When my eldest first asked if he could go on social media, I’ll admit my gut reaction was a solid “absolutely not.” The idea of my kid being out there in the digital wilds — surrounded by influencers, algorithms, and people arguing about pineapple on pizza — filled me with dread. But, as with most things in parenting, I quickly realised “no” was only delaying the inevitable.
Whether we like it or not, social media is a big part of growing up now. It’s where kids make friends, discover their interests, and, occasionally, learn how cruel the internet can be. So the real question isn’t whether to let them on it — it’s how to help them use it without letting it take over who they are.
The First Like
The first few weeks were fascinating. Watching my son navigate his feed felt like witnessing a small sociological experiment. He’d scroll, smile, and announce that someone from school had ‘liked’ his post. But after a while, I noticed his face become less animated.
“What’s up?” I’d ask.
He would mumble for a while, before admitting that not many people had engaged with a photo of his new haircut, or whatever he had posted about that day.
That was the moment it clicked for me. My son wasn’t just using social media — he was already learning to measure himself by it. And that’s what really scares me. Not the trolls, not the scams, not even the dodgy trends — it’s the way a simple counter of hearts and thumbs can worm its way into a child’s sense of worth.
We all know the feeling, don’t we? You post something you’re proud of, it gets a few likes, and you think, That’s nice. But when it doesn’t? You can tell yourself it doesn’t matter, yet part of you still wonders why. If it can get to fully-grown adults with reasonably stable egos, what chance does a 12-year-old have?
We’re All Addicted But We Don’t Admit It
I can’t exactly lecture my kids on healthy screen time while refreshing my own blog stats or checking who’s liked my latest post on Threads. That’s the humbling part of parenting in the digital age — you realise you’re fighting the same battles, just in a slightly more respectable disguise.
So I decided that if I was going to talk to my kids about social media, I had to start by admitting my own hypocrisy. We had a chat — not a lecture, a proper chat — about how easy it is to get hooked. I told them I sometimes find myself checking my phone for no reason other than boredom or habit. That seemed to put us on the same level.
I also tried explaining algorithms to my kids — not in a technical sense, but in an emotional one.
I told them: “Social media isn’t evil, but it’s not your friend either. It doesn’t care if you’re happy, sad, lonely, or confident. It just wants you to keep scrolling. Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Youtube, they all make money from your attention, so they don’t care how they get it, they just need you to keep clicking.”
That seemed to land more than any “be careful online” warning ever could. Once they started seeing social media as something designed to use them — to grab their attention, make them compare themselves to others, and keep them hooked — they began to see through it a little.
Now, when they tell me about something weird or upsetting they’ve seen online, it’s not in a panicked way. It’s more like, “Look what the algorithm threw at me today.” That small bit of distance, the ability to laugh at it, is gold.
The Offline Balance: Make Real Life More Interesting
One of the hardest things to teach kids is that the online world isn’t the whole world. When I was their age, the only people who saw my awkward teenage experiments with self-expression were my parents and maybe a few mates from school. Now, kids put something out there and it can be seen by hundreds in seconds.
That pressure — to look cool, funny, or “relevant” — can be exhausting. So we’ve made a point of grounding them in real life whenever possible. Not as punishment, we don’t take their phones away, but as balance.
We go for walks, play football, cook together — normal stuff. And yes, they still sneak looks at their phones, but it’s not the only source of joy in their day. I’ve found that when life offline is full enough, social media naturally takes up less space.
You can’t tell kids to value the real world if the real world isn’t giving them much to value.
Privacy, Not Paranoia
Of course, safety in the more traditional sense still matters. We’ve set accounts to private, talked about not sharing personal details, and agreed to check in with each other if something feels off. But I’ve tried to make those conversations collaborative rather than controlling.
There’s a fine line between protection and paranoia. If you make kids feel like you’re constantly spying on them, they’ll just get sneakier. I’d rather they come to me when something bothers them — not because I’ve demanded it, but because they trust I won’t overreact.
We have to also remember that social media can be brilliant too. It’s given my kids creative outlets I never had — music, art, comedy — and connected them with like-minded people from all over the world. I don’t want them to miss out on that.
The trick, I think, is helping them use it intentionally. To follow people who inspire rather than intimidate them. To create, not just consume. And to know that validation from strangers isn’t the same as connection with friends.
Raising Social Media Savvy Kids
If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the goal isn’t to keep kids off social media — it’s to raise them with enough confidence and self-awareness that they can step away from it when they need to.
We can’t childproof the internet. But we can teach our children to know when it’s messing with their heads — and to have the strength to close the app, put the phone down, and remember who they are when no one’s watching.
I think this approach can stop them falling into the like trap. Because the only real “like” that matters is the one they give themselves.