Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #464 Teens and TikTok with Kirra Pendergast
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families Podcast. It's the podcast for the
- 0:07Speaker 1: time poor parent who just answers.
- 0:10Speaker 2: Now, I'm terrified. We've got a whole generation of kids
- 0:13Speaker 2: coming through that have got such massive digital footprints. Now
- 0:16Speaker 2: I actually tell them to delete everything and start again
- 0:18Speaker 2: once they're over the age of thirteen.
- 0:20Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my Mum
- 0:23Speaker 1: and Dad.
- 0:24Speaker 3: Every now and again, something pops up in the news
- 0:26Speaker 3: that makes every parent take a quick intake of air
- 0:29Speaker 3: and then think, oh no, it would never be my child.
- 0:31Speaker 3: And yet technology has changed the way we live our lives,
- 0:34Speaker 3: and particularly the way we raise our kids. Oh and
- 0:38Speaker 3: the way they engage with the world. Today, I want
- 0:42Speaker 3: to have a very important conversation about an issue that's
- 0:44Speaker 3: arisen in the news. In the last couple of weeks,
- 0:46Speaker 3: The Washington Post, via a journalist by the name of
- 0:49Speaker 3: Julie Jargon, has shed some information about how girls are
- 0:53Speaker 3: getting increasingly rewarded with huge followings on TikTok as they
- 0:58Speaker 3: become increasingly risk And my guest on the Happy Families
- 1:02Speaker 3: Podcast today is Kira Pendergast. Kira looks after a business
- 1:07Speaker 3: runs a business by the name of Safe on social
- 1:10Speaker 3: Kira is somebody that I've been watching and admiring for
- 1:12Speaker 3: a long time and had a handful of really great
- 1:15Speaker 3: conversations with over the last several years. She does extraordinarily
- 1:18Speaker 3: good work in schools and organizations with sporting major national
- 1:23Speaker 3: level sporting clubs, helping people to navigate the online world safely.
- 1:27Speaker 3: After having some significant experience and unfortunately negative challenges in
- 1:33Speaker 3: the world of technology herself, and Kira joins me today
- 1:37Speaker 3: for this conversation about our girls and TikTok. Thanks so
- 1:40Speaker 3: much for being on the Happy Families podcast.
- 1:42Speaker 2: Kira, thank you for having me.
- 1:44Speaker 3: So let's talk about girls and TikTok. In fact, let's
- 1:46Speaker 3: talk about TikTok generally. The idea here is that when
- 1:50Speaker 3: people see your stuff and they like it, TikTok has
- 1:53Speaker 3: an algorithm that says, let's let everyone see it because
- 1:56Speaker 3: more and more people are liking this. That's the general rundown.
- 1:58Speaker 2: Right, correct, Correct, it's you know, TikTok has got a
- 2:03Speaker 2: really flawed algorithm, to be honest, justin it's just starting
- 2:07Speaker 2: to show kids more of what they don't want to
- 2:09Speaker 2: see as well. It's like anything that they may hover
- 2:12Speaker 2: on for a tiny little second, more than anything else,
- 2:15Speaker 2: will keep appearing in their feed, so it sort of
- 2:18Speaker 2: starts there.
- 2:19Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's kind of like if you watch something,
- 2:22Speaker 3: TikTok calculates your time staring at it, and the longer
- 2:25Speaker 3: you look at any particular piece of content, the more
- 2:28Speaker 3: likely it is to push more of that content into
- 2:30Speaker 3: your feed.
- 2:31Speaker 2: Correct. So's it's absolutely the most advanced algorithm for tracking
- 2:37Speaker 2: what a human is looking at and how long they're
- 2:39Speaker 2: looking at it for, and that's what's causing the issues.
