Yes, Kids Need Social Media

Earlier this summer, Glennon Doyle Melton — who I love — tweeted that she doesn’t let her kids use social media. I know that she’s not alone in this. Lots of parents — rightly — fear the effects of social media on their children. Hell, we fear the effects of social media on ourselves. How many times have you told yourself that you’re going to remove Facebook from your phone? How often have you thought that maybe, just maybe, your psyche would be a little healthier if you didn’t check Twitter everyday?

We all worry about social media, and rightly so. There’s a ton of research out there that says that social platforms cause us a tremendous amount of anxiety, but we don’t need studies to tell us what we already know. Out there in the digital commons, we face tremendous pressure. To look good, to sound smart, to be popular. We compare our lives to others; we worry about missing out. We grapple with fake news and bad news and the toxic conversations that seem to bring out the worst in everybody. It’s a complicated space, to say the least; why wouldn’t we want to protect our children from it? Shouldn’t we keep our kids away from that space as long as we possibly can?

But here’s my answer: no.

Really. No.

Obviously, it’s a personal decision, and I totally understand why many parents would lean in the opposite direction. But I…