Which sentence would be best to add after the second sentence in paragraph 2, to support the claim? The issue of what role parents should play as their children become more engaged with social media is an important one. While children—especially us teenagers!—believe our social media posts should remain private, our parents tend to disagree.
Parents oftentimes argue that they need access to their children's social media accounts so they can remove content they feel should be kept private. However, there is no research to support the idea that teens share too much personal information online. The real issue is that teens and parents view privacy differently. When teenagers seek privacy, it is generally because they want to be able to exercise control over who sees the content they post. When parents insist on monitoring their children's social media accounts, teens lose that sense of control, which can lead to a feeling of mistrust between parents and their children.
Another argument, which is one often cited by parents, is the concern that children spend too much time on social media, talking long into the night with friends and losing sleep. While this may be true, it is important to note that the issue of how much time teens spend on social media offers an opportunity to build trust and set reasonable boundaries with their children. Parents can start by talking with their children and asking questions such as: How much time do you think is reasonable to spend on social media each day? What time should social media access end each day? And so forth. Through conversations like these parents and children can begin to find some middle ground. Once parents and children have worked together to establish rules that everyone can live with, trust between them can be established—if children adhere to the rules, they can likely be trusted to monitor own social media; if not, then work together to establish new guidelines that will work for everyone.
No one wants to feel like they are being monitored all the time, especially teens. So, it is important that adults understand and work with their children to find common ground on the issue of social media.