Episode 50: Check out the 2020 stats for kids and tech! Yikes!

The Be THAT Mom Movement Podcast: Protecting kids in a digital world

2020 was a year none of us could have foreseen. These stats produced by Bark after analyzing 2.1 billion messages from kids online will blow your mind!

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FULL TRANSCRIPTION:

Speaker 1 (00:00):

So no doubt. If you have showed up here today, then you likely have a kiddo that is on the digital things, and you are looking for guidance and support in that realm. Right? Well, today I'm going to talk about barks annual report, where they basically summarize all of the things that they analyzed over the year of 2020, and help give you guidance on things that you need to be looking out for. This is profoundly amazing that they are able to produce this and give us a starting point for moving forward. In this year of 2021, stay tuned.

Speaker 2 (00:40):

Welcome to your source for tips, tools, and support to help you be that mom that is tuned in and proactive for yourself, your family, and for the wild ride of raising kids in this digital age, inspired by a mother's love with a relatable real life. Proud to be that mom flair. This is the bead that mom movement with your host, Dolly Denson, Hey friends, did you

Speaker 3 (01:06):

Here, there is an app that will transform the safety of your kids. Smartphone and technology use. It is my favorite way to sleep easy at night and have peace of mind because it is monitoring my kids' activity online without me being in their business. It is the bark app and yes, bark like a dog bark bark bark. It tells you when there's something that you need to be concerned about starting at a small fee each month, you can protect your whole family across all devices. Get connected with bark today. Use code, be that mom for 20% off your subscription for life and get a seven day free trial to check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:40):

So if you go back to some of the first episodes of my podcast, I talk about this report for 2019. And at that time I found it to be like eye opening, that so much of this stuff was going on on these platforms. And I had no clue a couple of years ago. And so this report is even more amazing because we all know what we have been through in the year of 2020 and that the use of virtual learning and our devices for all of the different things in order to function in our world went way up. So we have seen those effects on our kids. Well, this report is amazing and disturbing, but also is going to give us some guidance moving forward. So you will know based on what platforms your kids are on, what things are more concerning on that platform.

Speaker 1 (02:34):

Okay. So I think this is going to be super, super helpful and give you insight into all of that. I will also link this report in the show notes, so you can download your own PDF. You can look at it more specifically and you know, really dig into it and then make a game plan for you and your family. Okay. So bark says in this report that they analyzed 2.1 billion messages across texts, email YouTube, and more than 30 apps and social media platforms. And these findings exclude school-based accounts. So these are all, all personal accounts. So bullying is the first section, and it says 76% of tweens and 82% of teens experienced bullying as a boy victim or a witness and alerts for cyber bullying range from mean-spirited teasing to hateful threats and provocation provocations. I can't say that word and additional statistics that they cite are from the CDC, that one in four students reports being bullied and then virtual learning during the pandemic has led to new forms of bullying, including zoom bombing, which I had not heard of this, but let's see what the zoom bombing is.

Speaker 1 (03:50):

So basically zoom bombing is aware kids or made fun of, or somehow bullied based on the view of their house wall on zoom. So if it was in their bedroom, if the bedroom was messy, if there was something in the background, kids would bully each other based on what they would see in the zoom room. So I had not heard of that until I looked at this report and wow, amazing, amazing. The next section has mental health that says 45% of tweens and 66% of teens engaged in conversations about depression, 66% of teens, 45% of tweens, or, you know, the younger kids. That's amazing alerts for mental health range from mild pessimism to talking about or planning to attempt suicide, additional statistics. They cite include that hospital visits related to mental health for kids, kids aged five to 11 and 12 to 17 increased by 24% and 31% respectively.

Speaker 1 (04:53):

And then nearly a third of high school students were unhappy and depressed much more than usual this past spring. I think we all know that that's probably not super surprising, but the statistics still kind of blow my mind. The next section is violence and it says 88.5% of tweens and 94% of teens expressed or experienced violent subject matter or thoughts alert for violence range from texting a friend about a fight at school, two direct threats against a child. And then other statistics cited include up to 1 billion children. Aged two to 17 have experienced physical sexual or emotional violence or neglect in the past year in a recent study warned of the high risk of childhood exposure to family violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now the next section is drugs and alcohol and says 78% of tweens and 91% of teens engaged in conversations surrounding drugs and alcohol.

Speaker 1 (05:52):

These stats really blow my mind to be in the 90% range for these Holy cow. That means almost every child that was online on social media or whatever has experienced this. Wow. It says alerts for drugs and alcohol can range from text about prescriptions, to videos of a child consuming illegal substances, additional stats that are cited include the frequency of both alcohol and cannabis use increased for young people after social distancing measures were put in place and 49% of young people were using substances by themselves. 31% did so with peers via technology and 23% with friends in person. Now the next section is self-harm and suicide. Thankfully, the numbers on this are lower. It says 41% of tweens and 66% of teens were involved in self harm, suicidal situation. That's still high alerts for potential self harm and suicide include anything from text messages about cutting to an email draft of a suicide note, national statistics.

Speaker 1 (06:54):

I can't say that word statistics very well. Can I surrounding self harm and suicide? Suicide is the second leading cause of death ages 10 to 24 and increased screen time in isolation due to COVID-19 have negatively affected the mental health of teens and tweens all across the world. The next section is sexual content says 70%, 70% of tweens and 87% of teens encountered nudity or content of a sexual nature. 87%. Holy cow alerts for sexual content can be anything from web searches for explicit content to a child receiving nude photos. Do you remember in my episode from last week where I talked about pornography being one click away on a lot of platforms that kids are on this is it Holy cow, additional stats are that sexting laws vary from state to state. Be sure to know the laws in your area research shows that teen sexting is associated with increased risk of bullying and victimization.

