What are your kids watching?

Do you know?

Do you know what your kids are reading?

Do you know who they are chatting with?

Do you know what the kids they are chatting with are watching and reading?

I’m not asking these questions because I think you’re a bad parent.

I’m not asking these questions because I think any parent can stay on top of everything their child does.

I’m asking these questions because I’m a teacher. Not only that but I’m a teacher of creative writing.

Lately, I’ve become a little concerned about your kids.

In one teaching year, I’ve had more conferences with students, notes to students’ parents, times when I’ve had to stop class and speak sternly…

Not more than other years. I’ve had more than I’ve ever had. Cumulative. My whole life.

This one school year, I have had more students referencing violent memes, more students taking part in destructive and deceptive communities, more students writing about violent fantasies.

It’s not just good, clean fun.

One student wrote a piece in which a murderer was interviewed by police while tied up, listening to other people in the police station being tortured.

Multiple students are ardent followers of quasi-religious online groups that take part in something akin to mass hysteria.

A student wrote a story based on a popular Internet meme about a child murderer and a sexual offender.

A group of students invented a world in which everyone had evil “dark sides,” and then their “dark sides” started attending classes with them, typing nasty things into the chat window.

Today, a few days after a mass murderer referenced a popular Internet meme while murdering people in a house of worship, one of my students referenced that meme in class.

It’s not just my online students.

I’ve asked around. Kids are coming to schools with all sorts of inappropriate materials. Kids are aware of things that you and I didn’t even know existed when we were that age.

It’s not ‘just stories’.

The stories we tell with our children important. Stories shape their worldview. Violence in children’s stories is not new. But despair and hopelessness in media for children is new. It’s harming our kids. It’s harming their psyches.

Have you checked out the most recent teen suicide statistics?

Have you considered what your child might be accessing that could lead them to despair?

I know this is harsh, but I’m worried about your kids. Humans have faced war, famine, volcanoes, mass migration, and drought. But I think the Internet is, perhaps, a bigger long term challenge to the health of the human race.

Your kids are great. Please take care of them. Please sit down and express interest in what they are doing online. Ask them what interests them. Be there for them to express their fears to.

And make sure they know that there is hope.