- 2:43Speaker 3: Yeah, so I was going to get onto TikTok clos
- 2:45Speaker 3: everyone said justin you've got to get onto TikTok, and
- 2:46Speaker 3: my team run a TikTok account for happy families. But
- 2:50Speaker 3: one of my team members said, the first two weeks
- 2:52Speaker 3: when you've got a TikTok account, you will literally get
- 2:54Speaker 3: dragged through the gutter as it shows you pretty much
- 2:58Speaker 3: every piece of content that is there in every genre,
- 3:01Speaker 3: every idea, every concept. And once you start to like
- 3:05Speaker 3: things and start to show TikTok what you're interested in,
- 3:09Speaker 3: it filters out the stuff you don't need to see
- 3:10Speaker 3: and you can actually have a and if you're willing
- 3:13Speaker 3: to go through the two weeks of literal gutter dragging.
- 3:16Speaker 3: She said, you can have a really pure and wholesome
- 3:20Speaker 3: TikTok account, like you can make TikTok absolutely brilliant for you.
- 3:24Speaker 3: But the thing is that our kids, they kind of
- 3:28Speaker 3: they're compelled to stare at the stuff that makes them curious.
- 3:31Speaker 3: And that's often the kind of things that we would
- 3:32Speaker 3: rather not be staring at.
- 3:33Speaker 2: Right, exactly right. And if I ask a room full
- 3:36Speaker 2: of primary school children, one of the questions I asked
- 3:39Speaker 2: them when I like, I do sessions from grade three
- 3:41Speaker 2: all the way through to parents, teachers and sporting bodies,
- 3:44Speaker 2: as you know. And if I ask a room full
- 3:47Speaker 2: of kids, like any age group who's seen something that's
- 3:51Speaker 2: made them feel uncomfortable, made them feel funny in the tummy,
- 3:56Speaker 2: or you know, scared in any way on TikTok, the
- 4:00Speaker 2: whole room will put their hand up. They're all seen it,
- 4:04Speaker 2: and they've all been exposed from a really young age.
- 4:07Speaker 3: And can I just highlight you're talking to grade three kids.
- 4:10Speaker 3: We're talking about eight year olds, no.
- 4:13Speaker 2: Younger six and seven in some cases too. You know
- 4:17Speaker 2: the little ones that are on it. You know they're
- 4:20Speaker 2: using mum's account because Mum thinks TikTok's a fun little
- 4:23Speaker 2: thing where they can watch little dances and stuff like that.
- 4:26Speaker 2: And you know, at the end of the day, it
- 4:28Speaker 2: does come back to a lack of parent education around
- 4:30Speaker 2: this and not understanding the tech behind it and the
- 4:34Speaker 2: fact that this will be around forever. And while their
- 4:37Speaker 2: kids are innocently scrolling through looking for the last little
- 4:40Speaker 2: viral dance on TikTok, they're seeing horrendous, horrendous things.
- 4:47Speaker 3: Okay, so a little bit of a content warning right now.
- 4:50Speaker 3: I don't want you to drag us through the gutter
- 4:52Speaker 3: too much, hre here. In fact, I probably prefer to
- 4:55Speaker 3: stay out of the gutter. But a lot of parents
- 4:58Speaker 3: probably don't even know that their kids are on TikTok.
- 5:00Speaker 3: A lot of parents think that let's just the latest
- 5:02Speaker 3: social media fad, and everyone in the media, everyone on
- 5:05Speaker 3: the podcast, everyone on the TV gets worried about the
- 5:07Speaker 3: latest platform all the time, and when it's not TikTok,
- 5:09Speaker 3: it'll be something else. A lot of parents have almost
- 5:11Speaker 3: become immune to the warnings that come from people like
- 5:15Speaker 3: you or I about kids being on things like TikTok.
- 5:18Speaker 3: Could you give parents who are listening to our podcast
- 5:21Speaker 3: conversation today, just a sampling of the kinds of things
- 5:27Speaker 3: that six and seven and eight year olds are seeing
- 5:29Speaker 3: when they jump onto TikTok, either with their parents account
- 5:32Speaker 3: or maybe their friends, or their big brother or the
- 5:34Speaker 3: big sister, or the neighbor down the road, or somebody
- 5:36Speaker 3: on the school playground. Let's let's let's give I've given
- 5:40Speaker 3: the content warning. If kids are listening, maybe you want
- 5:42Speaker 3: to press balls for a sec. But let's just dive
- 5:44Speaker 3: in and have a one to two minute exploration and
- 5:48Speaker 3: then we'll talk about what parents need to do.
