It is often difficult for parents to truly understand how important social media, and the mobile devices they use to access the Internet, is to their children. There really isn’t a point of comparison that parents can draw from their own childhood. Parents look at their child’s smart phone as just an electronic thing—a toy. They unfortunately misunderstand the important and central role it plays in their child’s life.

Parents, remember when you were a child and if you wanted to hang out with a friend, you had two choices: You could call them up on the phone and have a conversation, or go to their home and see them there. Possibly, if you had transportation you could meet at a central location, like the Mall, and hang out with a few friends at one time.  Those personal connections with your friends were essential at that informative time in your life. This is still true today for children, but what has changed? With social media, your child can now hang out with all their friends, all the time, wherever they are. Not only that, but they are sharing powerful images and ideas of what is important to them with instant feedback from hundreds, even thousands of “friends.” Social media has created a feeling of connectedness never experienced before in human history. Your children do not know a world without the Internet or social media, and they can’t imagine being in a world without it. In a study conducted by Cisco, they found that more than half of the young people surveyed considered the Internet an “integral part of their lives,” as important as food, water and even air. Social media was something “that they could not live without.” (Cisco, 2014)