due to concerns over a social media ‘trend’ that swept the nation yesterday, my child didn’t go to class this morning.  a viral TikTok challenge gained attn of threatening possible school shootings/bombings for today, dec 17th.  if it’s not covid, it’s violence- what the actual f*ck?  so many thoughts but first, we knowingly take this chance every second she’s at school.  with the attn/extra security, maybe today is actually *less* concerning other days, but i have too much anxiety atm.

the bigger issue- we should reevaluate our children’s SM consumption.  a couple of months ago, after weeks of dragging my feet, my 13 year old deleted snapchat.  that was just the tip of the iceberg, but huge.  she was upset; i lost some ‘cool’ points.  ironically it wasn’t mentioned again- turns out, she CAN survive without it.  eliminating SC was a big move bc it gave me the nudge i needed to continue to make difficult but necessary decisions.  you see, there’s peer pressure on teens- no doubt, but SO much pressure on teen parents too.  i refuse to feed into harmful things just bc others do.

this post isn’t to be judgmental but i think it’s time (past time) we wake up.  honestly, i haven’t been vocal about social media toxicity bc i believe in leading by example.  while i don’t have twitter, snapchat, tiktok, i’ve obviously used instagram, a lot.  over the past decade i’ve invested so much into this platform.  do i regret it?- yes and no.  all we can do is move onward, changing our minds when presented with new information.  since jan 2021, i’ve been gradually minimizing my time here and drastically decreased sponsored posts.  that changed the game as i let go of the stress associated with analytics, insights etc.  content designing is a creative outlet and my goal has been to keep it leisure, but between unpredictable algorithms, harmful content targeting youth and the push for more videos; a downhill slope.  IG is now a replica of tiktok.  our eyes/minds are literally NOT designed to gaze at rapid-changing videos one after another after another.  but that’s also when i became more aware for my own children.  things are changing and so are we.

xx,

katy