by Christian Garcia
Parents, is this your frustration? Whether it’s out to eat, at the dinner table, or sitting on the couch, your teenager is always on their cellphone. It drives you crazy.
And for sure, you’d like to limit their digital frenzies, but you think, “I wouldn’t want to harm their social life.” Unfortunately, it seems few parents consider that their teenager’s excessive smartphone usage is actually damaging their social life!
”It turns out that the people who reported spending the most time on social media — more than two hours a day — had twice the odds of perceived social isolation than those who said they spent a half hour per day or less on those sites. And people who visited social media platforms most frequently, 58 visits per week or more, had more than three times the odds of perceived social isolation than those who visited fewer than nine times per week.”1
Online communication is extremely appealing for teenagers because 1) it offers freedom from their physical limitations, and 2) they can surround themselves with people who think like them. For a generation struggling with identity crisis, those benefits seem like great plusses. Unfortunately, teenagers are lonelier than ever, and it’s because their face-to-face interaction is nonexistent.
Be very careful with how free you allow your kids to handle their social media habits. By filling their minds with the thoughts and opinions of others, they tend to leave very little space for their walk with God and real, life-giving relationships.
How Can I Help My Teen’s Social Skills?
- Consider a set time of day where screen-time is off limits. Use this time to engage your teenagers or to encourage them to build stronger connections with someone face-to-face.
- Teach your children to have Quiet Time (Bible reading and prayer) while they’re young. The more distant we are from God, the less vibrant our relationships become.
- Challenge their thinking. Have you ever considered how much small talk we have with each other? Very rarely do matters of eternal value come up. But these are the very things that bind hearts closer together. Challenge your teenager to go beyond the trivia of life and start talking of things that have real value.
1 Katherine Hobson, National Public Radio, Feeling Lonely? Too Much Time On Social Media May Be Why, https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/03/06/518362255/feeling-lonely- too-much-time-on-social-media-may-be-why