October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and parents will hear plenty of familiar advice about keeping their children safe online: use strong passwords, turn on two-factor authentication, and never click a suspicious link. This is good advice. A child who knows how to recognize a phishing scam is safer from it.
Imagine a 13-year-old who has just gotten her first social media account. She’s been feeling bad about her body lately, but she hasn’t told anyone. One night, she pauses for a few seconds on a video about losing weight. Maybe she watches it twice. Maybe she taps the heart. She doesn’t search for anything or follow anyone. She isn’t looking for dangerous content. She’s just scrolling.
The app notices.
Researchers at the Center for Countering Digital Hate tested something similar. They created new TikTok accounts in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, all set to age 13, and had the accounts briefly pause on videos about body image and mental health and like them. Suicide-related content appeared within 2.6 minutes. Eating-disorder content appeared within eight minutes.
The feed doesn’t wait for a child to go looking. It learns what holds their attention and brings them more of it. For a child having a difficult week, that can mean being served more of the very content that inevitably weighs on them, potentially at the moment they’re least equipped to scroll past it.
For parents, this raises a question that goes beyond how much time children spend online: When are they developmentally ready to navigate platforms designed to hold their attention?
We often ask whether a child is old enough to have an account. Most major platforms set their minimum age at 13. But 13 isn’t a developmental milestone that suddenly makes a child ready to navigate a system built around engagement. The question shouldn’t just be, “Is my child old enough?” It should be, “Is my child ready for technology designed to keep their attention?
Social media companies have been clear about the value of attracting young users. In a 2018 internal document made public through litigation, Facebook put it plainly: “If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens.” The company’s interest in reaching children early wasn’t incidental. It was part of a business strategy built around developing long-term users.
A child’s attention isn’t simply a byproduct of social media. It is central to the business model.
The research on timing points in the same direction. A study published in the Medical Journal of Australia followed nearly 1,200 children in Melbourne from childhood into early adulthood. Teens who spent more than two hours a day on social media were at greater risk of depressive symptoms and poor well-being a year later, with the risks highest at ages 12 and 13.
Sixteen isn’t a magic number. A 16-year-old can still make a poor decision online, just as a 13-year-old can make a good one. But waiting gives children more time to develop judgment, confidence, and the ability to recognize when something online is trying to manipulate them. It also gives parents more time to build the digital literacy children will eventually need.
Whether your child is just starting out online or already has accounts, there are practical steps parents can take.
- Start by talking about how algorithms work. Ask your children why they think a particular video appeared in their feed. Explain that apps track what they watch, like, and linger on, and that the goal is often to keep them scrolling, not necessarily to show them what’s healthy or true.
- Explore privacy and content settings together. Show them how to mark videos “not interested,” block accounts, and report harmful content. Remind them that a video with millions of views isn’t necessarily accura
te, healthy, or worth watching.
- Establish boundaries before problems arise. Keep phones out of bedrooms overnight, agree on screen-free times and spaces, and know which platforms your children are using. If they already have social media accounts, make reviewing privacy and safety settings an ongoing conversation rather than a one-time task.
- Most importantly, make sure your children know they can come to you if something disturbing, sexual, or frightening appears on their screen. They shouldn’t have to weigh the fear of losing their phone against the need to tell a parent what happened. Your first response should be to help them, not punish them.
The goal isn’t to raise children who are afraid of the internet. It’s to raise children who understand it. So this Cybersecurity Awareness Month, lock the doors and update the passwords. Then ask what the technology you let in was built to do.
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Layne Shill is the Strategic Project Coordinator for The Parent Center at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation.
