Screenagers
My Internet was down for 5 minutes so I went downstairs and spoke to my family. They seem like nice people.
Growing Up with Gadgets
Historically, children have hung out only on two playgrounds, one at school and one at home. Now they operate on a third playground, the digital universe, a playground that is infinite in size, difficult to regulate, ever-changing, and beyond our comprehension. Anyone, anywhere can post and read posts without accountability. Without military-quality encryption, there is no privacy.
Our children are digital natives with parents who are somewhat like first-generation digital immigrants. The cyber-universe has few meaningful boundaries or filters, making it difficult for parents to protect their children from the vast amount of information flowing into or out of their family rooms and bedrooms. The parents of today’s generation of teenagers did not grow up with the Internet or use social media until the last 20 years. The ever-changing character of the digital world makes it challenging even for parents who first used the Internet in the early 1990s to keep up with what’s out there. As a result, they are missing some of the experiences of their teens’ world. A responsible parent must try to be as digital savvy as possible.
Not all teens use the Internet for the same reasons. Some spend their time socializing, texting, chatting, creating a network of friends, and interacting with those friends online. Some do most of their communicating using IM (instant messaging). They IM while watching TV, listening to music, doing their homework, and sometimes juggling several different friends at the same time. Some look for music, follow indie groups, read about different artists, download interesting music, and post on blogs. Others are passionate gamers, participating in communities built around shared expertise in games like Minecraft. Others watch media, movies, and old TV shows online, replacing the TV as their primary source of entertainment. And some use the Internet to participate in social action, express themselves anonymously, support a passion, and/or create a blog to talk about what they find interesting and important. Many teens share a big chunk of their lives online. The takeaway for parents is to be proactive and curious about what most interests their teens, how they use the digital world, what attracts them on the Internet, and why.
While much of the generation gap between parents and adult children has shrunk, the one place where it may still exist is in the digital divide. Although parents may believe they are digitally savvy and admit to being tied to their cell phones and tablets, they are no match for their teenage children. Providing the guidance teenagers need is difficult when parents are often two steps behind them, unaware of the hottest, most current sites and apps while their kids have already moved on to the next new site. Regardless of how techno-smart parents are, the world has changed, and there’s no going back to rotary phones, typewriters, pen and paper, and newspapers. You need to get smart!
The Internet has an infinite memory. Much of what our children post leaves its trace. Anything put out on the Internet is indelible; there are no real erasers, even after you hit Delete. There are no more Hansel and Gretel crumbs that birds can snatch and nibble without leaving a trace. Nothing can disappear, and our children’s words are indelible footprints that can be recaptured even after they press Delete.
While technology has radically changed the landscape (the playground), the basics of teenage development and behavior remain the same. Teens still do what they’ve always done—socialize, check in, hang out, and seek acknowledgment. They are still driven to connect and engage with one another. The developmental goal of figuring out their identity and finding out where and how they fit in is the same; it is the environment that has changed dramatically.
In this chapter, we explore the digital world of teens. We discuss the impact of social media on the lives of teenagers. In addition, opinions on the impact of the technology explosion differ, and we provide a variety of experts’ perspectives. Before parents can set appropriate boundaries, they must know more about the advantages and disadvantages of technology.
Totally Wired
Parents and teenagers have become psychologically dependent on cell phones, computers, and tablets. They wake up to the alarm set on their cell phone, carry the phone into the bathroom, and then play music while they get ready for school or work. During breakfast, they check for texts and peruse Facebook, Snapchat, and/or Instagram to see what their friends have posted since they checked in the night before. Teenagers are never far from their phone, keeping it in their purse, backpack, or pocket. There is incessant connection; the phone is really an extension of their body. Many kids feel incomplete without their cell phone, and it has quickly become the most important possession of a teen. In the words of 16-year-old Jenna, “It is literally a lifeline; without my phone, I’m anxious.” Many teens say texting is the first and last thing they do every day (Li, 2012). For teenagers, social networking is not a distraction from their offline life; they use it to define their life.
