Good relationships with parents and religious beliefs are among the factors that influence a teenager not using the Internet inappropriately.
A study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior found that using Instagram or Snapchat before the age of 11 is closely related to more problematic digital behaviors, compared to those who join these platforms when they are older.
“Sites require a minimum age of 13 years to register, but the reality that many of the users are younger. A third of our respondents had started using social media at 11 or 12, and a third had started at 10 or even earlier”Said the paper’s lead author, Linda Charmaraman, director of the Youth, Media and Wellness Lab at the Wellesley Centers for Women (WCW).
Charmaraman and his colleagues interviewed 773 students of these ages in the northeastern United States. They found that those who took online accounts before age 11 were more likely to:
- Make friends or visit online sites that your parents would not approve of.
- More problematic digital behaviors.
- Less empathy online.
- Be victims of virtual intimidation and sexual harassment.
Some of the negative effects (not all) lessened when parents applied restrictions on phone use and they monitored the time their children spent on social media.
What are problem digital behaviors?
An earlier investigation, from 2019, of the American Journal of Psychology, mentions that adolescents who use smartphones as their primary internet source are more exposed to receiving requests for sexting (images or messages with sexual content). They are also more likely to see pornography intentionally.
What makes the difference in these cases? The youth’s environment, their family structure, their religious beliefs, their attachment to parents and the monitoring of their online activities by adults, the study cites.
“Highly religious teens with a strong attachment to their parents are less inclined to use the internet in problematic ways”Wrote Drs. Ryan Atwood, Troy Beckert, and Mitchell Rhodes.
Not all news is bad. It is also clear that many adolescents (ages 13 and older) tend to engage in positive rather than negative behaviors. And even if they joined before that age, as they grow older, they can gravitate towards civic and social support behaviors, awareness raising or event organization. This may be due to early exposure to the positive and negative potential of the different platforms.
“This suggests to us that the minimum age of 13 can be a good standard, if it is emphasized, ”observes Charmaraman.
The strategies that this team proposes for families with tweens and teens are:
- Be aware of all the sites that your children join.
- Put at least one clear rule about the use of devices (for example, not at night).
- Monitor how often they review accounts. (F)
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