Last month, the Twinsburg High School PTSA hosted a family night focused on digital safety and well-being in partnership with TikTok. The “Create With Kindness” event featured speakers including Suzy Loftus, Trust and Safety Head of TikTok US Data Security; Mikki Wilson, National PTA connected ambassador; and a student panel.
The event, supported by TikTok, offered parents an opportunity to learn about parental controls and safety features on the platform. The goal was to provide information and awareness so parents could make decisions that are right for their household.
“It’s great to be able to spread this awareness about online safety,” Wilson says, calling it a “new era of digital parenting.”
“We know that parents want to protect their children, but I think it’s important that we also share the youth perspective,” she says. “They are what I call digital natives — they were born when social media was already common and popular. So it was important for the youth to illustrate how they use platforms and how they use TikTok for good.”
Wilson has observed that parents and caregivers approach this digital landscape from the same place of concern, but with opposite perspectives. Youth often see the good in the apps — how they enrich their lives and how to use them for kindness — while parents are primarily focused on safety.
The core goal of “Create With Kindness” was simply to start the conversation. Wilson acknowledges that there is “no one-size-fits-all approach” or “cookie-cutter solution” for every family. The desired outcome was for parents and caregivers to be heard, ask questions, and leave more informed and empowered to establish healthy technology habits.
Tech Conversation Starters for Parents
Wilson shared several ideas for parents to initiate a productive dialogue about technology with their children. She believes these conversation starters can help families better determine what works for them.
Ask your kids the following questions:
Why are you interested in this particular platform? Is it that you want to explore, create or connect and communicate with friends? This helps establish a baseline for the child’s motivation.
What is your comfort level with social media? Wilson notes that curious parents who ask their child what they want to create, or what they are looking for tend to have richer conversations about safety and healthy habits.
What kind of creators do you follow?
What kind of content are you interested in?
How do you know when to take a break from social media?
She advises that a conversation doesn’t always have to start with the social media platform itself. Parents can instead ask about their child’s plans for the next grade or their thoughts on college, as “they may want to use social media to explore potential college campuses.” Asking these kinds of open-ended questions empowers the child, invites their perspective, and naturally opens the door to more in-depth discussions about technology.
Parental Controls and Safety Features
When dealing with issues like bullying, parental controls become essential.
According to the National PTA’s TikTok Guide for Parents, “when enabled, the Family Pairing feature lets parents link their TikTok account to their teen’s account to choose a variety of content, privacy, and well-being settings.”
This Family Pairing feature allows parents to:
Set screen time limits
Create a schedule for push notifications with the option to mute notifications during certain times of the day
Manage content preferences and restrict a teen’s ability to search certain content
Manage privacy and safety, including restricting who can send their teen direct messages
Even if parents don’t have a TikTok account and can’t use Family Pairing, they can still help their teens enable the app’s screen time settings. This setting provides teens with information on how and when they’re using TikTok, gets nudges to take a break after a certain period of uninterrupted use, provides sleep reminders to log off, and sets daily screen time limits.
“These controls allow parents to see their kids’ online activity, not in an intrusive way, but as a means of picking up patterns,” Wilson says.
She suggests monitoring for changes in use, such as:
Is the child spending too much time on social media?
Did the child go from spending a little time online to a lot more time online, and what does that mean?
Wilson shares that teens are often more aware of safety features than their parents. It is beneficial for parents to learn from their children while also equipping themselves with the knowledge of safety tools and controls to limit use. It’s also vital for teens to know who they can turn to if the situation is beyond their control.