Speaker 1 (07:53):

And if you don't know what sexting is, it's basically kind of like flirt talk as well as sending pictures and different things through text or through the message parts of social media. Now, this is the part that I found to be really interesting. It breaks down some of these stats and tells us which apps are more Rhone or have the highest detection of these things. So the top five platforms that were flagged for severe sexual content, the number one is Kik. K I K I don't even know what that is. My kids aren't on that. The second one is Spotify. The third one is tumbler. The fourth one is going to blow your mind Pinterest. And the fifth one is by text message. Number one was Kik. Number two, Spotify, number three, tumbler number four, Pinterest, and number five texting. So if your kids do those activities, be aware of that.

Speaker 1 (08:45):

The next category for the top five apps or platforms is suicidal ideation. The number one platform that had that detected was Twitter. That number two was Instagram. The number three was discord. Number four was Tik TOK in number five with Snapchat. So that was for suicidal ideation detection. Okay. Twitter, Instagram discord, Tik TOK Snapchat. The next section is about depression in the top five apps were Twitter, Instagram discord, Snapchat, and Tik TOK. So that was pretty much exactly the same as the suicidal ideation, except for the last one, Tik TOK and Snapchat or flipped. Now the next section for top five apps is body image concerns. I think this is huge, huge, huge, especially if you have girls. I think this is a very huge issue with their self-esteem and one reason to keep your girls off of social media platforms, as long as you can.

Speaker 1 (09:47):

And then when you do allow it communicate with them about all bodies are perfect. And a lot of what you see on social media is not real life. And you should not compare yourself to any picture in anything that you see. Pictures can be doctored. Pictures can have filters. And so the pictures that you see on social media and everything portrayed on social media is often a highlight. Reel is not real life. So when you do allow your girls and boys to have the social media platforms, body image concerns is such a mega powerful thing that we need to have more voice about with our kids. Okay. The top app for body image concerns is tick tock. The second one, again, surprises me. I did expect tech talk to be the top for body image concerns. But the second one is Pinterest. I had no idea.

Speaker 1 (10:39):

I have only used Pinterest to look up recipes and things. I just had no idea that Pinterest had this sort of impact. The third one is Instagram and I could have guessed that that would be one of the top ones. And then the fourth one is Twitter in the fifth one is text messages. You've probably heard me talk about it in one of my episodes on the danger of text messages, but it's not something that's I originally thought was anything to worry about. And when I shut down all of the social media things that I had allowed, I kept texting available and didn't realize the danger of it at that time. So definitely monitor text messages. Okay. And then the next section is the top five apps or platforms for bullying. Number one is Twitter. Number two, surprises me. Number two is Spotify. I had no idea on that.

Speaker 1 (11:25):

One. Number three is Instagram. Number four is Snapchat. And number five is discord for bullying. Number one is Twitter. So I kind of would have guessed that for Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, but not discord or Spotify. Now the top five apps for hate speech. These kind of surprise me a couple of these surprise me too. Number one is Spotify. I guess I need to check out Spotify closer. I just thought it was a place for you to stream music. I will have to check that one out. The second is tumbler. The third one, Snapchat, the fourth one, Instagram and the fifth one discord. So hate speech, Spotify, Tumblr, Snapchat, Instagram discord. I would have thought Snapchat. Instagram would have been at the top for that. And then the last section that they highlight is for violence. And the number one app flagged for severe violence with Spotify.

Speaker 1 (12:17):

Number two was Twitter. Number three was Reddit. Number four was Instagram. Number five was discord. So we see a common thread amongst some of these apps, but I'm still surprised with Pinterest. I thought Spotify was simply for music. I knew discord was probably an issue. I have. I know nothing about Reddit. I need to educate myself on that, but I hope that this was helpful for you. And seeing that all of these apps have a risk. If you have given a smartphone and you feel like you need to adjust, you know, I highly recommend the pinwheel phone as a dumb smartphone. I also have a link for the gab phone. If you want to compare the two, the best thing about the pinwheel phone is you can put bark on it to monitor text messages, and then everything that is allowed on it is all kind of like vetted by a roup and a therapist and different things like that.

Speaker 1 (13:07):

There's no way for you to communicate with other people on the phone. And it's supposed to be to more like to teach your kid about using the phone as a tool, not just, you know, letting it control you. And then besides that younger kids, I've got the watch options listed, highly recommend those. And then for smartphones, get bark on your kid's phone. If you don't have it already, my code is be that mom, it is 20% off the subscription for life. And you also get a seven day free trial to set it up. You can cancel it at any time and the fee is really, really low. But let me tell you, it is quite amazing to have this data, these stats, and they are not meant to scare you, although I do find them scary. So I'm sure you do too, but this is just meant for us to educate ourselves as to move forward as to know that the digital things are not benign and that we need to be providing guidance in helping our kids step into the deep blue sea of the digital world.

Speaker 1 (14:08):

Like I said, in the last, last week's episode, these are just parts of our layers. They're parts of our village and you just can't go wrong with having something like this to help you out. Okay? So I am quite surprised by some of that stuff. And those numbers on the percentages are quite high. I haven't had the time to go back and find last year's report to compare the numbers, the stats, but I do believe all of those numbers are up from last year. So kind of to be expected because of all the digital things and the world that we have had to live in. But let's just move forward in linking arms with this being a village for each other, supporting each other as we guide our kids in this world. Okay. Hope you found this super, super helpful and that you have a great week.

Speaker 2 (14:55):

Thanks for tuning in being that mom isn't easy, but together we can be that mom's strong. Don't forget to leave a review, connect on social and join Dolly's free community till next time. Hey,

Speaker 3 (15:09):

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