Beneath The 'Like' Button

What if the problem isn’t social media… but how we’re (not) teaching our kids to relate to it?

Social media isn’t going anywhere — so I’m not interested in parenting from panic. I’m interested in raising kids who trust themselves in a world designed to pull their attention outward.

In this episode, we unpack what’s happening right now — from major court cases to the real impact on kids’ brains and self-worth — and why fear won’t help them navigate it. The shift is agency.

I break down social media like money and the ocean: powerful, not inherently bad, but something you need to learn to navigate. We talk nervous system regulation, why teens can’t do this alone, and how kids mirror what we do more than what we say.

You’ll walk away with practical strategies for calmer boundaries, deeper connection, and raising kids who actually know who they are.

Thanks for listening! 

Connect with me on instagram: @theburnedoutb

I'd love for you to message me what you thought, what it made you think about, your reflections, and of course what’s been coming up for your or causing you anxiety lately. I will never share your name or info unless you say it’s okay!

Transcript

Tempo: 120.0

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Hey mama, if you're exhausted from reacting to the world instead of shaping it, you're in the right place. This is Mama, where we stop parenting from panic and we start parenting from honesty, authenticity, and from power. You are not just a mama. You're building your system. You're keeping values. You are influencing the future of our planet. So no pressure, but also kind of pressure. Let's do this consciously. Welcome back to Mom Bomb. I'm Nicole, your host, and this is where we talk about soloing parenting, nervous system work, and raising kids who actually know who they are. Because the world isn't going to be fixed from the top down. It changes through the children that we raise and the way that we show up while we're raising them. Today I want to talk about kids and social media. And not from a place of panic, not from a place of everything is terrible. I'm not here to be the screaming mom about the injustices of the world and the injustices done to my children by the fact that it exists. What I want is to give you a balanced take. And more importantly, I want to give you a way to think about this, a perspective. And maybe thoughts on how to actually handle it as your kids grow up in a world where this isn't going anywhere. So let's dive in. If you're new to what's going on right now, like if you have been really actually living under a rock, well, right now there are some major court cases that are happening, and a lot of them are originating out of California. They all center around the lack of protections for young people on social media. And the argument that's being made is that these platforms have knowingly impacted kids' brains, their self-worth, their perception of reality, their mood, and that they were designed in ways to keep them hooked. Well, they were designed to keep us all hooked. I think we've all experienced that. Some people are even comparing this to early tobacco lawsuits where companies were accused of knowing the harm and continuing anyway. Well, yeah, and we have the receipts in both cases. They put it in a memo. And I'll be honest that what has come out of these cases from my perspective, it's rancid. There are systems here that were built to capture attention, and they had a real impact on everybody. But for kids, it's more intense. But at the same time, I'm not interested in collapsing into the belief that I'm a victim of this. And I'm not interested in sitting in powerlessness about it either. Because that doesn't help me. And it definitely, definitely doesn't help my kids. So we could be angry about it. We can be angry about a lot of things. There's so much to be angry about. But when we make ourselves the victim of a system, we give away our agency. And I'm not available for that for myself or for my children. Now, one of the arguments being made is that these companies aren't responsible for how their platforms are used, that they provide the tool and then the user chooses how they engage with it. Well, that's a really handy loophole to, you know, escape responsibility, but it raises a real question. If they're not responsible, who is? Because we also have to ask can we reasonably expect that level of responsibility from a child, from a developing brain that doesn't yet have full impulse control? And most of us wouldn't hand our child alcohol and say, here, use this responsibly. Actually, I do have an elder teenager, and I know that that is sometimes the case. And this is where I have to check my judgment because I judge that hard. I judge it hard. I think it's an total cop-out in parenting. Just thinking, well, at least you're doing it here where I'm watching you. I'm sorry, does that make it healthy? I don't think so. What most of us do is we teach them what it does. We set boundaries, we guide them. Social media isn't any different. The effects are just less visible, or rather, visible in a different way because our kids aren't stumbling around because they got into the social media, but they might be moodier. They might talk to you less. They might be more concerned about external validation than they are about their internal self and you know what values, what identity that they're building. They might start to build an identity that you don't like very much. And here's the other piece that we have to be honest about. Even if these platforms are held accountable, even if they're regulated, even if they're fined, does that fix it? No, because that doesn't rebuild our kids' self-worth. It doesn't rewire a nervous system and it doesn't teach discernment. So yes, let's hold them accountable, but don't expect that to fix the problem. Now, this is not a call to panic. It's a call to come back to center, to stop parenting on autopilot and come back to parenting with awareness and with courage. I look at social media the same way that I look at money. Money has been used for all kinds of evil. It's been used to exploit, to control, to create inequality. But it's also been used to build hospitals, to fund education, and to support families. The thing itself is not inherently evil. It's powerful. And powerful things amplify the state of the person using