OP, my 17-year old DD is very modest and circumspect in her social media. This is probably mostly her personality, but I did talk to her about this from a young age. What good rules were, what the consequence could be, etc. i think it helps to give real world examples and not just as part of a lecture but as part of just discussing how the world works. I had a friend whose appointment to a very prestigious public position was almost derailed by an innocuous posting she made about a vacation trip, which was manipulated into something bad by someone else. I used that to explain why having a low social media presence is good, years before she even cared about such things. Do talk and monitor, a lot, is my advice.

You should watch Euphoria to prepare for what may surround your daughter in just a few years. The alcohol and drugs have been part of teenage life forever, but social media's influence of normalizing sending nude photos and recording sex acts was quite simply horrifying.

It's also hard because not allowing kids to use their phones to socialize can end up leaving them left out by their peers as it's the medium through which many socialize.

I think starting off by clearly explaining anything that is put on social media lives forever. You could give an example of if you put up an embarrassing photo of them when they were a baby on Facebook or Instagram will always be there for people to see.

Either your daughter is the type to do that...or not. I’m 45 and not that type. I have adult friends who are still that type.

Anonymous wrote:No social media in middle school. Certainly not elementary school. There - you are done. Solves lots of problems. Smartest thing I ever did. Now that my kid are in high school - they really don't care.

Ugh. I know some positive elements of Social media. However, it mostly feels like communication (conversation or writing) one would observe in a high school bathroom. Even amongst adults. Minus the smoke/vape atmosphere.

No social media in middle school. Certainly not elementary school. There - you are done. Solves lots of problems. Smartest thing I ever did. Now that my kid are in high school - they really don't care.

RE: "it's normal"

No, it's not "normal" to sexualize 12 to 17 year old girls while they wear practically nothing for strangers and mimic explicit sex acts for "fun" on social media, permanently placing the images and videos on the internet.

Anonymous wrote:Our youngest daughter is age 11. Nearly every time I jump on social media I see girls a little bit older than her wearing essentially nothing, shaking these butts, just really sad and desperate use of their bodies for attention seeking. If this is what they show the public, I can safely assume it's more explicit on their fake instagrams, snapchats and TikToks. Even KAC's young daughter is doing it on TikTok (top trend on twitter as I type this).

This scares the crap out of me and my husband. I want to stress it's clearly not every tween and teen gal, but my Lord, it seems like most of them. Is there a secret to raising a mentally balanced tween / teen gal that has self respect and isn't at all interested in this or is it totally random? I'm not some prude, I partied in high school and college, but this is just not cute at all. It's actually really, really low and sad.

Why are you following so many slutty tweens?

Most kids don’t do this, OP.

I am kind of alarmed at your social media diet.

It's clearly pay back for your partying in HS.

Don’t let her use Tik Tok. I have 12 (almost 13 year old) who doesn’t use any social media. She FaceTimes friends and has her own phone but doesn’t use any of that stuff. She has no expectation of privacy as an almost teen on her phone. We set limits. Research is very clear that social media can be detrimental to girls.

https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2007/02/sexualization

Eh, it's normal, so your first step should be realizing that many young teen girls are going to want to show off and get attention and explore provocative avenues and those feelings ARE normal and not "really really low and sad." If you express that to your daughter she will want to rebel stronger.

We did these things too, we just didn't have social media to document it forever and to make it easy for other people to comment/save/spread. That's hard.

While it may be normal and healthy even to want to be desired and get attention, it is NOT a good idea to post gratuitous butt pics to social media, so just straight up tell her what can go wrong and that she is expected to have good judgment, because if she messes it up or someone else gets control of her social media then you will try to help her but the real damage will be done and there's not much you can do and that would be really awful. If she wants to post cute pictures (in a few years when she is older) tell her you can HELP her decide where that line is because it's hard to see at first. Shaming and scaring her won't help facilitate this type of relationship.

I don't know if it's possible, OP. I remember sneaking out of my house in skin tight clothes and liking the attention that I received from guys. It did make me feel pretty. Now I'm pretty modest and a professional with a couple of degrees from top schools. I don't know what would have made the difference, honestly, but I can't imagine that anything my parents said or did would have changed things. I was immature because I was a kid and so did stupid things and then I grew out of it.

You have to figure out a way to explain that she shouldn’t do it without just trashing the girls who are. I don’t think declaring her peers to be “sad” and “desperate” and without self-respect will work.

Maybe you could talk through it first with a therapist to figure out a more truthful or at least more effective message to deliver to your daughter. Tbh I don’t know what it should be - it’s a complicated subject, and difficult to tease out all the misogyny and not make her responsible for it. Maybe an overall internet safety approach - you can’t post things like this because it’s dangerous - would be best but idk. That’s also not far from “don’t wear a short skirt or it’s your fault if something happens.”

Maybe the message should be about ownership of your sexuality and how social media can lead to loss of control over it? Because you can’t erase it later? Idk. Very tough.

Anonymous wrote:Our youngest daughter is age 11. Nearly every time I jump on social media I see girls a little bit older than her wearing essentially nothing, shaking their butts, just really sad and desperate use of their bodies for attention seeking. If this is what they show the public, I can safely assume it's more explicit on their fake instagrams, snapchats and TikToks. Even KAC's young daughter is doing it on TikTok (top trend on twitter as I type this).

This scares the crap out of me and my husband. I want to stress it's clearly not every tween and teen gal, but my Lord, it seems like most of them. Is there a secret to raising a mentally balanced tween / teen gal that has self respect and isn't at all interested in this or is it totally random? I'm not some prude, I partied in high school and college, but this is just not cute at all. It's actually really, really low and sad.

A lot of this a** shaking and gyrating is under the guise of "funny" / trending dance TikToks. It obviously has nothing to do with humor, it's about normalizing the sexualization of kids and getting minors and young females to post explicit sexual content on social media.

One way would be to tell your DD that if you see her posting that, she loses her social media.

Our youngest daughter is age 11. Nearly every time I jump on social media I see girls a little bit older than her wearing essentially nothing, shaking these butts, just really sad and desperate use of their bodies for attention seeking. If this is what they show the public, I can safely assume it's more explicit on their fake instagrams, snapchats and TikToks. Even KAC's young daughter is doing it on TikTok (top trend on twitter as I type this).

This scares the crap out of me and my husband. I want to stress it's clearly not every tween and teen gal, but my Lord, it seems like most of them. Is there a secret to raising a mentally balanced tween / teen gal that has self respect and isn't at all interested in this or is it totally random? I'm not some prude, I partied in high school and college, but this is just not cute at all. It's actually really, really low and sad.