For almost a year now, I have been teaching Social Media Safety classes to Neurodivergent individuals. I have learned some things on the way that I want to share in these next couple posts. The first, and perhaps most important thing, is that it is so important to be trauma informed when you are teaching social media safety. Obviously, the reason we teach any safety skill is because we don’t want to kids/teens/adults to be in unsafe situations. I found that many people who came to my classes had already been in some pretty unsafe situations and I was teaching skills to make sure it didn’t happen again. What this means is that some individuals in the classes already had a history of trauma and it is important to tread carefully while still teaching the content.
In my groups I start by teaching WHY we are even learning these skills. I do this by showing news clips of actual situations that have happened. Many of these clips, while not super explicit, mentioned topics that can be very triggering- suicide, self harm, bullying, emotional abuse, sexual exploitation. For any individual (even those that don’t have a specific history with these traumas), mentioning these topics can bring up a lot of uncomfortable feelings. This is especially true for neurodivergent individuals. Neurodivergent individuals already tend to feel things deeply. Many of them are highly empathic, so these uncomfortable feelings that we are bringing up when we discuss trauma that can happen online, can feel very BIG.
In order to help my clients learn these skills in a safe way, I have done the following (and will address each one in future blog posts).
- We practice emotional regulation skills before we start each session.
- I have educated myself and educate my clients on polyvagal theory (learning is dependent on our physiological state and there are specific things you can do to help activate your parasympathetic nervous system so you can be ready to learn).
- I use trigger warnings to increase agency in how my clients interact with sensitive material.
- I don’t shame behaviors. There are reasons why my client’s might engage in unsafe behaviors, even after they have learned the right ones. Let’s validate those reasons, find safer options avoid shame in that process.
If you are looking for materials you can use to teach these skills, check out my store. This lesson might be a good place to start:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Social-Media-Safety-Why-Do-People-Lie-Online-11217969