them. Powerful things amplify the state of the person using them. So the real question becomes what state am I bringing to this? Am I grounded, regulated, aligned, using this for entertainment? Or am I anxious, comparing, consuming, and seeking validation? Another way to look at this is like the ocean. The ocean is incredible. We don't even know what all is in there. It's fun, it's beautiful, it's expansive. You can go to the beach, swim, paddle board. There is no end to the things that you can do with the ocean. It's also dangerous. There are rip currents, there's sharps, there's jaws out there, there are things that you don't see coming. The ocean doesn't change based on who enters it, but the outcome does. She offered it voluntarily. And from a 17-year-old, that's really powerful. Because the part of the brain responsible for impulse control and discernment, that prefrontal cortex, that's not even fully developed until mid-20s. So we can't expect our kids to navigate this alone. That activates our brain's threat response. Right? Our brain doesn't distinguish between a physical threat and a psychological threat. It treats them both exactly the same. The amygdala is going to start to send the signals to release our stress hormones, no matter what, whether it's physical or whether it's mental. And now we have this system that so just prolifically reinforces insecurity and external validation. And this matters even more during adolescence because that's when kids are forming their identities. Think back, how many different personalities and identities did you try on as a teenager? It was like, wake up and who do who do I want to be today? But that process is heavily shaped by social media now. And we have to ask, what are they trying on? Because when validation becomes externalized, identity becomes unstable. We don't know who we are at our core. And if we're being honest, that's not just our kids. That's us too. We scroll, we compare, we curate, we buy things we didn't even know we wanted five minutes ago. We absorb the outrage that we find there and we perform instead of connecting. And our kids are watching all of it. If we say, I don't care what people think about me, but then we go check for likes. If we say, be authentic, be genuine, but then we curate everything, we lose credibility with our kids. And not because we're bad, but because kids are perceptive. And when what we say and what we do don't match, frustrate us. We want self-trust, discernment, a regulated nervous system, a values-based decision-making system. And you don't teach that with rules, you model it as a parent. Because kids are mimics. Think about toddlers, they mimic everything you do. It becomes a little bit softer, a little more nuanced as they get older, but it doesn't go away. And this is so important because this technology isn't going anywhere. So, like let's say that we say, Nope, you're not even having a phone until you're 18. What happens at 18? A kid in a candy store happens at 18. Regulation has to be built, it has to be practical. Because again, the ocean isn't dangerous because it exists. It's dangerous if you don't know how to swim. So what can that look like in practice? We can model putting the phone down. We can narrate it. Do you remember when your kids were toddlers and you basically narrated your entire life because that was part of their language development? Pick it back up again. Point it out. Have device-free moments, device-free dinners. Talk openly about algorithms, about how they work, about what they're doing. Be curious about your child's experience instead of controlling it. Be in it with them, giving them the thoughts and the ideas of a regulated, grounded, values-based nervous system. Because kids won't respond well to control, but they really, really respond to curiosity and connection. And then we can build real-world competence. Now, one of the other things that I think is so important to model for our children is having a hobby, something that doesn't include scrolling your phone, working out, sports, art, relationships, skills, mastery, like a coloring book. I have a friend that colors with her kids, and they're teenagers. They still sit with their coloring books and they color. And it's just such a beautiful way that they have this time together with very little pressure. No devices involved. I love it. And while it is great to do hobbies with your kids, let them see you have your own. Let them see you have your own things that you value and that you carve out time for, because then they're going to model that too. Because this isn't just about them, it's about us too. If we can't regulate our scrolling, how could we possibly expect our kids to regulate theirs? That's like a core principle of leadership. Don't ask somebody else to do something that you're not willing to do yourself. This isn't about controlling devices. It's about nervous system maturity, ours first, because we can't remove the ocean from the world, but we can teach our kids how to swim and how to recognize when something feels off, when to step back, when to disengage. Because if we don't teach them, the algorithm will. That's where we have lives. We have actual conversations, not just me talking at you. You can ask questions, you can challenge me, you can share what's coming up in your own home. I host Monday morning coffee in consciousness, where we set intentions for the week. We talk about what we're noticing and how we're growing. Because this work, again, it's not going to happen from the top down. The world isn't going to get better from our leadership making changes. Think about it. It happens in the small daily choices that we make, the nervous systems that we're changing and shaping in the process, in the modeling we're giving our children so that they can grow up grounded, so that they can solve higher order problems because they're not walking around like an anxious mess all the time. Right. You can find me again on Patreon, Instagram, Facebook, The Burned Out Bee. And as always, take what resonates, question everything else and stay grounded in yourself. See you next time. Later, bees. Remember, the world doesn't change from the top down. It changes from your kitchen table out. If this hit, subscribe. If it turns something, stick with it. And if it challenged you, good. That's how we grow. This has been a burnt out bee production. And I will see you next time.