NJ parents don’t want kids on social media until THIS age

Parents of yesteryear must have no idea how difficult it is for modern-day parents to navigate the social media age.

There are so many more and different reasons to worry about how your kids interact with their peers or (even scarier) with strangers.

So, have you, as a parent, toyed with what age you would be comfortable with your child forming social media accounts?

After the Surgeon General’s warning earlier this year about the negative effects of social media on children’s mental health, there has been an uptick in calls from lawmakers to introduce stricter regulations on children's access to content on the internet.

To get a firmer grasp on how parents feel about this, Test Prep Insight surveyed 3,000 parents across the U.S. to determine how they feel about their kids’ social media practices.

New Jersey parents don’t want their kids on social media until age 15.

New Jersey parents concluded that children shouldn’t have a social media account until the age of 15, one year older than the national average of 14.

We take this seriously in the Garden State:

The New Jersey Senate Bill 1982, introduced on January 9, 2024, aims to require social media platforms to verify the age of users and obtain parental consent for minors to create accounts. The bill is currently pending and has not yet been passed.

When it comes to monitoring social media usage, many parents say that they take on an active role.

📲 Half of the respondents stated that they have full access to their children's accounts and regularly check their activities
📲 32% of parents said they occasionally monitor their children’s social media or discuss their usage
📲 18% of parents reported more hands-off approaches, either rarely monitoring their children’s activity or opting not to discuss it at all

NJ parents had differing views on whether their children should follow influencers or celebrities.

📲 40% were comfortable with it as long as they could approve the accounts
📲 27% preferred their children only follow friends and family members
📲 18% of parents indicated they would rather their children not follow influencers at all
📲 15% of parents expressed a more lenient attitude, not minding who their children followed on social media

If you don’t believe how toxic and problematic social media can be, just take a look at some of the crazy things that have happened because of TikTok….

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5's Kylie Moore. Any opinions expressed are Kylie's own. You can follow Kylie on Instagram.
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