- 5:50Speaker 2: Okay, before we dive into that. A lot of parents
- 5:54Speaker 2: come straight back at me with that one in parents
- 5:57Speaker 2: sessions and say, well, I don't let my child use TikTok.
- 6:00Speaker 2: Where you may not, but at school they're accessing it
- 6:03Speaker 2: through their friends' phones, and whether they're at sleepovers or
- 6:07Speaker 2: whatever on the weekends, they're accessing it through their friend's phone.
- 6:10Speaker 2: So parents need to be aware that, no matter how
- 6:13Speaker 2: hard they try, their kids are looking at it, they're
- 6:16Speaker 2: seeing it.
- 6:17Speaker 3: The metaphor that I always use is you can put
- 6:19Speaker 3: a fence around your pool, but you can't put a
- 6:21Speaker 3: fence around the ocean. And you've got to teach your
- 6:25Speaker 3: kids to swim, because one day they're going to end
- 6:26Speaker 3: up in front of a body of water that is
- 6:28Speaker 3: not fenced. And your filters and your parent controls and
- 6:31Speaker 3: whatever you're doing to keep your kids off it at
- 6:33Speaker 3: home is one thing. But they head out of the
- 6:35Speaker 3: house and they're going to come across that metaphorical unfenced
- 6:38Speaker 3: body of water at some point.
- 6:39Speaker 2: What are you going to do then, So the things
- 6:41Speaker 2: like to answer your first question there about what they're
- 6:44Speaker 2: exposed to and not going too far into the gutter,
- 6:48Speaker 2: I'll just use subject headings self harm, eating disorders, you know, racist, violence, hate, crimes, war, genocide,
- 7:00Speaker 2: you name it, it's there, and it's graphic. And the
- 7:03Speaker 2: latest one was the shark incident off Sydney a few
- 7:10Speaker 2: weeks ago, and the graphic unedited, unedited video circulating around TikTok.
- 7:18Speaker 2: If you had a little one that was into baby
- 7:21Speaker 2: shark and type that in, think about what was coming
- 7:24Speaker 2: up instead.
- 7:24Speaker 3: After the break, we're going to have a deeper dive
- 7:27Speaker 3: into what Julie Jargon wrote in the Washington Post about
- 7:29Speaker 3: these sexualized images and the sexualized algorithm on TikTok and
- 7:34Speaker 3: get stuck into an important I mean, this is the
- 7:37Speaker 3: podcast for the time for parent who wants answers. We're
- 7:39Speaker 3: going to get stuck into the important question of how
- 7:41Speaker 3: do we talk to our children about staying safe online,
- 7:44Speaker 3: especially since we know that they're probably going to use
- 7:46Speaker 3: TikTok at some point. It's the Happy Families Podcast.
- 7:50Speaker 4: Imagine a home where discipline got results without anyone having
- 7:53Speaker 4: to feel bad or in trouble. The do's and don'ts
- 7:56Speaker 4: of Disciplined as a webinar to help parents set limits
- 7:58Speaker 4: with love, compare and humanity. Find it now at happy
- 8:02Speaker 4: families dot com, dot au slash shop.
