When Gen Z Voiced Concerns About Their Kids Use Of Social Media Ring Hollow
- The White Hatter
- 8 minutes ago
- 9 min read
We recently came across a social media post that shared three striking statistics about Generation Z:
62% of Gen Z believe social media does more harm than good.
50% wish they had spent more time offline.
78% say they would delay giving their own children access to social media once they become parents.
On the surface, these numbers appear to tell a powerful story. A generation that grew up alongside smartphones, social media, influencers, algorithms, and the attention economy is now looking back on its own digital childhood with some regret. Many seem to be saying, “We experienced this firsthand, we know what it did to us, and we want something different for our own children.” That deserves attention. However, we believe it also deserves a deeper and perhaps more uncomfortable examination.
Depending on the definition being used, Generation Z generally includes those born between approximately 1997 and 2012. This means that the oldest members of Gen Z are now approaching 30, and some are already parents or caregivers. Many of their children are infants, preschoolers, or attending elementary school. In other words, we are beginning to see the first generation of parents and caregivers who largely grew up with social media now raising their own children in an even more technologically complex world (1).
The question is no longer simply what Gen Z says about social media. The more important question is whether their own digital behaviour reflects the lessons they say they have learned.
As digital literacy and internet safety educators, we have long emphasized a basic truth about parenting, “Children learn far more from what we consistently do than from what we occasionally tell them.”
A parent or caregiver can tell a child to put down their phone, but if that parent or caregiver is constantly scrolling during meals, the behaviour speaks louder than the rule. A parent or caregiver can tell a child not to overshare online, but if that child’s entire life has been documented publicly since birth, the lesson becomes confusing. A parent or caregiver can tell a child not to seek validation through likes and comments while simultaneously designing family moments around what will generate the most engagement on Instagram, TikTok, or Snapchat.
Children notice these contradictions. They watch how often we reach for our phones. They see whether we interrupt conversations to check notifications. They observe whether every family outing requires a photograph for social media. They learn whether private moments are genuinely private or simply potential content waiting to be posted. Long before children have their own social media accounts, many are already receiving a powerful education in digital behaviour simply by watching the adults around them.
This is why the statistics about Gen Z regretting aspects of their social media experience, while interesting, can feel somewhat shallow if those regrets do not lead to meaningful changes in behaviour. Saying that social media does more harm than good is easy. Modelling healthy, respectful, thoughtful, and ethical digital behaviour in front of our children is much harder.
One of the most concerning developments we have witnessed in the social media era is the growing normalization of using children as content.
There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong with a parent or caregiver occasionally sharing a family photo or celebrating an important milestone online. The issue becomes more complicated when a child’s emotions, embarrassment, fear, vulnerability, distress, or private experiences are deliberately turned into entertainment for an online audience.
The so called “egg crack challenge” that is once again trending on Instagram Reels and TikTok is a particularly disturbing example. In these videos, parents filmed themselves cooking with their young children. The child believed they were participating in a fun family activity. Without warning, the parent would take an egg and crack it against the child’s forehead rather than against the bowl while recording everything on their phone and then post it online.
In many videos, the child’s immediate shock was obvious. Some appeared confused. Others looked betrayed. Some began to cry while the parent laughed, often continuing to film because the child’s reaction was the very thing that made the video entertaining and potentially viral.
We need to be willing to ask an uncomfortable question, “What lesson does a child learn when a trusted adult deliberately causes them distress, laughs at their reaction, records it, and then shares that vulnerable moment with strangers for clicks, views, likes, and comments?”
If another adult deliberately humiliated a child, filmed their emotional distress, and distributed the video publicly for entertainment, many parents would understandably be outraged. However, when a parent or caregiver does it as part of a viral social media trend, the behaviour can somehow become normalized as harmless fun. We strongly disagree!
Some forms of social media content involving children cross a line from playful family humour into humiliation, exploitation, and, in extreme circumstances, behaviour that we believe can reasonably be described as abusive. A child’s distress should never become the price of adult entertainment or online engagement.
Digital literacy does not begin when a child receives their first smartphone. It begins much earlier. It begins when a toddler sees a parent or caregiver constantly looking at a screen. It begins when a preschooler realizes that funny, embarrassing, or emotional moments are recorded and shared. It begins when a young child watches a parent or caregiver take 20 photographs to capture the perfect image for Instagram. It begins when children hear adults talking about likes, followers, views, comments, and going viral. These are all digital literacy lessons, whether we intend them to be or not.
If we teach our children that attention is currency, that embarrassment is content, that private moments belong to an audience, or that the value of an experience depends on how many people engage with it online, we should not be surprised when they later adopt those same behaviours themselves.
The old expression “monkey see, monkey do” may sound simplistic, but the principle behind it is deeply relevant to parenting in today’s onlife world. Children model adult behaviour, they always have. Technology hasn’t changed that fundamental truth, it has simply created new behaviours for children to observe and imitate.
A parent or caregiver who drives while checking their phone is teaching a lesson. A parent or caregiver who scrolls through dinner is teaching a lesson. A parent or caregiver who asks permission before posting a child’s photograph is teaching a lesson. A parent or caregiver who puts their device away during an important conversation is teaching a lesson. A parent or caregiver who removes a post because their child says it makes them uncomfortable is teaching a lesson.
