Erin Napier and Ben Napier are best known for their show Home Town on HGTV. For seven years, they have been using their home renovation and interior design skills to revitalize their hometown in Mississippi. It’s a mission they are visibly passionate about, and now they are turning their attention toward another meaningful project that has nothing to do with housing.
The couple is instead focusing on helping families keep their children off social media through their new nonprofit Osprey, which is designed to create communities that support social media-free upbringings. The Napiers intend to keep their daughters — Helen, 5 and Mae, 2 — off of social media through high school. They are among many celebrities who have strict rules on the topic, and that’s for good reason.
“Research tells us social media is as addictive and destructive for developing brains as any drug,” Erin Napier wrote in the caption of an Instagram post introducing the new platform. “My kindergartener doesn’t expect to drive a car before she’s old enough. She doesn’t expect to own a house of her own before she’s old enough. If we build a culture in our home and school now where she doesn’t expect access to the entire world in her pocket until she’s much older, we can set her up for success.”
A post shared by Erin Napier (@erinapier)
Erin came to the realization that a lot of parents worry that keeping their kids off social media could lead to their children feeling insecure or being bullied. Because it’s hard to be the odd friend out. And so it’s no wonder that the HGTV stars who are so driven by the thought of uplifting communities and neighborhoods are now using community building to help support this social media-free vision.
“[It’s hard when] ‘Everybody else is doing it; We didn’t want to give them social media; We didn’t want to give them a phone, but everybody else it doing it’ … What if there is a way to create communities, small communities within schools, that hopefully become big communities within schools, where families say, ‘We’re not going to (use social media)?’” Erin told TODAY.com in May before the official launch of Osprey. “Then (the families) support each other, they kind of make a pledge together when their kids are in about fifth grade, and then they see it through and support each other.”
This year, there has been a growing concern about children’s social media usage. The American Psychological Association recommended new guidelines on usage for kids in early May, and U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a major advisory on the effects of social media on youth mental health soon after.
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“The most common question parents ask me is, ‘Is social media safe for my kids?’” Dr. Murthy said. “The answer is that we don’t have enough evidence to say it’s safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health. Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content to bullying and harassment. And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis — one that we must urgently address.”
And so how can families do that? Well, they can consider joining Osprey when it launches on Aug. 1, and they can follow the advice of Ariana Hoet, Ph.D., executive clinical director of On Our Sleeves — an organization at the forefront of the movement for children’s mental health — who spoke with SheKnows’ Parenting Editor Rita Templeton in May.
“I always say small changes are the best way to get long-lasting outcomes,” Dr. Hoet tells SheKnows. “Let’s say my child is spending eight hours a day on social media. Maybe we implement a plan where we’re going to bring that down to seven hours. And then after a few days, we bring that down to six hours and try to slowly decrease the time while adding [other activities to their routine].”
“If we’re at a place where we’re really, really worried about their mental health, parents may have to intervene more quickly and take things away, if necessary, to keep them safe — and look for professional help, of course,” Dr. Hoet says. “But if it’s more of a prevention, then I always say make those small changes with them.”
Parents should also set expectations for the entire family about when social media can be used because, remember, kids are looking at the adults around them as role models. In Dr. Hoet’s house, everyone powers down at 8 p.m. and puts their phones on the collective charging station in the kitchen.
What comes next? Listening.
“A lot of the times the [children’s] frustration after rules and boundaries is because whatever we’re saying makes them different — they don’t have access to social media, but all their friends do,” she says, sounding a lot like the Napiers. “And that’s how friends are making plans and connecting, especially over the summer, weekends, times when they’re not seeing each other every day. That can make kids feel excluded or left out, so this is where open dialogue and compromise come in handy; explain your standpoint, but if there’s an issue surrounding social media use that’s genuinely bothering your child, find a way to work around it that you can both live with.
Before you go, check out these celebrities who fight to keep paparazzi away from their families.
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