- 8:05Speaker 3: It's the Happy Families Podcast, the podcast for the time
- 8:08Speaker 3: poor parent who just wants answers Now. My guest today
- 8:10Speaker 3: on the podcast is Kira Pendergast, the CEO of Safe
- 8:13Speaker 3: on Social and Kira, this conversation matters so much, and
- 8:16Speaker 3: I'm sure that a lot of parents are going I
- 8:18Speaker 3: had no idea that TikTok was this. Let's dive into
- 8:21Speaker 3: this Washington Post article. I just want to read a
- 8:24Speaker 3: smidge of this to you. When Jula Anderson joined TikTok
- 8:28Speaker 3: at age sixteen, writes Julia Jargon, her first video featured
- 8:32Speaker 3: her family's home renovations. It got five likes. After seeing
- 8:36Speaker 3: others post risk a videos and get more likes, she
- 8:38Speaker 3: tried it too. She said, I wanted to get famous
- 8:41Speaker 3: on TikTok? Can I just pause on that? I wanted
- 8:44Speaker 3: to get famous on TikTok? How many teenagers are saying
- 8:48Speaker 3: that's it? That's my goal in life. I want to
- 8:49Speaker 3: be famous and TikTok's the way to do it. And
- 8:51Speaker 3: she said, and I learned that if you post stuff
- 8:53Speaker 3: showing your body, people will start liking it. Jula is
- 8:57Speaker 3: now an eighteen year old high school senior in Colna,
- 9:01Speaker 3: and what Julie Jargon basically says is mental health professionals
- 9:04Speaker 3: around the country are growing increasingly concerned about the effect
- 9:07Speaker 3: of teen girls posting sexualized TikTok videos. Therapist say teens
- 9:12Speaker 3: who like a group of close friends and teens with
- 9:14Speaker 3: underlying mental health issues, especially girls who struggle with disordered
- 9:17Speaker 3: eating and body images, are at particular risk. Now we
- 9:19Speaker 3: will link to the Washington Post article, although it is
- 9:21Speaker 3: it's behind a paywall, which is going to make it
- 9:23Speaker 3: difficult for a lot of people. But just talk me
- 9:26Speaker 3: through how we're supposed to respond to this. I mean,
- 9:29Speaker 3: our kids want to be popular too. Many of them
- 9:31Speaker 3: really believe that TikTok fame is what life is for.
- 9:35Speaker 3: That's why they were born, that's why they'll put on
- 9:37Speaker 3: this planet. And I know that sounds superficial and ridiculous
- 9:40Speaker 3: to most of us as adults, but our team they
- 9:41Speaker 3: just buy this, right. I mean they're hook line and
- 9:44Speaker 3: sync with this.
- 9:45Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Look, you know when I was a young girl,
- 9:49Speaker 2: I wanted to be on the TV. You know, it's
- 9:50Speaker 2: the same thing, different format now. But because it's gone
- 9:54Speaker 2: from being a newsreader or an actress or something like
- 9:58Speaker 2: that to this international platform, where they've got to be thinking.
- 10:03Speaker 2: Is like I often tell kids, you do not know
- 10:08Speaker 2: who's looking at you the amount of grooming and things
- 10:11Speaker 2: that happens through TikTok, because they'll get a message saying,
- 10:15Speaker 2: you know, hey, Q, what are you doing And they'll say,
- 10:19Speaker 2: I'm just in my bedroom, what are you doing? And
- 10:22Speaker 2: the person responding says, I'm about to get in the shower,
- 10:24Speaker 2: I'm in bed, and you know, statistically from the Australian
- 10:27Speaker 2: Centerive account of Child exploitation, they'll say it's something ridiculous
- 10:31Speaker 2: like eighteen seconds before a child is that far into
- 10:34Speaker 2: a conversation with a potential online predator that it's really
- 10:38Speaker 2: difficult for them to back write out of it. You know,
- 10:40Speaker 2: there's that side of it that parents need to be
- 10:43Speaker 2: aware of.
- 10:43Speaker 3: And I've got to interrupt you there here because the
- 10:46Speaker 3: eighteen seconds it sounds shocking. And yet I've spoken with
- 10:51Speaker 3: teenage girls. When I was writing Misconnection, my book about
- 10:55Speaker 3: adolescent girls, one girl told me, and this wasn't even
- 10:59Speaker 3: on TikTok, this was just via messaging app. She had
- 11:03Speaker 3: met a friend in the mall, and while I was
- 11:06Speaker 3: hanging out, a friend of that friend showed up. They
- 11:09Speaker 3: had a chat. Ten minutes later, as she was getting
- 11:12Speaker 3: in the car with her dad, he'd found her, sent
- 11:14Speaker 3: her an instant message and made a sexual solicitation to her,
- 11:18Speaker 3: Like he'd known her for three minutes in conversation, and
- 11:21Speaker 3: within ten minutes he'd sent her an absolutely obscene message
- 11:26Speaker 3: saying how about it? And she's sitting in the car
- 11:28Speaker 3: next to her dad. She's like fourteen fifteen years old.
