The sayings like “Monkey see, monkey do” or “Actions speak louder than words” are pretty accurate when it comes to the way children interpret the world around them. We can be super well-intentioned, proactive at setting clear boundaries for our kid’s screen time, have the Internet usage limits set and everything, and then, model some less than impressive screen habits of our own which disempower the healthy messages we voice.

Your kids will step into the uncharted waters of social media at some point. How do you teach them to swim between the flags? Creating a social media account for your child won’t put them at risk of becoming a self-proclaimed ‘influencer’, or an online food critic whose blog is exclusively about your cooking. But there are real risks that are important to be aware of, and it’s important to walk alongside your child as they take their first steps into the social media sea.

Sex ed should be a series of evolving conversations. One in three New Zealand boys are watching pornography on a regular basis. Girls are watching porn, too. It’s just too easy to access. No more walking through the video shop to a dimly-lit R18 nook. Accessing porn is now as easy as opening a web browser and entering a search term 🔍 So—where to from here? Parenting in the digital age requires us to be brave and rewrite what the norm was in our childhood sex education.