This Mom Started "Social Media Prep School" With Her Tween & It's Honestly Brilliant

Parents (and researchers) have long warned of the dangers of social media on the developing teenage brain. Mental health can be a sensitive topic, and parents might feel wary about overstepping with their tweens and teens. But social media usage and internet readiness are two topics that should be talked about in-depth and often, especially before setting a cellphone in your kid’s hand.

Don’t know where to even begin?

One mom is doing the work! On TikTok, Jamie Sea held her first “Social Media Prep School” lesson with her 11-year-old daughter in hopes that by the time they’ve completed their lessons, her daughter will have a thorough understanding of not just how the internet and social media work but how the human brain works while using social media.

“In the next few years, she's going to most likely be going to be online. And I want to prepare her for everything: how to not let any kind of comments affect her, how to believe in herself, how to show up in the most amazing way,” she begins.

Sea’s first lesson focuses on how the brain works, which she breaks down in four simple ways that a tween can understand.

1. How the brain filters before someone comments

Sea begins the lesson by showing her daughter how the brain works through “external events.”

“Let's say that you post a video online. We'll say it's like a dance video ... So when somebody sees the dance video, what they're going to do is they're going to see, and then it's going to go through all of these sensations: the way that they see, hear, feel, touch, smell, all of that. And it's going to go through all of their own past experiences. So everything that they've ever been told about dancing and themselves, it'll go through what they believe about the world, if they think dancing is good or bad or silly or stupid. How they're feeling in that moment, like if they're tired or cranky or they just had a bad day or someone just yelled at them, right?” she prefaces, checking in that her daughter understands before explaining that how her daughter is perceived by others will be heavily based on how individuals see themselves.

“Then, they make their choice on how what they're seeing makes them feel, and then they comment ... All of a sudden, someone says, ‘This is so cringy. Why would you dance like that?’... When they type that, that commenter may have been feeling nervous about dancing in public. Like they actually want to dance like that, like so confidently, but they feel nervous. So they are typing what they're actually like because they feel bad about themselves. They want to be able to do that. Or maybe they were teased about their dancing in the past. And now they're just like, ‘Okay, well now, now dancing is so uncool.’ Maybe they had a bad day and they're just putting out their energy onto somebody else.”

Long story short, the hypothetical rude comment was never about dancing, says Sea, it was about that commenters own personal experience.

“It's about how they see the world, how they see themselves, how they see dancing. And you are just the screen that's now easy for them to just comment on,” she adds.

2. The lens of seeing the world based on our internal world

Next, Sea tells her daughter they’re going to play a fun game. She demonstrates that she and her daughter have different glasses on, noting that everyone sees the world through they own “lens on life.”

“All [of] this is what creates their lens, all of their past experiences, how they're feeling, their beliefs, what they've been told growing up, how they feel about themselves,” she explains before referring back to a hypothetical negative social media comment and different “lenses” behind those comments. She focuses on the “jealousy” lens.

“So now you're seeing through the lens of somebody who might be feeling like, ‘I actually want what you want, what you have.’ Right? Now take off the jealousy lenses. Let's put on hurt feelings glasses. These are hurt feelings glasses. This is somebody who maybe had their feelings hurt in the past ... then they now see something, and they communicate to you through their hurt feelings glasses.”

3. The comment mirror reframe

Lastly, Sea teaches her daughter about what she calls ‘the magic mirror,’ which is a simple way to help younger kids understand the more complex idea of projection.

“So, when someone says something mean or what you experience is mean, coming through their lens, they might just be hurt, but it feels mean to you. I want you to imagine what they're actually doing because you're just projecting something to them that they have to experience ... what they're actually saying is a mirror,” she says.

“So, when they're saying it to you, I want you to imagine that comment is actually what they're saying to themselves in the mirror. Right? Like dancing is...so cringy ... You imagine that comment as a mirror. That comment that says, ‘You're ugly. Or who do you think you are to be able to do that?’ They're actually not saying that to you. They're saying that to themselves.”

The comments on Sea’s video were encouraging and insightful, including several parents who felt inspired to start their own social media prep school with their kids.

“god. im so proud of our generation. miss maam, youre doing such a good job. this is teaching the grownups too. thank you for sharing,” one user wrote.

Another said, “Such good training for your daughter!! Most times it’s another’s projection. Good job teaching her to know the difference 🙌🏾👌🏾👏🏾”

“Since the day my kids were able to speak unkind to each other I have said ‘Just because they said it, does it make it true? No, why? Because you KNOW it isn’t. That’s the only voice you need to listen to,[.]” another said.

Sea has continued her lessons over on her TikTok page with “Part Two: how to handle a mean comment”, and honestly, adults need these refreshers too!