When you were a teenager, did you have to wait for your sister or your parents to get off the phone so you could call a friend? How did you make plans for a Saturday night? Was it by word of mouth at school on Friday? It’s funny to think back on how we managed to make plans and socialize without cell phones because socializing through screens is the experience most kids have today.
Social media, texting, online gaming… It’s all screen-based interaction. Kids scroll TikTok and send videos. They’re on their phones while they’re hanging out in person. When our kids are home, they must know if a text comes in. Research shows that nearly a quarter of teens report giving a new friend their gaming handle as contact information. And nearly nine in ten boys who play online games say they talk with their friends while playing. Not only are kids making friends online, but they’re also using online gaming to connect to kids they meet IRL. But parents are concerned. Get out of the house. Hang out face-to-face like we did. Make REAL connections.
In this episode, we discuss the pressure parents feel to let their kids get a phone and whether a socially awkward kid is being enabled by socializing through screens. We also debate whether parents are too protective and whether letting kids be kids would mean they wouldn’t need screens to hang out. What do parents do when it feels like we’re fighting a battle against screens that the world is winning or, to be honest, a battle that we are losing, too?
Articles We Mentioned
3 Reasons I Let My Kids Socialize Through Online Gaming
University of Chicago Press Article: Kids These Days: Are Face-to-Face Social Skills among American Children Declining?
Pew Research Center Article: Teens who are constantly online are just as likely to socialize with their friends offline
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