Ailyn M.

Landas
Grade 11 gas maxwel January 22, 2024

LEARNING CANCEPT
1
Should parents control the time that their kids spend on social media platforms?

Social media is a wide and varied platform, yes we are now open minded
and aware of the current events and problems around the world because of
the influence and connection in social media. The important content is as
easily accessible as the harmful contents which are not appropriate for
children and may affect their socioemotional growth as well as their mental
health. Children are innocent, they might be able to know what’s right and
INTRODUCTTON
wrong but there are harmful things on the internet disguised as something
nice. Who are the people that can help children from experiencing dangerous
things? Of course the parents. Limiting the time they spend on their phone
does not equally mean the parents are taking away their freedom, but
protecting them from potential risk of exposure in harmful content instead.

The kids nowadays are very easy to adapt from the changes that happens in their
surrounding and social media is a wide field that the parents can't can't control. The
children's adaptability plus the social media's wide scope can affect and alter their
life. An example of this is when there was an article from foreign country reporting
that an elementary student had taken away her own life just because of copying a
trending game on tiktok. That article alone is very alarming but there's also local
BODY news about Filipino students doing a tiktok trend that is normalizing physical harm
towards their classmate and laughing it off as if it was just a joke only. All of that
alarming news was due to the ripple effect, one might think it was normal because it
was done by others and might execute the same thing which can influence other
children as well. One of the reasons why it happened and still happening is because
of negligence of parental guidance on children. I have witnessed myself the issue of
social media towards children, not just in socioemotional aspects but as well as in
the child's physical health, I have a family friend that lost their child because of too
much use of gadgets, the child is eating around 2 am in the morning while eating ice
cream, due to cardiac arrest and stress he passed away. The main source of that sad
event is the gadgets or social media. Parental guidance does not only imply on
children's decision in real life but it does also go with children's access on
information inside their phones, laptops, personal computers, tablets, and
technological devices.

The social media can help the children especially in terms of communication and information
access however, too much exposure might lead to complication on student's end. Their
beliefs of right and wrong might get twisted depending on who they interact with online. The
parents should be media literate so that they can teach their children how to use the social
media appropriately and prevent them from harmful content. The social media is convenient
for us adults, who can differentiate between right and wrong, but for children to explore it
alone it might be risky. Parents who are limiting their use of social media is not just a strict
CONCLUSION parent but a loving and caring parents instead and they should start considering the social
media as part of their child's environment that might affect their child's growth. Too much
can destroy good things, parents should assert their dominance to discipline their child to
lead them on the right path to become a good and responsible person. Stopping the child will
not be a good idea but explaining to them the consequences of certain actions might help
them reflect and become cooperative with their parents. Parents should remember that
limiting their child on browsing the social media is not a way of taking away their happiness
but a way of protecting and guiding them instead.