SOCIAL MEDIA: Kids and Social Media: Guidance for Parents

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - As many who were children before the era of cell phones will remember, contacting a friend by phone often involved mastering at least the following script: “Hi, Mrs. Doe. Is Johnny home?” Not so today, in the world of cell phones, texting, email, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you are a parent and don’t use or understand the new technologies, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has just issued a guideline saying that you probably should. More than half of teens connect to a social media site at least daily. Three-quarters have cell phones that they can use for social networking as well as texting. In a guideline published in March, the AAP makes the important (if obvious) point that today’s children are growing up on the Internet. Since children and adolescents now spend a great deal of time there, parents have good reasons to know what the place is like.

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