[1827162]

I think the pendulum will swing towards that way eventually. It's cyclical. Once the novelty of social media wears away, as it has done already, and the harms start being worse than the benefits.

However not being on social media can have real-world consequences in the classroom, the child could be treated as an outcast and mocked or bullied for it.

There is a middle ground, which is to use a pseudonym and ensure anonymity. You can then selectively disclose this pseudonym to people you trust. It might be safer for the children that way and also make it more difficult for adult authority figures to interfere with their lives.

[glenngillen]

My 6yo daughter had to create a login for various online things recently (e.g., code.org to keep track of her progress). I don't exactly when or where they taught her this at school, but she absolutely refused to share any of her personal information in any way. She spent a good 30 minutes trying to make up a handle to use that she liked but didn't include any reference to her name, her initials, anything about her birth month or day (I'd suggesting adding the day of the month she was born as a suffix so she'd remember it given all her initial name preferences seems to be taken already), etc.

I was very impressed that they seem to have this conditioned into them so young, and to a level of importance that exceeded even my own paranoia about doing it properly.