When do children become vulnerable to the new world’s challenges

A word on my absence

Those who are familiar with my blogs have certainly noticed that I havent been writing for a long time. Apart from the fact that my career and personal life took over and left me very little time for my passion in writing, I wasn’t finding any stimulation to address any social or cultural subject for all this absence.

Children and the online suicidal and self-harming challenges

While this is not a new topic and not one I would usually consider to comment on, but the latest trend of the Momo challenge and the overreaction of social media to it provoked me rather than inspired me.

My two teenage boys have joined the electronic and online world at an early age. They had every device trending, watched, played had accounts and deactivated others… I certainly was monitoring those activities but I never stopped them. It’s because I have always believed that you can’t protect the children from a danger by preventing them from knowing about it. The fear from the monster in the closet is not gone until you come at night and open the closet and show them there is nothing there. The animation movies work on that same concept, they give knowledge about their most common fears and concerns to help waive them.

In short, and in the old world’s language; if you keep your children from getting cold, they are the most vulnerable to catch it… If you keep them from playing with dirt, they are the most vulnerable to germs…. If you keep them from fighting with other kids they are the most vulnerable for getting bullied.

Same with e-games and devices, if you keep them from knowing this trend, enjoying it and understanding this world, then you are not keeping them from their dangers but you are helping making them the most vulnerable kids to the online trends such as the momo challenge and other.

Children are curious discoverers and they want to discover their own world not yours, as a parent you should let them do that but monitor from a safe distance. My boys know about this e-world’s threats as much as I do and they did so by getting to know it and learning my guidelines of utilizing the means to enter it over and over. When I talk to them about the challenges and the fear they present they laugh and their laugh is just like the one you’d expect from a child who masters cycling and you warn him from the risk of falling from unbalance.

Help your children explore their world to immune them from its dangers.

The key to immunity is knowledge not ignorance