Professional counselor offers tips on social media safety at Mars Area Community Library
If 10-year-old Kevin McCallister were left home alone in 2025, would he be the same mastermind seen outwitting The Wet Bandits, or would he be too preoccupied by unsupervised social media and video games to notice the threat?
As a licensed professional counselor for almost nine years, Alexandra Dimoff said it largely falls on the parents to monitor their child’s electronics use and demonstrate media literacy to create healthy practices when she presented Saturday afternoon at the Mars Area Community Library.
Dimoff presented guidelines for safe electronics and social media use for parents to more closely monitor the content their child consumes and limit their exposure to inappropriate content.
Dimoff highlighted Apple safety features and demonstrated using built-in features on Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat to filter out bad actors from reaching children. She said out of the three apps, TikTok creates the biggest risk for the children as young as five up through the adults she serves.
“It’s inevitable that kids are going to want to be on social media,” Dimoff said. “It’s not something you can keep them away from. It’s just a matter of keeping up with the times and promoting it in a way to keep them safe on there.”
TikTok presents risks with trends that make kids want to attempt dangerous challenges, like the blackout challenge. The blackout challenge went viral on TikTok encouraging kids to suffocate themselves and get as close to losing consciousness as possible.
Dimoff showed a picture of 10-year-old Nylah Anderson, who died attempting the challenge in December 2021 in Chester County. She also referenced the Benadryl hallucination challenge, which encourages children to take a dangerous amount of the substance.
Instagram offers some similar content with its reels, but is mainly a photo- and video-sharing app. Instagram has more built-in privacy settings that allow users to set their account to private so only followers can see content, and followers must be approved.
Instagram also allows comments to be turned off, which is one of the main places cyberbullying occurs, Dimoff said. Instagram also allows other accounts and locations to be tagged, which makes the posted content appear on the tagged page’s account.
“I’ve see a peer making videos mocking a client, then they tag them in it, and it shows up on their page for everyone to see,” Dimoff said.
Tags can be manually approved instead to restrict what appears on the user’s page. Dimoff said parents should not rely on their child’s school to protect them from cyberbullying. She said schools can usually only get involved if the cyberbully posts content on school grounds during school hours or at school-sanctioned events.
Dimoff also explained a suspicious Instagram account will likely have few posts, followers and accounts it is following; while a verified account will have a blue checkmark at the top of the screen next to the username.
For Snapchat, Dimoff explained the “my eyes only” tab, a folder photos can be organized into that requires a four-digit pin to access. She said children will commonly store photos they don’t want their parents seeing in the tab.
Snapchat typically deletes messages and photos as soon as the user has viewed them, but the image or message can still be saved as a screenshot and shared. Police can also subpoena Snapchat to access deleted messages.
Dimoff said most of the clients she’s met treating mental health have Apple devices, so she continued explaining Apple’s privacy and account settings parents can adjust. For parents with Android devices, Dimoff recommends Bark, a privacy app that sends a notification to the parent’s phone if it flags unsafe activity and predatory behavior.
Dimoff said parents should also model proper electronic use, such as how to be friendly on social media and putting away electronics while promoting other types of play.