Many people would rather leave their wallet at home than their cell phone. A father of two teens is a case in point:
I can remember losing my wallet in college and feeling totally lost. I felt unanchored and naked without my ID and credit cards. Now I would feel awful if I lost or forgot to bring my cell phone. I’d feel disconnected from the outside world. It’s a security blanket of connection. When I’m stuck in traffic, I can call ahead, and if I’m on line at the bank, I can look at Twitter. The cell phone is an indispensable part of me, an extension of my hand. My wallet is now just a wallet.
Our teens are experiencing the same attachment to their technology.
However, it’s one thing to have a cell phone in your backpack and another to leave class or sneak a look while in class to check your e-mail or texts. The dad of 15-year-old Emma said, “I find it troubling that my daughter is so connected to her cell phone. It would be a crisis for her if she lost it. Her twin brother loses his all the time. He’s even retrieved it from the toilet twice!” The allure of texting, e-mail, Instagram, and Twitter is the intermittent reinforcement teens feel they need when they check their phone for a new post. The randomness of the posts reinforces their dependence and need to check. If posts came every hour, they would know when to look, just as adults used to wait for regular traffic and weather updates on the radio. The addictive quality of digital media is a real concern. This worry is one that parents understand and fear, particularly because they struggle with a similar addiction.
One mother said, “In the words of my child’s pediatrician at his last physical after I asked if my son were ADHD, ‘Is he ADHD? I don’t know. I think we’re all ADHD. I refer to myself as an adult with acquired ADHD. The world is just moving so fast. The information is endless, and we are all compulsively checking our devices.’” Another parent added, “I just saw a cartoon of a mom, dad, and two kids with their heads buried in their various screens. The caption read, ‘Where should we go to stare at our phones this summer?’”
The generation gap is apparent in the social language of the Internet. While most parents embrace technological tools and utilities like syncing family calendars and sending group e-mails, for them technology is just that—a tool. They use their phones, laptops, and tablets to make their lives more efficient. And many parents are not very fluent in the Internet’s social language. Every generation of teenagers has used its own slang, and today’s teens are fluent in the abbreviations and phrases known as netspeak. Their abbreviations are sprinkled in their texts, making them illegible to some parents. To stay an informed parent, you have to know what your kids are writing, and the Internet has sites such as the Internet Slang Dictionary and Translator (http://www.noslang.com) and NetLingo (http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php) that can be helpful in decoding the new slang or abbreviations for parents. Here are a few examples of netspeak:
GTG: got to go
NMU: not much, you?
OH: overheard
OMG: oh, my god
ORLY: oh, really
P911: parent emergency
PAW, PRW: parents are watching
PIR: parent in room
POS: parent over the shoulder
PRON: porn
QQ: crying (this means that the person typing is crying)
RUOK: are you okay?
S2R: send to receive
SWAK: sealed with a kiss
SWYP: so what’s your problem?
TDTM: talk dirty to me
LMIRL: let’s meet in real life
GNOC: get naked on camera
ASL: age, sex, location
Teenagers today are extremely comfortable living their lives online, trying on new identities in public for their close friends as well as the friends of their friends and strangers. One mother told us that her son came out online on Facebook before he told his own brother. Another parent said, “My daughter, Jesse, was at a pool party at her friend’s house. After she dove into the pool, her bikini top came off, and she freely posted the topless photo of herself emerging from the pool on Instagram. However, Jesse was terribly humiliated when a friend of hers shared it with her mother, who shared it with me.” Teenagers have always hidden some of their behaviors from their parents. What has changed is, instead of sharing with one or two people, they now share their conduct with the potentially billions of people who use the digital universe.
Daily Use Is Significantly Up
A Pew Internet Project survey (Zickuhr, 2010) found that 75 percent of children aged 12 to 17 have cell phones, an increase from only 45 percent in 2004. The significance of this finding is that parents can no longer monitor their children’s exploration on the Internet. It wasn’t long ago that placing the computer in a public room like the kitchen would be enough to help you keep a watchful eye on your teen’s Web surfing. One mother still laughs when she thinks about her son, now 29, innocently opening a photo his cousin had e-mailed him. As the photo slowly appeared—slowly because it was in the days of dial-up—first the head, then the naked breasts of a woman, her son turned beet red. If your children have a smartphone, they can access the Web from anywhere, so you will miss these moments and won’t have the advantage of letting him know it’s inappropriate.
