We are all plugged in nowadays. And social media seems to
be the way that people are connecting. Our children are even connecting with us
that way. Well some people want to know is that a
good thing? What effects does social media have on our
family relationships? Many. Some for the good, some for the bad.
I'm Nicholeen Peck and I am a parenting and relationship
expert and owner of Teaching Self-Government.
We're going to be talking today about social media,
what it does to our relationships, how we can use it for the better
and what we need to be aware of.
In this video, we're going to talk about the positive effects that social media
can have on our relationships. And we're going to talk about the
negative effects that social media can have on our family relationships because
it definitely can have both. And then we're going to be talking about
some of the boundaries that we need to set for ourselves to make sure
that we stay in the positive zone and not go
into the negative effects for our family relationship.
The first positive is probably pretty obvious. And that
is that it helps us to keep track of people,
right? So, social media is nice because we can know, "Okay, what are they doing?
What's my child liking? What is my spouse thinking about this thing that's
happening in my in the community? What has my cousin been up to after all
of these years? Right?" So, there are things that we can watch
online on social media to see what everybody's
been up to. And feel like we're a little bit more
connected to them or a little bit more in the know about what they know and
think. Now, this can help us with our communications but
it can also hinder us. And we'll talk about that in a minute.
The second positive is that we actually can give public
praise to our family members. So, public praise is a really powerful
way to praise somebody. It's also really powerful and meaningful
when you just look at a person one-on-one
and you tell them how great they did at something,
how much growth that you see in them, you know, what they're accomplishing and
how wonderful this will be for their lives.
Things like that. But when you say something in front of a bunch of other
people about how a person has put in a lot of
work on something, how they have mastered something, this
means even more. Now, we have to be careful not
to just inflate. When I say praise, I don't mean like,
"You're incredible! You're stupendous!" like for every little
thing because that actually could be a negative and a lot
of people know well, "That's not true. I'm not the most incredible at it, I'm
not the very best at it." You know, so we need to make sure
that our praises are meaningful but we can
really boost a person up by being willing to praise them for things that
they've done. Beautiful pictures that they've taken
stuff like that on social media. Another positive effect of social
media is we can have conversations with people
that we wouldn't normally have. Because people will send around things
like pictures and memes and videos. And they can be
good conversation starters. Or sometimes maybe some of our family
members chime in on some political issue or something and
hopefully if they're mature and you start talking with them that you
can have a really deep and unifying conversation even if
you don't completely agree on everything. Just because you got a chance
to talk to another person about it in a meaningful way. So, those can be some
of the positives but each one of those positive things
could go negative if done wrong and there are
other negatives. So, let's spend some time now talking
about the negatives. One of the negatives that you've
probably experienced but you don't necessarily think about it
when you're online looking at people's posts
on social media is that if you tell them good job for something
on social media or you comment on something that they've done
on social media, you actually sometimes have less to talk
to them about when you're with them live. Have you
noticed that? You'll be with somebody and you'll say,
"Oh, I really want to talk to them. I already kind of told them about that.
And now if I ask them what's been going on
but I already know because I've been all over their social media pages."
Then it feels a little harder to start conversations. And I think parents are
finding that with their children that when their children start
engaging in social media. And the parents are watching the social media
to try to make sure that they know what's going on in their child's life
that the parents are actually talking to their children less,
not more. Because they don't have as many things to discuss. You basically
have to decide you're okay with the conversation that starts out something
like this: "Hey, I noticed on social media that you
went to the beach. It looked like you had a really great time."
Then you've got to take it the next step further and you have to say,
"So, is that your favorite beach? What beach were you
at? I'd like to know a good place to go to the beach."
And you've got to take it to a new level and then start
asking questions about it. Otherwise, if you just leave it with,
"You look like you have a good time", the only response
they're going to probably say is, "Yeah. It was fun."
And then you can't have a conversation. And that's so
frustrating when you really want to. Another negative effect of social media
on family relationships is it's really easy to get into
a post mindset. Now, what does that mean a post mindset? That doesn't mean an after
mindset but it means, well... I guess it kind of does. It means "What am I going to
post about this?" Right? So, some people, they engage with
activities with their family, with their children and they do it for false
reasons. Because they want to make the post they
want to make something cool a good picture on social media or something
like that. Or while they're in the moment even if
they weren't originally planning for the post,
as soon as they get in the moment, they start thinking about the picture that
they're going to take and the post that they're going to make.
It's not bad to take pictures and it's not bad to make posts. But i'll
tell you what, it is kind of rude to disconnect from
a social situation with your family members and
only be thinking about what you're going to show people about it
after. Another negative effect is what I call
social media on the brain. And this isn't the type where
it's what we're going to post. We already talked about this. When social media is
on the brain, it's when you get engaged in the
conversations that are happening there or the pictures that are going
on there --the movies, the memes, stuff like that and you
just lose track of reality. Because it's on the brain. And then when
you're talking to people, you only talk about the memes.
And you can't talk about anything in real life.
Have you met people who are like that lately? Who are like, "Oh, yeah and this
meme and this meme and this meme?" That's
that's fun every once in a while. But at that point, does anybody ever even
consider that those memes and videos and photos
and conversations are now scripting your dialogue and
social life? That's super controlling. It's one thing to use them as an
occasional thing to talk about. It's another thing if that's the only
thing you can talk about or think about. In fact, oftentimes many
people that engage in social media especially in large
doses, even when they're doing things with
other people, they're thinking about a certain post
on social media. "Oh, so and so on twitter said...
