“I worry about Jake in his room with the door shut. What’s he seeing that he doesn’t want us to see?” posed a friend with a worried brow. She goes on, “When we were teens, parents worried about curfews and what we were doing at other people’s houses but when we were home, they could breathe easy. They knew we were safe. Now, that’s not the case.” It’s true. Once children reach the age of owning their own personal devices — an age which seems to get younger with each passing year — we, as parents, have worries. And those worries are valid. The internet is still the wild, wild unregulated west, offering mostly free reign to publish any content including the very dark stuff. 

The tech-in-every-person’s-hand world that we live in has created more isolation. For parents, it may feel like we are skating around the issue frequently but not often or ever able to enter our child’s private digital world. Even if we activate parental controls, there’s still a big world that can be accessed with the touch of a screen. Ownership is a natural human desire and with smartphones in particular, our children can become Gollum-like, “my precious!”, about them. When we try and stir conversation about what’s going in our teen’s social media world, they can become snappish or quiet. First, it’s their own world and that gives them a sense of independence and freedom they don’t enjoy in most of the rest of their lives. And second, how can you describe or even adequately reflect on the rush of images, messages, music, and videos that pass by on screens in nano-seconds? There may be themes but how can a teen call out those themes as they rush past them while scrolling?

Though my own experience of teen parents and parents in general is that we worry about social media, teens’ impressions of their parents (as found in a research study by Pew Trust) is that we don’t.¹ Only one in five teens thought their parents’ worried about social media. That same research study showed that nearly half of teen parents regularly worry about social media. So how about you? Do you worry about social media, smartphones, or technology in general? What part of technology do you worry most about?

One concern is that teens do not feel like they are in the driver’s seat when it comes to social media and the information companies collect on them. Both parents’ worry and teens’ feelings of helplessness amount to a lack of agency. But we do not have to passively accept what’s on our screens. It’s worth looking at some small steps we can take to gain more control over our own usage and our teen’s to loosen the grip of worry and take action. When we do, we’ll have more confidence in our ability to meet the challenges we are faced with. So what can we do to cultivate agency in ourselves and in our children and teens related to technology in our lives?

Make the invisible visible to yourself, your teen, and your family. Work with your teen on how to be proactive – and take control – of their content and also who they connect with online. Here are a few ways you can promote their sense of agency — and your own!

1. Establish a Safe, Regular Digital Dialogue

Ask yourself, are your current interactions around social media psychologically safe from your teen’s perspective? If there’s been any inkling of a “gotcha” or fear in your questions of them, then the answer is likely no. So how can you turn that around and create a safe, ongoing dialogue about social media? Work to establish a new norm or expectation around your digital conversations. Turn that around by cultivating their trust in this area. 

Listen first! Spend some time learning from your digital native. Ask questions like, what do you think of AI?, with curiosity and open-mindedness. Wait to share your views until you’ve spent some time getting to know and understand their perspectives and how they view the purpose of technology in their lives. Then, focus on a two-week period and become intentional about your daily interactions – at least one digital and one in person – that are positive like sharing a post you laughed about or a video that you both might enjoy. Check yourself and your own comments after that two-week experiment. Do I have a balanced view – some positive experiences, some negative ones? If not, how am I seeking out more of the positive experiences? How am I sharing in the positive experiences with my teen? How am I creating a safe space to discuss social media so that when there is a problem, my teen will come to me?

Concerned about AI? Generative AI is now a part of all common search engines. Children and teens are likely to use it at times, without awareness that they are using it. So help raise awareness. First, use it yourself to gain firsthand experience. Then, talk about the positives of AI. It can help give you helpful background knowledge on a new topic. It can synthesize and come up with themes for a large amount of information. It can explain a complex topic in simple, understandable terms. But also, it can be inaccurate. When I conducted my own quick experiment for parenting advice, it offered some helpful tips and some that were contrary to science. In a study by Common Sense Media, nearly two out of five teen students who have used AI for homework have found inaccuracies.² AI may seem like an appealing short cut to students but plagiarism can be detected by fact checking sites. More importantly, they short change the thinking skills they’ll need to develop for today and their future by using only what they find with AI. Dialogue about the constructive ways to use it. Engage your child’s teacher in the conversation so you understand the school’s policies. Come up with your own co-created rules for AI use so that your child or teen feels prepared when they are faced with making choices about how they will navigate AI.

2. Build Emotional Awareness.

When you are leaving time on social media, how are you feeling? Model your observations and become aware of yourself and your own reactions. Offer a simple story at your family dinnertime. “I’m making an effort to notice how I feel. Today, I felt…” The simple step of connecting your emotions to your experience of social media will help build that emotional awareness muscle in yourself and model it for family members.