- 11:30Speaker 3: So when you say eighteen seconds online and they're talking
- 11:33Speaker 3: about the shower or the bedroom or what are you wearing,
- 11:35Speaker 3: it must be nearly a nighttime eighteen seconds. It happens
- 11:39Speaker 3: that fast.
- 11:41Speaker 2: That's correct. And the other way that it happened super
- 11:43Speaker 2: fast is with little ones unsupervised playing roadblocks. I've had
- 11:49Speaker 2: a ten year old that was playing roadblocks against her boyfriend.
- 11:53Speaker 2: And I say that trying to attempt in verticmmace because
- 11:57Speaker 2: she said to me. She came up to me after
- 11:59Speaker 2: one of my workshops in a little regional town and
- 12:02Speaker 2: said that her boyfriend in America had asked her to
- 12:06Speaker 2: follow him on TikTok because as soon as they moved
- 12:09Speaker 2: them from one platform to TikTok, it opens up the
- 12:13Speaker 2: video message section, so they're able to share video messages
- 12:17Speaker 2: with each other. And what happened with this ten year
- 12:19Speaker 2: old is she was convinced to send videos of herself
- 12:23Speaker 2: and she would ask for a video back and he
- 12:25Speaker 2: said his camera was broken. And it went on and
- 12:28Speaker 2: on and on, and this person found out everything about her.
- 12:31Speaker 2: So there's this little one that I'll never get her
- 12:33Speaker 2: face out of my brain. Was standing in front of me,
- 12:36Speaker 2: trembling with tears streaming down her face, saying, please don't
- 12:39Speaker 2: tell my mum because she won't let me use TikTok
- 12:42Speaker 2: and roadblocks anymore, and as she then told me the
- 12:47Speaker 2: horrific things that this man was making her do on
- 12:51Speaker 2: video and sending it through TikTok messenger. So what we've
- 12:55Speaker 2: got is a whole generation of kids that are growing
- 12:57Speaker 2: up thinking they've got to do this because that's what
- 13:00Speaker 2: everybody else is doing. And we've got a whole heap
- 13:02Speaker 2: of parents that are just saying it's too hard to
- 13:06Speaker 2: make or to socially ostracize my child because they're the
- 13:09Speaker 2: only one that doesn't have it. All of those kinds
- 13:13Speaker 2: of things, and the lack of education on where and
- 13:17Speaker 2: how these algorithms work and what's being stored and where
- 13:21Speaker 2: it's being stored, and starting from the very basics, Justine, like,
- 13:26Speaker 2: I go through with the kids. Have you read the
- 13:29Speaker 2: terms and conditions abuse? And in primary school they all
- 13:32Speaker 2: put up their hands and go, yep, I've read the
- 13:33Speaker 2: men to end and I'm like, no, you have not.
- 13:35Speaker 5: The first thing says you've got to be over the
- 13:37Speaker 5: age of thirteen, and none of you are. And whilst
- 13:40Speaker 5: it's not illegal for them to use it under the
- 13:43Speaker 5: age of thirteen with a parent's permission, it's against the
- 13:47Speaker 5: law for TikTok to store and retain the information of
- 13:51Speaker 5: children under the age of thirteen for the purposes of
- 13:53Speaker 5: sales and marketing through the Children's Online Privacy.
- 13:56Speaker 2: And Protection Act in the US. So there's education. And
- 14:01Speaker 2: then when I go through what's in the license agreement
- 14:04Speaker 2: in kids' terms, and even with teenagers, they all sit
- 14:08Speaker 2: there looking horrified, and I'm like, one of.
- 14:10Speaker 6: The terms and conditions actually states that they can change
- 14:14Speaker 6: the terms and conditions anytime they like and it's up
- 14:18Speaker 6: to you as a user to keep on top of that.
