Social Media - Avoid To Protect Your Child’s Mental Wellbeing?

The decision for parents to hand mobile devices to their children can be a difficult one, let alone allowing them access to the social media. While social media offers a multitude of benefits, its impact on our mental wellbeing has become a concern.

The link between excessive social media use and poor mental health outcomes among children and youths is well established. However, we need to recognise that social media is not the sole cause of poor mental health outcomes. Instead, it interacts with an individual's pre-existing stressors to yield negative outcomes. Hence, understanding the family context is necessary in helping children and youths as they navigate and build their online presence.

At TOUCH Cyber Wellness (TCW), we believe in a family-centric wellness approach towards digital use, habits, and lifestyle for the whole family. Since 2001, TCW has conducted education and counselling programmes to more than 2.8 million youths, parents and educators, to help families grow together in the digital age. Rather than shunning cyberspace, emphasis should be placed instead, on supporting families, especially parents, educators and caregivers, to be equipped in the relevant knowledge, skills and attitudes to manage the digital and social media space.

A cyber wellness mediator paired to a family has proven to be a critical success factor in helping families to adopt technology and stay safe online. The mediator could be a volunteer trained in cyber wellness knowledge and skills to support the families. TCW piloted this in our Digitally Ready Families programme during circuit breaker in 2020 and it has helped many vulnerable families in adopting online platforms, especially for the purpose of home-based learning and staying connected with loved ones through social media.

Avoiding the cyberspace and social media is unrealistic and is therefore crucial that we tackle this issue with a balanced perspective. Families need strategies that promote digital and mental wellness and this will help us to mitigate potential online harms.

The social and professional community can support parents to build a family environment that harnesses the benefits of technology for a healthy and well-rounded lifestyle at home.