A Tennessee teacher has gone viral on Facebook after a post saying that children are not ready for social media.
Jackie Tate, whose Facebook profile identifies her as a teacher at St. Patrick’s School, a Catholic school in McEwen, Tennessee, says the following:
Imagine something embarrassing happened to you at school when you were in the 7th grade. Everyone laughed and it was awful and you were mortified. Then a few weeks passed and everyone found new things to laugh about and they moved on. You didn’t forget how embarrassed you were, but you could move on too.
Now imagine you did something embarrassing in 7th grade. And everyone laughed and it was awful. But someone also caught it on Snap Chat. And turned it into a meme. And a Tik Tok. And everyone in school saw it. And took a screen shot of it. And spread it further. And you couldn’t get away from it. And no one forgot. And you couldn’t either. And people were still re sharing it months later.
Just sit there and imagine it for a minute.
Kids aren’t ready for social media. It starts with us parents. Please share.
Tate’s post was shared, as she requested.
At the time of publication, more than 86,000 Facebook users had shared the post.
Tate (pictured above) could not immediately be reached for comment.
All over the country, lawmakers are reconsidering whether social media is appropriate for children.
Montana legislators recently passed a bill banning Chinese-owned social media app TikTok entirely.
As reported by The Ohio Star, legislators in that state are working on legislation that would require parental verification for children to use certain social media apps.
Specifically, the bill requires that social media companies to create a parental consent page when users under 16 years old register for an account and that they obtain verifiable parental or legal guardian consent and send written confirmation of the consent to the parent or legal guardian.
Ohio’s Lt. Gov. John Husted is particularly set on the new law’s passage.
If that bill is not passed, Husted says it should be added to the budget bill that must be passed by June 30.
“The Lt. Governor’s support for the Social Media Parental Notification Act remains very strong and he will continue to advocate for its passage this spring. The budget, along with the social media provision, is currently under consideration in the Senate and we are urging members’ support there as well,” Husted spokesperson Haley Carducci told The Star earlier this week.
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
Photo “Jackie Tate” by Jackie Tate.
Ms. Tate is absolutely correct. There is an anonymity to social media which allows people to say what they would not say to another in person. This can be brutal for the school age children. The youth are impressionable regardless if they are the sender or the victim of the comments. The forum is often steeped in hate. The anonymity isolates the child and narrows inter-personal communication development. One not need be a psychologist to see these very observable short comings, among many others in social media.
She is right ! If we really care about kids there should be NO social media for them and the only phones they should have is an emergency phone to call home and the police