- 14:20Speaker 2: They don't have to notify you. So last September, TikTok
- 14:25Speaker 2: sneaks through a whole new set of terms and conditions,
- 14:28Speaker 2: which was that they have the permission to use your
- 14:31Speaker 2: face through facial recognition technology and voice imprint. Okay, so
- 14:36Speaker 2: if they're already using those two things to identify people,
- 14:41Speaker 2: what else are they using? And how is this going
- 14:43Speaker 2: to look in ten years time? And what if your
- 14:47Speaker 2: child grows up to be a politician? Like And I
- 14:49Speaker 2: always say that, please know, I know, but.
- 14:54Speaker 7: That's you know, that's what I actually use that as
- 14:57Speaker 7: an analogy with primary school kids, and I say, what
- 15:00Speaker 7: imagine if Scott Morrison had TikTok and they go, Scott
- 15:05Speaker 7: Morrison does have TikTok and then they laugh when I
- 15:08Speaker 7: said no, but what if he had it when he
- 15:09Speaker 7: was your age?
- 15:10Speaker 2: And they go, oh my god, and then they all laugh.
- 15:12Speaker 2: You know, but they get it then because they I
- 15:15Speaker 2: have to step them through stuff that they haven't learnt yet,
- 15:19Speaker 2: like how cloud computing works, and that nothing is ever
- 15:23Speaker 2: really deleted. There's backups upon backups upon backups, and there's
- 15:27Speaker 2: people taking screen recordings and screenshots, and you don't know
- 15:30Speaker 2: where it's going to go, so as soon as you
- 15:32Speaker 2: post something, it's out there forever somewhere.
- 15:35Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's all those wayback machines. I've had it
- 15:38Speaker 3: happen to me. I've had people dig up stuff that
- 15:39Speaker 3: I said eight years ago on Twitter in a moment
- 15:43Speaker 3: of weakness or a moment of frustration, and then they're
- 15:45Speaker 3: not even things that are representative of what I really
- 15:47Speaker 3: do think or feel. But someone said I found this.
- 15:53Speaker 3: I'm not sure that will change.
- 15:54Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they change with the education. You know, when
- 15:57Speaker 2: we're educated more, we go, oh well no, that's I
- 16:00Speaker 2: thought that then, but not now. And people don't take
- 16:02Speaker 2: that into consideration.
- 16:04Speaker 3: Once you've said it. That's who you are in the
- 16:05Speaker 3: eyes of some so obviously really important. Now let's just
- 16:09Speaker 3: talk about some solutions for parents who are probably listening
- 16:12Speaker 3: to this conversation and going, oh, my goodness, I hadn't
- 16:15Speaker 3: I had no idea, And I don't want my child
- 16:18Speaker 3: to feel like the only way that he or she
- 16:20Speaker 3: can be a value as a human is to seek
- 16:23Speaker 3: reward for sexuality, that my value is placed in the
- 16:29Speaker 3: evaluations that other people make of me based on how
- 16:31Speaker 3: I look and how sexually available I am, or how
- 16:34Speaker 3: many likes I'm getting on TikTok or any of those things. So, Kurra,
- 16:39Speaker 3: I know that you primarily work in the tech space,
- 16:41Speaker 3: but you do talk to a lot of parents about
- 16:43Speaker 3: this kind of thing. Obviously I do that a lot
- 16:45Speaker 3: as well. Let's put our heads together for a minute
- 16:48Speaker 3: or two. If you're a parent and you're hearing this
- 16:51Speaker 3: stuff for the first time, or you've been mildly aware
- 16:54Speaker 3: of it, but now it's kind of given you a
- 16:56Speaker 3: bit of an uppercut metaphorically speaking, would you what would
- 17:00Speaker 3: do you want parents to be knowing about roadblocks, about TikTok,
- 17:04Speaker 3: about Instagram, about everything we're talking about here.
- 17:08Speaker 2: Take the time and make sure you know what your
- 17:10Speaker 2: child's signing up for. There's a lot of information out there,
- 17:13Speaker 2: think about how it's going to be used in the future.
