I took my older girls to a digital safety event sponsored by Meta last night. The purpose of the event was to teach parents and teens about how to be safe online. I’ll be honest, I was initially tempted by the promise of free food. Anytime someone can take away the worry about what to shove in my family’s mouths for dinner, I’m down. But also, I wanted to support the event and show my kids I thought the topic was important.
Turn of events, I ended up being on a panel last night where I was part of a small group of parents that were asked to share our thoughts and experiences with social media. This was not what I signed up for. Despite my internal agony over being asked to participate, I showed up and did my best. I tried not to let my history of nerves get the best of me.
Surprisingly enough, I did fine. My voice didn’t shake too much. My hands were relatively calm. And I didn’t say or share anything that I instantly regretted. Let’s call that a win.
When I sat back down in the audience next to my 18-year-old daughter Gianna, she beamed at me and said, “you did great, Mom.” I could tell she meant it. She looked proud of me and that look made it all worth it.
Two women from Meta then assumed the stage and began to cover some features of teen accounts for Instagram. The one woman actually reiterated a point I had made during the panel. I had said that I wanted teens to know that life doesn’t happen on their screens. Real life happens off their phones, and they need to put them down for that to occur. They can’t spend their lives scrolling. I was thrilled. Something I said made an impact!
I leaned over to Gianna to point out this fact, but for some reason she looked paler than usual and distracted. She apologized and said she had zoned out during the Meta lady’s speech because she had been thinking about school shootings.
What? Where the hell did that come from?! I mean, we were in a school, but my mind didn’t once go there. She said she had seen someone out of the corner of her eye who looked suspicious at first and she thought they had a gun. They didn’t, thank God, but then her mind starting racing on what she would do, would she go grab Evie from the hallway and run? Would she hide? Where were the exits?
I sat there next to my newly adult daughter, hearing her say this, and I felt my heart move to my throat. We were here to learn about screen safety and how to protect them from the insidious effects of social media and tech use…. yet she sat there next to her mother and felt fear. She had the adrenaline rush of flight and mentally went through how to react to a shooter in school. Because they have active school shooter drills.
This….this hurts my mom heart more than social media. I can handle social media. I can parent the hell out of my kids and give them the emotional resilience and mental strength to withstand anything the little screens in front of their faces can throw at them. I am not worried about social media or technology. I know that I can show up for them as a mom and give them the tools they need to grow into strong, functional humans despite their phones.
But I am worried about the fact that my 18-year-old daughter had this thought track. No… not worried. I am sad. I am sad that our children have to grow up in a world like this where school isn’t safe. I am sad that I don’t think about that daily, because it’s not something that my brain constantly worries about because it was not the norm for me growing up.
Having heard Gianna’s thought track last night though, and her nature to immediately think someone was coming to harm us when there were no real apparent dangers, made me realize that this might be a deep seated, ongoing, and maybe even daily concern for my kids.
How often do they think about this? What kind of mental load is this having on our children? What kind of parent am I to put my kids in this situation?
The irony of the night was not lost on me. I came to a digital safety night to help my daughters navigate what’s on their screens. But it was a reminder that the real world, the one right outside those screens. is what is truly scary. I brought them to a place where there could be danger – one that I can’t protect them from. I spoke on the panel about real life happening off the screens, and my God… isn’t that true.