And I said this. And now I want to see what other people said to what i
said." Hmm, that's called social media on the brain.
And it puts you in a place where you can't connect well with other
people. What's going to happen to your family
relationships if you're technically on a screen
even when you're not on a screen? Another negative
to social media is the way that the social media is designed.
So, these social media platforms are designed in ingenious ways.
They are designed to suck us in and to make us lose track of time.
Has it happened to you before where you've said to yourself,
"Okay. Yeah, I'm just going to go in there for a second and I'm going to make this one
quick post. Or I'm going to go check so-and-so's post
because I haven't looked at their posts for a while and they're a good friend or
they're a family member. So, I'm going to go take a quick look."
And you go in and you see something on the feed because the feed always pops up
first, have you noticed? So, you see something on the feed and
then you see more things on the feed then you're going down the feed
and you've been there for a while and then you say, "Why am I here?"
And then you go, "Oh, yeah." And then you finally go over to that page
if you can even remember why you were there because sometimes you could forget.
But if you then you go over to that page of that person or you go to do that one
post and after you do that you see something
else that's there. And then you have to look, "Well, what
did anybody say about that other post that I did?" Or maybe, "Oh, hey
this friend that's over here, I haven't seen what they've been doing for a
really long time. I wonder what they've been up to." So, then
all of a sudden, I'm talking to this friend or I'm going and looking and
scoping out their page and seeing what their new baby looks
like or whatever it is. None of it seems very harmful. But if
your time is valuable to you then it could
definitely harm you. And I want to tell you something about
your relationships. They actually do take time to nurture, foster and grow.
So, if you're taking too much time from your relationships,
even if it's just looking at somebody's new puppy
or somebody's recipe for this or that and the other, it is
actually damaging you because you're not present.
You're not there with them to communicate and converse with them
about things that are right there relevant in the minute.
There are other negatives for our family relationships that have to do with
social media and our involvement with social media.
I'm not going to go into every one of those
because I want to share something really powerful with you. And this
is a how-to list. It's 5 things that you can do to create the
appropriate boundaries so that you can use social media how you need to
but not have it get in the way. Number 1, identify
your need or your reason to go on social media.
Is there a reason to go there? If it's just to surf around, that's a pretty
vague reason and you'll end up there for a long time.
But if you say to yourself, "I'm going to look at so-and-so's page
and I'm going to make a post. Those are my 2 reasons.
My 2 needs to go on social media." Number 2 plan, a time frame. So, once you
know what you need to accomplish then say, "How long is
it going to take me to make one post and to go and see my sister's page so
that I can see what she's doing on her trip
right now?" Well, let's see. To do that might take me
10 minutes. So, give yourself 10 minutes of time and tell yourself, "I will give 10
minutes." What time is it? Actually look at the
clock right then and determine when you're going to stop.
You maybe even tell your phone to set you a reminder to go off in
10 minutes. That brings me to step number 3 which is
to hold yourself accountable. If you're by yourself
then yeah you're going to have to set an alarm of some sort to make sure
that you follow through on what you've planned.
But another thing that you can do is you can talk to a person.
And you can say, "Hey, so and so I've decided that i'm going to go do =2
things online. I need to make a post and look at so-and-so's pictures of
their vacation because i'd like to see how that went.
And that's going to take me about 10 minutes. So, I'm going to be on for 10
minutes. Will you please be my accountability person.
I'll let you know when I'm done. And if it passes too far over 10 minutes,
will you please let me know and give me a reminder so that I can be done with
the social media time for the day." This will hopefully help you keep your
brain focused so that you don't get sucked in and have
your day hijacked by social media. Step number 4 is
stop on time. When it comes time to stop, give yourself a no answer. "No more social
media. I'm done." Okay. So, I'm a self-government
guru, all right? I teach all about self-governing and how
we can learn to control ourselves. That's what i'm known for
on my website teachingselfgovernment.com. And so,
part of that is a skill called accepting a "no"
answer. When a person is truly self-governed, they can give themselves
a "no" answer. Of course your children have to at first learn
how to accept no answers from you before they'll ever be able to give themselves
a no answer. So, when the time comes that you're supposed to be done,
these are the steps that you use: You look at the person or situation,
keep a calm face voice and body so don't get anxious about
it. And then tell yourself, "Okay, I'm done. This is it." And then you drop the subject
which means you don't think about social media
anymore. You put it away. You be done. If you can't do that,
if you can't give yourself a "no" answer, then you might
actually have a bit of a social media addiction.
And you'll want to definitely address that addictive behavior
in a pretty like aggressive way so that it doesn't take
over your life and ruin your relationships.
The final step is to walk away. So, after you tell yourself "No, I'm done."
Especially if it's difficult for you to give yourself that no answer
and actually accept it, then it might be important for you to put your phone down,
close the lid on the laptop wherever you're viewing the social media
and just walk away. Go and do something else
and taste that productivity that comes with doing something that's real.
You know? Something like get your dishes done
or read some of that book that you wanted to.
Go out in your yard and pull some weeds. Do some of the things that you keep on
your list but for some reason you're not sure why you don't get to them
every day. We all have those lists. So, that's when you just walk away,
go be productive, taste of the fruits of telling yourself no
and accepting that no answer.
If you've enjoyed this video, you're going to
love the next one which is called How to Make Kids Listen and Obey?
Check it out right over here.
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