according to a report by the parental control application Qustodio (prepared with a sample of 100,000 families between Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States), it was the favorite among the 76% of Spanish minors.
Minimum age: 14 years. There are different parental control options depending on age. First of all, YouTube Kids up to 12 years old is recommended, a filtered version, with parental control, an option to block and limit the channels or videos that the parent selects. It also allows restricting screen time. If users are already 13 years old, parents can choose between three supervised versions with different levels of control, depending on the age of the child.
Privacy: In YouTube Kids the child cannot create content, only watch it. All the videos you access are stored in the history within your profile. The father is the one who creates the child’s channel, for which he must enter his own year of birth and log in with his email account. Only the name and age of your child are stored. To access exclusive parental options, YouTube will ask you a question like how much 3 x 4 is, even if the kid is already 12 years old. YouTube Kids does not give the option to comment on the publications, the child can only search and watch videos (filtered by the platform and by their parents) and follow the automatic recommendations. Nothing more.
Inside the app: There is advertising (also on YouTube Kids) and in the normal version there are also links to purchases.
More tips: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802272?hl=es
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