The question isn’t whether we are teaching our children about technology, because we are. The real question is, “What we are teaching them through our own behaviour.”
We often hear the argument that parents and caregivers have done their best but have simply been outgunned by trillion dollar technology companies, sophisticated algorithms, persuasive design, endless scrolling, notifications, and platforms deliberately engineered to capture and hold attention.
There is truth in this argument. Social media companies have enormous resources, access to extraordinary amounts of behavioural data, and sophisticated systems designed to maximize engagement. Parents and caregivers should not be expected to carry the entire burden of online safety themselves, and technology companies absolutely have a significant responsibility to create safer products, implement safety by design, provide meaningful privacy protections, respond effectively to harmful content, and be transparent about how their systems affect young users.
However, acknowledging corporate responsibility should not require us to abandon parental responsibility. These two things can be true at the same time. Technology companies need to do better, and many parents and caregivers also need to do better.
We believe there is a danger in telling parents and caregivers that they are essentially powerless against technology. While this message may be intended to relieve guilt or place appropriate pressure on technology companies, it can also unintentionally remove parental agency from the conversation. If parents and caregivers are told repeatedly that algorithms are too powerful, platforms are too sophisticated, and resistance is virtually impossible, what incentive is there to examine our own habits, establish boundaries, have difficult conversations, or model healthier behaviour?
Parents and caregivers are not powerless. They may face challenges, experience frustration, and make mistakes along the way, because what parent or caregiver doesn’t? However, despite these moments, they still hold enormous influence over how their children are first introduced to technology, how they learn to understand it, and how they ultimately experience and navigate the onlife world.
This brings us back to the statistic that 78% of Gen Z say they would delay giving their future children access to social media. Perhaps they will, however, delay by itself is not digital literacy.
A child who is kept off social media until 16 but grows up watching their parents constantly scroll, overshare family life, chase online validation, photograph every private moment, or use them as content has still received years of digital education. The lessons may simply not be the ones the parents intended to teach.
We have long believed that the conversation about children and technology has become too focused on a single question, “At what age should a child be allowed access?” Age matters, but it is only one part of a much larger discussion. We should also be asking what skills the child has developed, what behaviours the adults in their life are modelling, whether trust and open communication exist in the home, whether the child understands privacy and consent, and whether they know how to manage conflict, misinformation, manipulation, social pressure, and uncomfortable online interactions.
Delaying access can provide more time for maturity and skill development. However, that time only has value if we actually use it to teach, model, mentor, and prepare.
Before a child attends a school presentation on internet safety, before they learn about privacy settings, before they create their first social media account, and often before they can even read, they are watching the adults around them interact with technology. The home is their first digital literacy classroom, and parents and caregivers are their first digital role models.
This does not mean parents and caregivers need to be perfect. Perfection is neither realistic nor necessary. However, it does mean we should be willing to examine our own habits with the same scrutiny we apply to our children’s behaviour.
Before asking why our teenager is always on their phone, perhaps we should consider how often they see us on ours. Before criticizing a child for oversharing, we should ask how much of their childhood we have already shared without meaningful consent. Before warning them not to chase likes and followers, we should consider whether we have allowed those same metrics to influence our own behaviour.
Before telling our children that social media can be harmful, we should ask whether our own digital habits demonstrate what healthy technology use actually looks like.
None of this absolves social media companies of responsibility. We strongly believe platforms must be held accountable for foreseeable harms, inadequate safety systems, exploitative design practices, failures to protect children, and a lack of transparency. Safety by design should not be optional, and protecting young users should not depend entirely on parents discovering hidden settings buried several menus deep. However, corporate accountability should complement parental responsibility, not replace it.
We can demand better from technology companies while also demanding more from ourselves. We can advocate for safer platforms while examining our own digital habits. We can criticize manipulative algorithms while refusing to turn our children’s distress into content. We can teach privacy while respecting our child’s privacy. We can talk about consent while asking for our child’s consent before posting about them. These are not contradictory positions. They are part of the same shared responsibility.
The statistics about Gen Z and social media that started this article are certainly thought provoking. A generation that grew up immersed in social media appears increasingly aware of its potential harms and, in many cases, wishes aspects of its own digital childhood had been different.
The true test, however, will not be found in a survey. It will be found in how Gen Z parents raise their own children. Will they simply delay access to social media, or will they model a fundamentally healthier relationship with technology? Will they protect their children’s privacy? Will they resist the temptation to turn family life into content? Will they put down their own phones when their children need their attention? Will they teach their children that not every experience needs an audience and not every private moment belongs online?
Perhaps most importantly, will they recognize that the digital literacy of the next generation begins not with the first smartphone, social media account, or parental control app, but with the behaviour children witness every day from the adults they trust most?
We often say that it’s not the tool, whether a cellphone, social media platform, app, or artificial intelligence system, that ultimately determines the outcome. How a person uses that tool matters enormously, and that can differ significantly from one child to another.
The same principle applies to parents and caregivers. Our children are watching how we use technology. They are learning from us long before we formally begin teaching them. If we want them to develop healthier, more thoughtful, and more ethical relationships with the digital world, one of the most powerful places to begin is not with their screen, it’s with ours.
Digital Food For Thought
The White Hatter
Facts Not Fear, Facts Not Emotions, Enlighten Not Frighten, Know Tech Not No Tech
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