Cell phones, laptops, and tablets also make the Internet omnipresent. The use of technology touches virtually all parents and teens. There’s no way to shove the genie back into the bottle, so we need to understand the use of social media. In 2010 the Kaiser Family Foundation studied the use of technology and media by contemporary 8- to 18-year-old children (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2010). The results of the study are considered one of the largest and most complete sources of information about media use among American youth. One finding is startling: children spend more than an average of 7.5 hours a day engaged in non-school-related technology, a two-hour increase over prior findings. If true, this reporting shows how ingrained the Internet has become in our children’s lives. Seven and a half hours of entertainment media use per day adds up to more than a full-time workweek! The study also suggests that children spend much of this time multitasking. It’s hard to wrap one’s mind around this.
Multitasking presents a serious challenge to developing concentration, focus, persistence, and imagination. Approximately 40 percent of high-school students report that they use more than one medium at a time—for example, listening to music while watching TV or using their computer at the same time (Kaiser, 2010). In fact, teens in grades 7 through 12 spend over 1.5 hours sending or getting texts a day. We all experience the impact this has on concentration and focus. Most of us can recognize when the other person on the phone is either searching the Net or texting while talking to us. You sense a noticeable lack of concentration, and you start wondering if you’re talking to yourself.
Although parents are aware of the issues related to the digital universe, they appear reticent to do anything about it. As of 2010, less than 36 percent of children aged 8 to 18 reported that their parents have rules limiting their TV, video games, or computer consumption. If these findings are correct, there is really no other explanation for this increased use other than parental enabling. We are the ones who have to buy the devices and the ones who should set the rules for teens. In fact, teenagers spend more time on their smartphones for things other than using it as a telephone, which is quickly becoming passé. The good news is that teens in homes with some limits spend almost three hours less with media than do those children without rules (Kaiser, 2010).
The Kaiser study shows a huge difference in media use of children from different racial and ethnic groups. The study found that Black and Hispanic children spend far more time with media than White children do:
Black and Hispanic children consume nearly 4½ hours more media daily (13:00 hours total for Hispanics, 12:59 for Blacks, and 8:36 for Whites). Some of the largest differences are in TV viewing: Black children spend nearly 6 hours and Hispanics just under 5½ hours, compared to roughly 3½ hours a day for White youth. The only medium where there is no significant difference among these three groups is print. Differences by race/ethnicity remain, even after controlling for other factors such as age, parents’ education, and single versus two-parent homes. The racial disparity in media use has grown substantially over the past five years: for example, the gap between White and Black youth was just over two hours (2:12) in 2004, and has grown to more than four hours today (4:23). (Kaiser, 2010)
However, if Black and Hispanic teens are more likely to own a smartphone, it is possible that the smartphone could be the tool that eliminates the digital divide.
A Pew Research report on teenagers and smartphones (Madden et al., 2013) found that while teenagers are sharing more online than in the past, they feel confident in their ability to manage their online identity and take steps to shape their reputation by editing and deleting data they want to keep private. In essence, they are curating the content that others will read about them to present a certain image. Teens report that they have online experiences that boost their self-esteem and also report being harassed and/or embarrassed by something posted about them online. In response to all this online sharing, some teens decide to limit the amount of information they receive.
A recent MTV survey of 13- to 18-year-olds (referred to as young millennials) found that this group of teenagers makes a conscious effort to disconnect to reduce stress and overstimulation (Baird, 2013). They engage in something referred to as “monotasking” by focusing on a singular activity like sewing or baking. In fact, approximately 80 percent of young millennials say they need to unplug periodically and focus on one thing at a time to de-stress. Almost 60 percent choose to make something with their hands when they unplug, and more than 50 percent of girls report that they like to bake because it reduces their anxiety.