3. Discuss/Educate on the Positive and Negative Effects of Images and Video.

Though research has struggled to pinpoint the extent of the impact of images and video on physical and mental health outcomes, we know that repeated traumatic imagery and video can have a harmful effect.³ What’s most important is that our children and teens understand that and look for ways to protect their own well-being. There are images that you cannot unsee. They stay in your mind. And as we discuss that fact with our son, he understands that if he goes looking for horror, for example, he might discover there are images he won’t want to view. It’s important to discuss that only one search for a curiosity can result in more of the same being sent to you. So go in and block together when undesirable content arises so that you teen knows exactly how to do it themselves and can take control of their viewing to a certain extent.

4. Take Steps to Self Manage and Share. 

What steps can you take to self manage your own social media/smartphone intake? For example, leaving phones in a charging station somewhere other than bedrooms is one possible step. Another could be moving app accessibility so that it’s not staring at you when you open your phone. Tuck it away as a reminder that you need to go to that app less. Turning off notifications is yet another. Are there times of the day when leaving the phone behind or shutting it down is important like dinnertime, or supporting homework and study time? Discuss these as the steps you are taking and encourage your family to discuss how they’ll gain time if they come up with their own ideas and strategies for self management. 

5. Cultivate Responsible Decision-making Skills.

Before downloading any new app, particularly for children and teens without the independence of their own credit card yet, learn together about it and it’s age-appropriateness before you download. Start this young and early if you can. Once you’ve shown your teen how to look up reviews — check out Common Sense Media! — and learn more about the content, they can take charge of their own vetting before they come and ask you for your money to download it.

Also be sure and discuss what is shareable personal information and what should not be shared. Play out potential consequences to draw connections between sharing their location today on an unsafe app and why that could be a dangerous move that could impact them in a week or two. Our teen’s cannot possibly be aware of all of the pitfalls…just as we aren’t. Discuss what and where information can and should be shared. Be sure and gain consent from your teens if you plan to share their information or photos. If they aren’t comfortable, don’t share their image. The trust has to work both ways! 

Proactively talk about cyberbullying and toxic attacks. If you introduce the topic at a time when your teen seems willing to open up (car ride?) surely, they’ll have stories to share. Share your own stories too and encourage blocking attackers. Teens can feel uncomfortable blocking anyone they know for fear of retribution from their peers. “But they’re not attacking me,” might be a teen’s logic. Yet, you might discuss the fact that consistent attackers require an audience and you are a willing participate if you remain a follower. We know they will eventually turn on your teen. With that in mind, it might be easier for them to see it’s important to end the conversation.

6. Raise Algorithmic Awareness

Alright, the phrase doesn’t exactly roll easily off the tongue but it’s important for you and your teen to understand how the algorithms determine your social media experience. Though you may feel passive in your viewing habits, all social media is structured for interaction and every interaction — “thumbs up!” — gets coded as data about your viewing habits. Instead of mindless viewing, you can take some control over what you view and help your teen do the same. Take some time to discuss all of the things your teen loves including causes they might be passionate about. Maybe they love sloths or travel or photography or crafting or train modeling or playing drums? Maybe they are concerned about ways we can help the homeless or address the world’s environmental issues? Make a list of all the things they love. Now encourage them to go into their social media proactively and check out sites and profiles in their interest areas. Encourage them to really review the history of posts to ensure it’s a positive addition. Then, they can follow those new feeds and do a deep dive into what they love. If you or they pick well, it will fill their feed with enriching, inspiring content. That’s digital agency! 

Navigating technology continues to pose challenges for teens and parents alike. But we can become more conscious of the ways we are taking it in, when we take it, and how we take it in. We can proactively seek out quality content — like you are right here, right now! — and make sure that we load our feeds with inspiration, factual knowledge, and enrichment. How are you adding to the those areas on social media – inspiration, factual knowledge, and enrichment? Technology is simply the tool. It’s humans who create the content. Ultimately, we can have digital agency.

References

Vogels, E. A., & Gelles-Watnick, R. (2023). Teens and Social Media: Key Findings from Pew Research Center Survey. Pew Research Center.

Calvin, A., Lenhart, A., Hasse, A., Mann, S., and Robb, M.B. (2025). Teens, trust, and technology in the age of AI: Navigating trust in online content. San Francisco: CA: Common Sense Media.

Holman, E.A., Irvine, J., Andersen, P., Poulin, M., McIntosh, D., & Gil-Rivas, V. (2012). Mental and Physical Health Effects of Acute Exposure to Media Images of the 9/11 Attacks and the Iraq War. Psychological Science.