The curse of social media – how much is too much?

Have you ever compared your children’s use of technology with your own?  My children are whizzes on the Ipad with Erin quite capable of finding and selecting her games to play.  She can go into the TV section and find whatever cbeebies repeat she wants to watch, her current favourite being Swashbuckler!  Chloe my millennium baby has been born into a world where apple products, blackberrys and tablets are the norm. To me at her age they were fruits and medicines not a way of communicating. Her childhood is very different from how mine was.  Dylan has already experimented on the iPad, which was a shock!

Social media is powerful – my goodness this blog is part of it and I am amazed at what my little bit of the internet has achieved. It has given us so many fab opportunities and I have met (I say met as we do actually see each other in real life, not just behind a keyboard) some great friends. Yet I do wander at times if it is a little too much.

I find myself photographing parcels I open, instagramming the children trying out new products and tweeting about places we are going. Sometimes,  I wonder if I am missing the moment because I am too focused on recording it. I am watching life through social media rather than living it.

I love my iPhone but it drives me to distraction too. I am constantly checking and replying to emails and I wonder if the balance is wrong. I walk around a day trip watching it through the lens rather than being in the thick of it!  Replying to emails constantly certainly annoys my husband.  When I caught myself doing it on our Villa Tour even I thought enough is enough!

We have a no phones at the dinner table rule, but I am wondering if that is enough.  I don’t want to be at the beck and call of a iPhone.  I don’t want the children to be at the mercy of beep that tells them to drop what they are enjoying and look at the screen instead.  We are accessible nearly all the time now and I am not sure that it is healthy.  More and more social media channels open – snap chat anyone and I wonder where it will stop.  Internet bullying and trolling is well known with several high profile cases this summer including the death of Hannah Smith and prison for the Cheltenham man that sent racist tweets -has social media ran away with itself?  How can we use it but not let it use us?

A few nights ago we had this conversation with Chloe – she laughed when she realised we only had our first mobile phone at 18 and this phone couldn’t text.  Today’s teens don’t know a world without social media and that I think has huge responsibilities for parents.  As a parent I wonder how much social media is the right balance and what do I need to do to ensure my children are safe, healthy and have the right approach with social media.

I don’t know the answers but being a good role model is definitely up there at the top.  Therefore I am going to make a determined enough to let go a bit and put the phone away a bit more.  After all the emails will still be there in the evening once the children are in bed – I need to switch it off more during he day – or at least put it on mute so the beep doesn’t have me dropping whatever I am doing to look at the screen.

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