RE: 13 year old daughter social media
Hi @sallylloyd, me and my wife have just gone through some of the worst weeks ever due to social media.
Our daughter has just turned 11 and has been bullied. this has happened on the social media giant youtube. some boys decided to make fun of her and her friend by mimicking them.
This video then got shared around their friends and has caused a lot of distress for her and her friend.
We have had the police involved, school has been contacted and they didn't really do anything to help the matter.
one of the boys who was in the video, his mother works at the school where my daughter and her son goes too. her reaction to this was don't worry just change your youtube name.
school are on the boys side by saying that the video was not that bad.
my daughter does not want to go to school, she really hates it.
we have kept her off for a few days last week as her mind can't cope with all the stress its put her under.
Social media for children should be stopped. after witnessing this first hand we strongly believe that children under 18 should have no access to the internet.
they should go out and play like we did when we were kids. there is no shortage of parks, they have bikes, footballs.
In all fairness, kids are becoming more lazier by sitting in front of computers.
sorry for the essay, just strong feelings when it comes to kids and social media. good luck with what you decide
I can imagine what you're dealing with. Bullying is indeed a bit problem. However, the idea of denying kids access to the Internet is unrealistic, as everywhere they go they see people constantly checking their phones. They'd just want access even more...
On the other hand, suppose you could enforce such a rule - you'd have an 18yo clueless how the Internet works and still exposed to bullying, trolling or even worse. Also, let's remember bullying is not a creation of the digital era. I'm really sorry your little girl was a victim of a cruel video, but even without YouTube those kids would've found another way of bulling her in the school-yard.
My daughter wanted facebook a few years ago, and stupidly I made her an account, with this she then started getting messages from men, grown men. this made me sick to the stomach with pictures of themselves. I ended up taking it off her and gave the details of the men to the police.
The youtube incident was horrible for her to go through as she didn't even know that there was a video out there of her. It was a friend of hers that told her.
The school tried brushing it under the rug, then when the police came to school to question the boy's involved they then made it clear that they didn't stand for bullying and it was in their school policy.
so they took all the kids to a place in Sheffield to see the effects that online bullying can have.
Social media will never go away I understand that and wrapping her in cotton wool will not help as she will never get strong to deal with things in life.
I just think there should be more things on the web to protect kids from the horrible doing that they bring on each other.
Right now my kid is on her phone playing roadblocks, I can't stop her from playing games so we like to keep her in the same room as us so we can monitor what she is doing. it is not because we don't trust her, but more we don't trust others who bring these negative things into others lives.
now the schoolyard bullying is another issue we have with the same boy, he has had her by the throat and also tried pushing her down the stairs. he has also got her bag and chucked everything of hers across the room and kicked it around.
If I was 11 I would go into school and kick his little arse for him but I am a grown man.
Now when I say the school won't do anything well this is because the boys mum is a TA, and from what they have said to us in a meeting last Wednesday, is she is a really nice woman and they don't want to upset her.
They then had the audacity to say that it was my daughter's mental health. there is nothing wrong with my daughter. she is a little nervous yes but she has no mental health conditions she is a girl trying to grow up in this big world.
as you can see this is a big deal for us at the minute.
Yes @artonmysleeve, I’ve seen some horrible bullying take place on social media and I’ve dealt with trolling myself too. I’m sorry for what your daughter has been through. So humiliating.
Potential bullying is definitely a reason to be involved and connected if your kids use social media. My kids haven’t posted videos. They are tentative, naturally. They know that all the youtubers they watch and the bands they follow have had to deal with trolling. They’ve dealt with it in minecraft servers too and have been able to tell me how to deal with trolls when I got trolled as a homeopath.
I tend to agree with @LadyRebecca that they are not going to avoid bullying by being banned from social media. In my daughter’s school they did plenty bullying with phones, a printer and a photocopier.
Only one of my daughter’s is in school and she’s largely avoided social media because of the problems with it. I’ve not told her to. I just let her talk and she came up with that solution.
I hope your daughter feels strong again soon.
it is a big issue. There is no way to protect kids on the net, just from a simple search they can be exposed to so much.
We have had talks with her, she wants to build a youtube channel and we have said yes, she came to us with a plan to build it for kids aged between 1 and 6. she wants to use puppets and act out plays and things. she is really bright.
but everything that she does is going to go through us first, which we think will help.