Teenager wins $1,800 From Mom After Avoiding Social Media for 6 Years!

Being a little older and wiser than I once was, the one thing I will say is that I am more than a little grateful that I did not grow up in the age of social media. More often than not, I don’t think it’s a particularly healthy place (physically or mentally) for a young person to spend any notably huge lengths of time. Not, incidentally, that I think it’s much better for adults.

Are there any benefits to keeping away from platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc, though? Well, following a report via TechSpot, however, one teenager’s ability to successfully avoid social media platforms has just successfully won them an (effectively) $1,800 bet from their mother!

’18 For 18′ – Avoiding Social Media

Although going under various guises the mother in question heard the concept on the radio back in 2016 and decided to try it out with her (then) 12-year-old son. The premise of it was quite simple. If he would commit to completely avoiding social media platforms for 6 years (until his 18th birthday) she would give him a cash reward of $1,800. – Optimistic I know, but quite incredibly, he managed to stick with it, and, having just turned 18, has now (quite rightly!) received his prize.

In fact, he has subsequently said that avoiding social media has never really posed much of an issue to him since he never had an overly significant interest in it in the first place. If anything, he said that he largely appreciates the challenge due to it effectively removing him from any of the online ‘drama’ associated with the various platforms.

What Do We Think?

This is certainly a very interesting parenting tactic to, basically, cash incentivises their kids to stay away from social media platforms. Yes, you could tell your kids that they’re simply not allowed, but in my experience, telling a teenager they can’t do something generally only leads to them attempting to do it behind your back. – The only issue as I see would lie in the fact that although the prospect of a substantial cash prize for staying off social media would clearly be quite a notable incentive to many teenagers, I couldn’t see many of them managing to survive this ‘challenge’ for more than a couple days, let alone 6 whole years!

What do you think though? Could this potentially represent a unique solution? More so, how much would you want to stay off social media for 6 years? – Let us know in the comments!