Kids constantly hear about the downsides of social media adults in their livesoften in the form of dire warnings and orders.
But adults themselves didn’t grow up with social media. They weren’t given a phone when they were toddlers, just to keep them quiet in a restaurant. They didn’t join TikTok and do silly dances before they even learned to read. They didn’t have their schools closed in a global pandemictheir relationships with friends and peers relegated to phone and computer screens.
Children who come of age thanks to social media are moving forward into a whole new world. And now that they’re getting older, they have some advice for their younger peers. Here’s what young adults say they wish they knew when they first went online.
- There is no need to compare everything: “It’s so easy to look at your friends’ stories and feel this feeling of FOMO, of missing out and comparing yourself, like, ‘Oh, my friend just got a new car,'” Bao Le said , 18, freshman at Vanderbilt “It’s like this overwhelming feeling of comparison,” he added. “But the things that people post on social media, that’s just the moment. strong, like the 1% of their life that they want to show to others.”
- Be yourself. Don’t be obsessed with products, brands: “My main advice would be to not take it too seriously,” said Doreen Malata, 22, a senior at the University of Maryland. “Be yourself,” she added. “Younger people want to be the ones they idolize. And when TikTok or social media stars are 20, 18, 16 years old, they want to be like them. You have younger kids who are now obsessed with products. and brands, and it’s getting really hard to be young. And it shouldn’t be really hard to be young.
- Set deadlines: “It seems like it would be really easy to just put your phone down and stop scrolling. But that’s not the case,” said Sienna Keene, 17, a high school student from Orinda, California. “If there was one piece of advice I could give to my younger self, it would be to tell my parents to set time limits for me – although I would never have said that when I first started going online Also, I personally wouldn’t have said let my kid have TikTok, I would try to resist…