Andie Kephart

Media madness! Nowadays, kids are on social media just as much as adults. Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok were the main apps that tweens chose to engage in.

Kids from ages as young as eight-years-old are now being given access to social media and are being given access to smartphones.

Too many young kids and tweens have social media right in their pockets, which is detrimental to their minds.

There is an epidemic of bullying, but more specifically cyber bullying. According to annapolis.gov, “Nearly 42 percent of kids have been bullied online and almost one in four have had it happen more than once.” The ages between 8-12 are developmental years for children. Their confidence and self-worth are forming. Now, if grown adults can barely handle the critique of social media, then kids should not have to either.

Something that’s just as concerning about social media is the content these children are being exposed to when using these platforms. When you’re scrolling on TikTok or Instagram reels, it doesn’t even take five minutes until you are seeing videos that most would deem inappropriate for young viewers. Even on websites like Youtube Kids, which is specifically made for children, unsuitable content still slips through.

On social media there are many types of challenges that users partake in. Most times these are harmless, but that’s not always the case. In 2019, there was a viral challenge that was called the ,“Momo Challenge.” This trend purported videos of a creepy creature named Momo, who instructed kids on how to harm themselves or their family. Even though the extent of injuries from this is highly speculated, it’s commonly believed that no substantial number of people were injured. Not all internet challenges end up this harmless though, which is why it’s important that these children, who are mostly naive, are limited to their internet access.

There are many people that argue the fact that social media is beneficial for young minds because you can have so much information that would otherwise take forever to research in books. This is true, you can access an incomprehensible amount of knowledge from online sites, but that’s also the reason why it’s social media’s biggest drawback. It’s incredibly hard to filter all the content that circulates social media, so it’s highly likely that false information can be spread like wildfire.

The quickest and most effective solution to stop this online pandemic from spreading to children is just to have them log off from social media and have them go watch their Bluey© and Mickey Mouse© instead. They should not be on social media at all, let alone spending their precious youth scrolling through the endless mind-addicting cage that is the Internet.

This change will not be an easy one, but it’s dire that this phone addicted generation of tweens is stopped before something even more truly terrible happens.