LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) – It’s Parenting Connection Tuesday and 6 News is here for you with tips, strategies, and helpful reminders from child development experts on how we can be better parents and guardians.
Today’s topic: Social media’s impact on sex education.
We’re continuing this week with exclusive survey results from the leading parent education platform, parents.com about sex education. Last week, we learned that there is a generational shift underway with a big increase in parents speaking to their children about it, compared to when they grew up. Today, we’re looking into how social media factors into this all.
According to the survey, 69% of parents, basically 7 out of 10 moms and dads worry that social media provides misinformation about sex education, and 67% believe their kids are seeing too much content related to sex education on social media. Easy access to adult content is also exposing kids at a young age, in fact, a report earlier this year from Common Sense Media discovered 54% of children had watched online pornography by the age of 13.
“Social media plays a role,” says Grace Bastidas, Editor-In-Chief of Parents.com. “Kids are being exposed to much more, and a lot more than parents are even seeing because it’s in their hands, it’s on their phones… it’s not on the TV where the whole family is viewing it.”
The good news though, according to Bastidas, is that 67% of parents have already initiated conversations about sex with their kids before they turned 13, due to that generational shift and the amount of media exposure.
That’s where we will go next week. How to speak with your kids about it… and according to parents taking the survey, how involved schools should be with providing sex education.
