I know exactly how you feel. I have a daughter who will be 9 in a few months and a 6 year old. I am so scared for them growing up. There just seems to be no respite from social media these days. I had MySpace in my teens, it definitely had its problems, but there wasn’t an app and you had to be on a computer to access it. You could turn your pc off and forget about it. Not like nowadays when we have the whole world in our back pocket all the time. My daughter already wants a phone but I’ve said not until the summer before starting secondary school and don’t expect it to be an all singing and dancing smart phone. Some kids in her class already have phones and are on tictoc and stuff. I really don’t get why you’d want to get your kid obsessed with social media at such a young age. I think it’s bad parenting to be quite honest.Really struggling right now with anxiety about my child growing up in a world where humans seem to be regressing and care more about money / social media than anything else. Having read a story about a 12 year old girl who committed suicide after pupil on pupil sexual abuse, only for her grave to have now been trashed and smeared with dog faeces, it makes me despair. I live in a town where county lines are targeting young children and often see pre-teens riding round starting fights and dealing drugs. I am so terrified for my 9 year old going to secondary school. She has mild cerebral palsy and anxiety. I’ve recently got her into therapy with a private counsellor as she has compulsions to say sorry constantly and generally worries about so much (she isn’t ‘neurotypical’ and has had these issues since she was young)
I just cannot shut off to this fear I have about her potentially being bullied, getting mixed up in the wrong crowd, being exposed to social media etc. I know I’m probably being irrational but when I was in school, if you were a target of bullies you could go home and it would be a sanctuary. Now with social media, there is no relief for children. Children are becoming preoccupied with ‘likes’ and are consumed with how they look. I realise I’m just rambling but how do you not become consumed with fear about your children growing up with so much awful stuff happening in the world? I try my absolute best to hide it from her and think of the positives but I live with this constant feeling of pure fear for her future.
Child on child sexual abuse is unfortunately on the rise. It’s terrifying, and its mostly boys abusing girls. As a mother of girls I just want to wrap them up forever and never let them go. Like you I feel like the world is getting worse, not better.