Mom Pays Son $1800 to Stay Off Social Media

(KNSI) – A mom is going viral for a deal she made with her son to stay off social media until he turned 18. Lorna Klefsaas, of Motley, MN, made a deal with her then 12-year-old son Sivert. If he would stay off social media until he turned 18, she would pay him $1800. Sivert collected the bet on his birthday, February 18th.

“It’s an idea that I heard on the radio one day. It was a 16 for 16 challenge, where a mom was going to pay her daughter $1600 to do something when she was 16. I thought that perhaps I could do something like that for Sivert. So I came home and made a deal with him. I would pay him $1800 to stay off of social media until he was 18 years old.”

Lorna said she knows how teens can struggle with social media – his older sisters became obsessed with it and it was affecting their mood – so she wanted to save her youngest child from going through the same thing.

“Sivert’s sisters are five, six, and seven years older than he is, and so we watched how social media at a young age affected them. We tried to limit their social media as teenagers with varying degrees of success. One daughter, in particular,(social media)became something that was really affecting her mood, her self-esteem, and she was really struggling with it in a noticeable way. We ended up taking her phone away, which she didn’t love. But after about three weeks we started to see an incredibly noticeable change in her behavior.”

One of the concerns over the lack of social media that developed over the last couple of years is the ability for Sivert, a senior at Staples-Motley High School, to communicate with college athletic programs and recruiters.

“We did consider amending the deal so that Sivert could put his highlights on Twitter,” said Lorna. “Twitter seems to be the big communication tool for football programs. Sivert decided he didn’t want to and, the reality is, he did just fine with e-mail and texting. I think it boils down to the fact that if you really want to get a hold of somebody, you can. Kids like to act like if you don’t have social media, you can’t be found. He did it all: phone, email, texting and it ended up not being an issue.

Sivert is set to play football at the University of Northwestern-St. Paul in the fall. He’s also wasted no time creating an Instagram account. His bio reads, “I’m new here, be nice to me.”

He plans to use his $1,800 on college supplies.

Zeke Fuhrman from KNSI’s sister-station KDLM in Detroit Lakes contributed to this story.

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