Social media can prove very beneficial for parents in order to stay connected with school teachers and other parents. It can help them to avoid missing important updates from schools and teachers. But parents must be a little careful while using it. Read on to find out how social media can affect parenting. Parenting has changed a lot since the advancement of technology. Digital communication has affected parenthood to a large extent. Social media, especially Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp have affected parenting enormously. It has its pros, but it has its cons too. This article may help you understand how it really affects your parenting.
Helps in Staying in Touch
It is because of social media that you have got back your sense of community that was almost lost. It is very easy to connect to relatives, such as cousins, aunts, uncles, etc., and get in touch with your long-lost friends, and you can also help them stay connected with your grown-up kids. You may live thousands of miles away from your closed ones, but if you do not have time to visit them while you are busy taking care of your kids and other jobs, then you can always stay in touch through social media. So in such cases,
parenting has become little stress-free.
Fast Gets Faster
The biggest challenge of parents is work-life balance, but now as fast has become faster; it has become easier to maintain the balance. Once there was a time when a pager text seems to be cool and important, but now you can contact your kids at home easily through just a message through on WhatsApp. You are accessible to your kids throughout the day and night, whenever you are away, just because of the
social media. The faster you connect to your kids, the less you need to worry – somehow, it is a good point for parenting.
Teach Kids Easily
Have an opinion about something? If you want your kids to understand your views, you can always send them some supporting documents through social media. Kids have undoubtedly become smarter while dealing with news because social media almost gives live feed. You are truly living in a connected world, and you can always teach your kids how to follow news over social media and make it much easier for them to build their views about any topic. So it is much easier to teach kids about politics, geography, science, etc. – all through social media.
As there are good effects, there are bad effects too. Social media keeps lot of information. Before even you know how dangerous your posted image or post be, it is already out and read by your kids. So you have to be careful and apply filters while using social media. Your kid may think differently of you because you posted the picture of you being drunk last night. So it is better not to share too much information over the
Internet.
Cyber-Bullying
It is very important to teach your kid about cyber-bullying. Parenting includes that you must make sure that your kids have proper
cyber safety measures. Words can be hurtful and can cause irreversible damage, so you have to be very careful for your kids. It is better to teach them recognize some of the indications of cyber-bullying. Do not be late, and educate your kids on the harmful effects of cyber-bullying and bring them away from the wrong crowd.
It is great to be on social media to connect with so many people and also make parenting easy, but you should never consider the drawbacks loosely. Keep your kids away from misinformation, cyber-bullying, and pornographic content over social media. Always curtail your personal information as it also increases the risk of theft. You must be very careful with what you share on the social media, because it is not only about your kids, but the world is watching you!
What are the advantages of social networking? In what ways can social media make parenting better? What are the disadvantages of social networking? Discuss here.