My Son Was Mocked in a YouTube Diss Track in Third Grade

Hi friends, when we recently got into a debate about a phone ban for teens, Karin reached out to us. Based on her own experience, she supports a social media ban for kids under 14. Her son was only in third grade when a diss track about him was uploaded to YouTube. That's a video aimed squarely at one person to taunt them.

Hey you, how do you feel about a social media ban for kids under 14?

I'm definitely for a ban. But I see the problem in how you'd put it into practice, and even more in how you'd enforce it. If you read the terms of service closely, probably not a single popular social media platform is officially open to kids under 14. And yet plenty of kids and teens have access to TikTok, Instagram, and the rest. Even WhatsApp has an age limit. But it's so firmly established as a messaging app that nobody even questions it. You just change the age setting on the phone, and you can download the app anyway.

Has your view on this changed over the years? If so, how?

Yes, I've definitely become more critical. Especially in the last few years, social media has turned in many places into what I'd call Unsocial Media. The tone is often harsh. People pile on faster than they would in real life. Misinformation spreads. And on these platforms, kids are left unprotected around adults. Do you want that for your child? I don't want it for mine.

What restrictions for kids would make sense to you?

Mostly restrictions on content. Some kind of real filter that doesn't let every piece of information through to kids. And drastic limits on communication, too, so that anyone and everyone can't just message them.

Do you think people would actually follow bans or restrictions? Or is it more about the signal it sends: this really isn't for younger kids?

I think the people who already look at this topic critically today, and who welcome a ban, would certainly follow it. My fear is that there aren't that many of them.

Right now, the talk is only about a social media ban, not an internet ban, so kids could still watch violent or sexual videos if they wanted to…

Basically, the internet isn't all bad either. When I was in school, I dug out my parents' old set of encyclopedias for my first school reports. Today, kids have search engines and an almost endless supply of knowledge. A complete internet ban would probably be even harder to enforce. 

Do you also find teens' media habits hard on their social lives?

Yes, absolutely. Last weekend we were at an indoor pool for a swim meet. The athletes were all glued to their phones, every single one. I've even given up packing card games for my son. Nobody plays with him anyway, and in the end he winds up hunched over a phone with the others. Two kids from another swim club were sitting next to us in the bleachers with their Donald Duck comic books. I thought it was sad that something like that even stands out, that it's noticeable when kids find something to do other than look at a phone. Yes, a day at the pool is long, but there are ways to stay busy that don't involve a small screen.

And that's not all. You've also been through something much more intense…

At school, we recently had a case where a classmate made a “diss track” about our son a year ago. It used his name. And it was uploaded, totally publicly, to YouTube. When the video went up, the kids were in third grade.

How did you find out about the diss track? How did your son take it, and how did you feel as his mom?

Honestly, our son told us about it a year ago. Because of how young the boys were, my husband and I didn't take it seriously. We more or less told him it was just his classmate talking big.

But this boy really does have a YouTube channel. Other kids in the class apparently found out about the channel recently, watched the video, and started teasing our son with it. He doesn't have YouTube himself, because we've locked down his phone with Family Link. So he told the boys at swim practice about it in the locker room. They're one to two years older. They watched it with him, thought the video was dumb, and even gave it a thumbs-down. He told me all this in the car, and I was completely blindsided.

Were there consequences? Is everything sorted out now?

My first impulse was to send the boy's mom the link to the video. I wrote that my son was named and insulted in it and that it needed to come down immediately. Just to be safe, I also made a copy with my phone's screen recorder. 

Her reaction was basically that I shouldn't make such a fuss, since the video had already been online for a year. She said she'd deleted it herself now, but that she didn't think my child's full name was in it, and there were other people with his first name. I was really stunned that she played it down like that and hadn't even watched it. The name is said twice.

What did the school say?

We reported it to the homeroom teacher and the principal. The teacher talked to the boys the very next day. The school administration advised us to file a report with the police or the youth welfare office, and so did a lawyer friend of ours. If a child that age has such unchecked access to, say, YouTube, that could well count as a failure to properly supervise, since YouTube is supposedly only allowed from 16.

We told the coaches as well, just to be safe. Kids can be cruel sometimes, and it could easily have happened that the boys he'd told thought the video was dumb in one moment and then used it to tease him in the next. They talked to those kids too. They turned out to be very caring and even asked whether we parents knew about it.

What would your message be as a mom?

There has to be a much stricter line when it comes to oversight. How can an 8-year-old, as he was then, upload something like that and run a YouTube channel with more videos all by himself? We reported the channel. So far, sadly, YouTube hasn't done anything. There isn't even a reporting reason like “person is a minor.”

But of course the big questions are: Who is supposed to enforce this in the end? What are the consequences for parents who don't follow the rules? I don't have an answer to that either.