- 17:17Speaker 2: I'm terrified that we've got a whole generation of kids
- 17:21Speaker 2: coming through that I have got such massive digital footprints
- 17:24Speaker 2: now I actually tell them to delete everything and start
- 17:26Speaker 2: again once they're over the age of thirteen, because from
- 17:29Speaker 2: a HR perspective, if someone is like, right, the simplest
- 17:33Speaker 2: thing here justin is around that lying about their age
- 17:38Speaker 2: to sign up to these apps. And what's that going
- 17:40Speaker 2: to look like depending on what job they apply for
- 17:42Speaker 2: in the future. Is it going to build a pattern
- 17:44Speaker 2: of deceit in an automated software system that's looking at
- 17:47Speaker 2: their digital footprint? You know? Is it going to stop
- 17:51Speaker 2: them from getting a job interview because of that? You
- 17:54Speaker 2: know the basics here. I would also suggest that parents
- 17:59Speaker 2: take the time to sit with their kids and make
- 18:02Speaker 2: sure that they understand how to block and report on
- 18:05Speaker 2: every app their child's using. They need to know where
- 18:07Speaker 2: to go when things go wrong, because we're not going
- 18:10Speaker 2: to stop them from using it, so we need to
- 18:12Speaker 2: build some resilience and mitigate some risk around that. And
- 18:17Speaker 2: the other way that they can do that is sit
- 18:18Speaker 2: with them and go through like age specific of course,
- 18:22Speaker 2: how do you know that person? Tell me two other
- 18:24Speaker 2: people at school that know them, and if they don't.
- 18:27Speaker 2: If they can't do that, delete them is another strategy
- 18:30Speaker 2: that I get parents to go through with little ones.
- 18:33Speaker 2: In particular, I had a kid in grade two who
- 18:35Speaker 2: had ten thousand followers on TikTok like that just tells
- 18:40Speaker 2: me that she probably knew three of them and the
- 18:42Speaker 2: rest of them could have been potential whatever you know,
- 18:46Speaker 2: So all of those things and then you know, my
- 18:48Speaker 2: final tip there for parents would be help them to
- 18:52Speaker 2: cleanse their feed, go through and unfollow things that make
- 18:55Speaker 2: them feel rubbish about themselves or rubbish other people, or
- 18:59Speaker 2: up fit them in any way because of the content
- 19:01Speaker 2: level on it. It's just a couple of tips.
- 19:04Speaker 3: Kira, I reckon. We could have this conversation over the
- 19:06Speaker 3: course of about four days. There's so much to talk about,
- 19:10Speaker 3: and I listen to your tips, lots of wisdom there.
- 19:12Speaker 3: There's about I don't know seven hundred other things that
- 19:14Speaker 3: I want to add, and I'm sure the same for you.
- 19:16Speaker 3: There'd be so many more things that you could share.
- 19:18Speaker 3: Let's get you back. I think that these conversations matter
- 19:21Speaker 3: a lot. In fact, recently on Facebook you mentioned something
- 19:25Speaker 3: about air dropping and cyber flashing, which has been also
- 19:30Speaker 3: flagged with me a few times. I reckon we should
- 19:31Speaker 3: have a conversation about that in the next couple of weeks.
- 19:33Speaker 2: Yep, for that sounds fantastic.
- 19:35Speaker 3: The conversation continues with Kira Pendergast Safe on Social or
- 19:39Speaker 3: the details at safe onsocial dot com dot au. The
- 19:43Speaker 3: Happy Family podcast is produced by Justin Ruland from Bridge
- 19:45Speaker 3: Media and Craig Bruce is our executive producer. If you'd
- 19:48Speaker 3: like more info, like I said, check out Kira's page.
- 19:50Speaker 3: If you run a school, if you're looking after school wellbeing,
- 19:55Speaker 3: school welfare, counseling, any of that sort of stuff, definitely
- 19:58Speaker 3: have a look at what here offers, and of course
- 20:00Speaker 3: all of the usual resources that can help your family
- 20:01Speaker 3: to be happier at Happy families dot com dot au