… If social media was spending more time with children than their parents are, then … how and why is this happening? How are kids being drawn in? How do their parents feel about this – and what is the impact?

So our 2 year journey began. We started having lengthy discussions and interaction with kids, parents, teachers and businesses. We read a lot of books and trawled endless websites to understand this topic – inside & out. This is what we learnt:

There exists a gap between what parents THINK they know and what they ACTUALLY know and it is in this GAP where many children are finding themselves.

Children were saying:

• “I wish I could un-see what I have seen”
• “I don’t think we as kids know how to have fun anymore”
• “You grew up in a 3D world and are changing it to 2D, we are growing up in a 2D world and really wish it was 3D.”
• “I would never let my little brother see what my parents have allowed me to see”
• “Parents have no idea how the world works – they think that because they know the word ‘cyber’ that they know what cyberbullying is – they have no idea”.
• “Parents want to know about devices and technology but they don’t want to learn”.

As business owners operating in the private and public sectors, we have first hand experience of corporations targeting an audience for commercial gain and using social media as a ‘low cost’ path to reach them.

Working with a group of expert deviceKids who believe that parents should really know more to protect their children, we decided to formulate a breakthrough program to help parents navigate this new world so that together we could help resolve this gap between those who are born digital and those who are not.