How to Help Your Kids Build a Positive Self-Image Online
As a parent, you always want what’s best for your children. One of these things is wanting them to feel happy, and have high self-esteem.
Sadly, it’s hard to do in this social media age. But, not all is doom and gloom, especially if you start teaching them healthy habits from a young age. This can prevent issues of low self-esteem which usuallyarise due to social media usage.
The internet can be a scary place if you don’t know how to navigate it. Especially for children, who can be influenced by everything they see on the internet. Besides adopting healthy and responsible browsing habits, it’s also important to ensure that you and your children are safe.
You can do this by using a secure internet connection like the one offered by Cox. You get advanced security features with your panoramic WiFi router when you sign up for Cox Internet. This will ensure that you and your family are always safe from any threat that lurks around the digital corner.
The Impact of Social Media on Self-Esteem
A decade or so ago, beauty standards were set by advertising and magazines, which used to be dangerously unrealistic. But now, with social media, the same impossible standards are set by friends and classmates.
This is made possible since social media allows users to carefully curate and even edit their lives, to only show the best parts while hiding any negative parts.
This can have a devastatingly negative impact on kids who use social media since they start comparing their everyday lives to the best parts of someone else’s life. This can lower self-esteem and even induce stress and anxiety in children.
Warning Signs of Low Self-Esteem
There are a lot of signs that point to low self-esteem induced by social media. Some of them include:
- Comparison to Others: Kids often see content that leaves them comparing themselves to others, often feeling bad about themselves.
- Fear of Failure: Social media usage can make children doubt their ability to become successful since they start losing confidence in themselves.
- Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): The use of social media is linked to a higher level of FOMO, which can lower self-esteem. This can cause children to use social media more to stay updated with the lives of other people because as the name suggests, they don’t want to miss out on anything about them.
- Trolling and Cyberbullying: Social media has made it easy for bullies to cause harm to others by sending threats, and malicious posts and uploading unflattering posts about people without consent. This can also cause lower self-esteem.
How You Can Help Your Kids Build a Positive Self-Image
There are a lot of ways you can encourage your children to build a positive self-image, even in this age of social media. Let’s take a look at some of the ways:
Have an Honest Conversation
These days, most people communicate on social media rather than in real life.
As a parent, it’s important to have an open, honest conversation with your child about how social media can hurt their well-being.
Take a nonjudgmental approach and ask them which social media platforms they use. Depending on their answer, start teaching them how these apps work while also talking about how everything they post on social media is permanent.
Set Boundaries Around Social Media
Chronic social media usage can increase the risk of depression, loneliness, and anxiety, which is why it’s important to set usage limits.
You can do this by setting screen-time limits, which put a timer on how long your kids can use social media applications every day. Make sure to put age limits on the content they watch on social media.
For younger children, the parent must have access to their parental controls so the children can’t make changes to the settings themselves.
Encourage Self-Worth Without Social Media
Social media is not even close to being an accurate way of knowing how well a person is doing. Teach them not to trust the smiling pictures, the tasty-looking food, the expensive cars, and big houses. Instead, they should have self-worth without needing validation from unknown people online.
A great way to do this is to introduce the concept “Digital Detox” to them early in life. The first thing to do is to limit their daily screen time. You can also create device-free zones. For example, the bedrooms in your house should be device-free after 8 PM. Make sure you lead by example by doing the same things.
Teach Critical Thinking Skills
In this digital age, it’s very easy to fool other people by creating fake news and media. When kids are constantly exposed to multiple fake news, they won’t be able to distinguish the truth from the sea of lies.
This is why it’s important to teach your kids about critical thinking. This will help them form their own opinions and learn to check the facts before believing anything they read on social media.
Having a healthy self-image is something that everyone can struggle with, even as an adult. This is why it’s crucial to teach your kids to love themselves and not believe everything they see on the internet, especially on social media.
While it can seem like a challenging feat, you, as a parent can have a huge impact on the lives of your children. So, make sure to help your child build a positive self-image so they can live their lives without feeling like others are better than them.
