How To Protect Kids From Social Media Risks
Video Transcript
Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
Welcome to Attorneys.Media – Legal Commentary Interview. I’m Ray Hrdlicka, your host. Today we have Stephen Giacovino, a personal injury attorney in Long Island, New York. And today we’re going to talk about an interesting topic: do parents get involved with their children’s lives?
And that’s in a general sense, but specifically, you know, when should parents get involved with restricting, with looking at, investigating the social media youth harm aspects of a childhood life? Meaning, whether it’s video games, addiction to nicotine or electronic cigarettes, et cetera, et cetera.
Avoiding too little, too late. That’s what I want the subject of this conversation to be about.
Just a personal note. I’ve got two adult boys. I remember when they were growing up and they were racing BMX, and I used to make them wear chest plates, elbow protectors, knee protectors.
We would go to a race, and the parents of other children would come up to me and say, “How do you get your kid to wear this protective gear? I can’t get my kid to wear protective gear.”
And I would look at them and say, “They don’t race.” It’s that simple.
So, the question I have is: you have a perspective, one as a parent, but two as an attorney. What can you say to parents about getting them involved in their child’s development, and specifically in regards to, let’s say, video games, social media, youth harm, you know, the social media addiction, et cetera?
I gave you a lot, sorry.
Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County (Long Island), New York
I won’t profess to be a perfect parent by any stretch of the imagination, but I know the problems that parents deal with today.
Monitoring children’s behavior is so difficult because they’re so much further advanced compared to us with the use of technology. We didn’t grow up the same way; we didn’t have the same stuff.
I also think that our parents’ generation was probably more focused on the parental aspect of monitoring children’s behavior, and I’m sure it was much easier. Today, typically, both parents are working long hours. They still have children, but it’s hard to monitor everything they’re doing.
Parents—and again, I’m probably answering more as a parent than a lawyer at this point—but I would say that the real answers lie in: intervene, intervene, intervene. If you think they’re doing something for too long, if it’s too much screen time, intervene. Try to engage your kids to find out what it is that they like to do. I think that we have to engage them in more scheduled activities outside the home in order to prevent a lot of this from happening.
Most of their downtime by default is going to go towards social media and video gaming. That’s where most of them live. The more that they’re there, the more they’re exposed to those algorithms which lead to addictions and the draw of pulling them in for so many hours a day, and the harms associated with that.
So again, I can’t profess to be by any means a perfect parent. I would just say that you need to stay as active as you can in their worlds and in their lives, because their default are these places where I think they’re getting exposed to a great deal of harm.
Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
Well, you have two different perspectives—as a parent and as an attorney—looking at the harm that is caused, whether it’s over a short period of time or a long period of time, with regard to social media or video game addiction. So you see the end result. And that’s what I wanted to get a perspective on.
And I can absolutely agree with you 100%. It’s the intervention, intervention, intervention of a parent in the child’s life. And we don’t see that in today’s world. It’s really sad.
You know, that’s the biggest thing I can say to somebody: get involved.
Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County (Long Island), NY
Get involved. Well, parents definitely have to pick up that ball.
And I do—I have compassion for how difficult it is, and I have even more compassion for not understanding what’s going on. Because, like most people in our age group, we just didn’t grow up with the same thing. Technology was not nearly as advanced as it is right now, and not part and parcel to every minute of our lives.
They’re exposed to screens all the time, and that’s the way they take in a lot of their entertainment, information, and socialization, quite frankly, because that’s where they live. They live on screen.
Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
I know. It’s actually kind of sad, which is probably another entire conversation with you that we shall have in the future.
Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County (Long Island), NY
Well, Ray, I would say to you that parents of today realistically have to learn to coexist with these things, and you have to do the best that you can coexist with them, because it’s not going away.
Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media
Yeah, no, you’re absolutely correct. We will talk about that in the future. Steven, thank you very much for talking to us today. Have a great day.
Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County (Long Island), NY
Same to you. Thanks.
Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County (Long Island), NY
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