Parents have always had to worry about their children’s health and safety. These days, they have to worry about their online safety, too. And a growing body of research suggests that parents can have a big impact when it comes to minimizing their kids’ risks from spending too much time online.
“Parents can be a really important influence in terms of social media behaviors of their children,” says Dr. Jason Nagata at the University of California, San Francisco. He and his colleagues recently published a report in JAMA Network Open that looked at studies on the impacts of various social media related policies across the U.S. and the globe. It found that parental monitoring of kids’ social media habits is largely effective in minimizing harms of screen time and social media.
Read five ways parents can help their kids use their digital devices more safely on npr.org.