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davisl435

Teen social media use

LisaD82
8 years ago

I am so out of the loop with social media it's embarrassing. Sort of a 2-part question here. First my kids are young teens (middle/high school). They each have a smartphone for texting and playing games but do very little on social media. No Facebook. One has a kik (?) account but doesn't use it much. They don't like instagram or snapchat (they're not into selfies or posting pics like that) and one has Twitter to receive news from his coach. We do check their phones frequently and simply because of their habits we don't believe they're using anything else we don't know about.

Over the weekend my youngest son went to the high school football game and I gave his friend a ride home afterward. On the drive, the friend's phone was lighting up and sounding off throughout the ride and I'm assuming it was social media updates (new posts? texts?). My son's phone was silent.

It made me wonder if he's being left out or if he's purposely declining using social media as much as his friends. This morning I asked him about it and he said he just finds it all boring so doesn't use it much. He seems happy, well-adjusted, good grades, healthy. He has a few good friends and is involved in sports and keeps busy otherwise.

Is it normal for a young teen *not* to use social media?

In addition my husband and I are not on social media but know we have to start using it for various reasons. I'll be setting up accounts for 2 reasons... there's a lot of neighborhood and community news that's shared through social media and also I want to know what my kids are doing if/when they start using it more often. My current list that I plan to set up include the following:

Facebook (I know kids don't use it much anymore but my schools and community do)

Twitter

Kik

Instagram

Figure out what the heck snapchat is


Are there any other social media networking services that you see your kids using that perhaps I should get to know, too?

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