Parenting Girls, Self-Esteem, and Media

[Dr. Lisa Damour] Don’t talk about it, be about it. So with your little kids and with your teenagers, you’ve got to model what you say you want them to be doing. So your technology should not be in your bedroom. You should not be talking about your appearance and weight. You should be really thinking very carefully about the relationship with technology you’re modeling and the relationship with yourself and your self-esteem that you are modeling. The second thing I would say is we have to be very mindful as the adults and kids environment how we talk about their containers versus how we talk about their contents. And for me, social media is a container world. It is all about the container. And so at every opportunity we want to remember, this is a zero sum game. Every moment that we are talking about what it looks like, we are not talking about who she is inside. So I’m not saying you can’t tell your daughters they’re cute. I love telling my daughters they’re cute. We also have to spend a lot of time talking about how smart, interesting, funny, sardonic. You know, all of that they are. And then I think the last thing I would say is get them questioning. Get them questioning what can really be shared in a 2D environment versus what can only happen in a 3D environment.