Parents: Here's how to stop the worst of social media by kelly wallace

As the mom of two girls, ages 7 and 9, there are countless reasons why I'm freaking out about the teen years. But topping that list, at the moment, is the thought of parenting in the social media age.

My kids won't be allowed to have smartphones until middle school at the earliest, but once the genie is out of the bottle, how will I possibly be able to keep tabs on everything they're doing on Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook and all the other yet-to-be created social networks?

Short answer: I won't. But the findings of a new "CNN Special Report: #Being 13: Inside the Secret World of Teens," shows why we parents should try to do a much better job of understanding what's happening online. ( The documentary, #Being 13, airs at 9 p.m. ET Monday. Watch to find out the results of the first large-scale study of its kind on teens and social media.)

"(Parents) just don't get the impact that social media has on, like, teen's lives," said 13-year-old Morgan, one of the 200 eighth-graders from eight different schools who agreed, along with their parents and schools, to allow CNN and two child development experts to monitor all their posts on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook over a six-month period.

Even for parents who try to control their children's social media use, the CNN study found a disconnect between what their parents think about their kids' posts and how their children are feeling. Sixty percent of parents underestimated how lonely, worried and depressed their kids were and 94% underestimated the amount of fighting that happens on social media.

Related: The acronyms kids really use on social media

"Even the parents who would be the most vigilant about monitoring, I believe, most often, wouldn't know enough to know the small hurts that sort of pile up on kids over time," said Marion Underwood, a child clinical psychologist with the University of Texas at Dallas and one of the two experts who collaborated with CNN on the study.

We parents often don't have a clue as to how subtle the aggression can be. I just learned that young people might post a group photo and intentionally not tag someone included in the picture, or, they might share a photo from a party or outing with the goal of hurting those who weren't invited.

"When we were young, I didn't know every party I wasn't invited to. I didn't see pictures every time friends, good friends, got together without me. Now they see all of it in real time," said Underwood, who is also dean of graduate studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and a professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. "And I think that's very hard to take. And we maybe haven't prepared them as well ... to deal with it in the best way."

so what can parents do..........to be continued