These teens sandwich their technology between the activities they do with their hands. They first research a project, go offline to do the project, and then go back online to share the project. In tech lingo, this activity is now referred to as “bookending.” Anna, a high-school sophomore, said, “When I’m overwhelmed, I go online and look for a recipe for cupcakes, prop my iPad on the kitchen counter, turn on my music, and follow the recipe. After I’ve decorated the cupcakes, I usually take a photo and post it on Instagram or Facebook. It feels good to focus on one thing, and I relax when I’m baking.” Anna’s friend Lauren also bookends, only she doesn’t bake. Lauren goes on the website Ravelry and finds a free knitting pattern for a scarf or socks. After she finishes the project, she posts a photo of it online for her friends to see. These activities are today’s teens’ way of reducing stress and expressing their individuality. They enjoy lying back, concentrating on one thing with a singular focus, and unplugging. However, they still want to go back online to let their friends know what they’ve done. Teens have figured out how to use technology as a creative tool as well as a stress reducer.
Life outside teens’ bedroom windows seems enormously stressful and challenging. They are accustomed to walking through metal detectors and planning for their uncertain futures. Teens live in an age of economic downturn, where they see their college graduate cousins and older siblings struggling with college loans, and many worry about how this will affect their future. They are bombarded with news stories about climate catastrophes, like Snowmaggedon, Hurricane Sandy, and a never-ending number of mass school shootings. Over one-third say they design escape plans when in public places, because of events like Sandy Hook (MTV, 2013). Although half are scared of violence at school, they seem to have adopted a practical “Keep calm and carry on” mentality. Adopting survival strategies is something they think about because so many tragic stories and images stream into their lives daily. Technology is a mixed bag. On the one hand, social media connect teenagers to a larger community, prevent isolation, and foster creativity. On the other hand, they shrink the world, burdening our teens with national and global tragedies as if they were happening next door.
The Positive, the Negative, and the Unknown
It’s difficult to imagine a time when there were no computers, tablets, cell phones, televisions, printed books, or even everyday use of the written word. More than 2,000 years ago, Socrates warned about the danger of the written word. He was concerned that by relying on a written record of history, people would lose the skill of remembering and transmitting oral history. It is believed (the translated words of Socrates via the hand of Plato from the Phaedrus) that he said, “This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories” (Berry, 2004). This historical forewarning serves as a powerful reminder that both validates our fears about overreliance on technology and normalizes our worry that the sky is falling.
Most of us say we can’t remember things as simple as family phone numbers or birthdays. One father said, “I feel like my brain is full, and I wish I could add some memory to it as easily as buying a memory stick for my laptop.” Each innovation evokes fear of change and worry that old and valued habits will disappear. The concern expressed by Socrates about the future is not a revelation to anyone reading this, but we were surprised to read what he worried about almost two thousand years ago. His remarks offer perspective to anyone who is concerned that change only leads to loss of something precious.
There certainly is a lot of debate about the pros and cons of the impact of our 24/7 wired lives. We wish we could tell you that physicians and researchers agree about the effects of texting, social media, and video games on the developing mind, but the studies won’t reap results for years. Scholars are hoping to determine whether the Internet and social media are providing a rich landscape for identity exploration or whether they will erode teens’ ability to decipher face-to-face social cues. What we can agree on is that teenagers today represent the first generation growing up with the impact of the Internet from birth.
From these studies and current research, we can see that there are no clear indications of the impact of the Internet and social media over time. This question remains: How much unplugging should parents enforce? In the absence of clear data, knowledgeable, tech-savvy parents will make decisions that are in the best interests of their children. The following paragraphs provide some of the pros and cons of teens’ social networking and Internet use for parents to consider.
Researchers agree that the explosion of technology use has a powerful effect on young people. Many are focused on the negative effects on children’s developing brains. Michael Richtel, associate professor at Harvard Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and Child Health in Boston, says that when our children search the Internet, their “brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to the next thing … and the effects could linger: The worry is we’re raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains are going to be wired differently” (Richtel, 2010). Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence (2013), discusses the importance of developing the social brain with face-to-face connections in real time. While he acknowledges that digital technology and social media expand our universe, he believes that they can also create a false reality, sometimes, at the detriment of interpersonal relationships. He finds it is too easy to get lost in the digital world, drawing us in by expanding our ability to connect information easier and faster than ever before. Further, Goleman observes,
The social brain is in its natural habitat when we’re talking with someone face-to-face in real time. It’s picking up information that it wants in the moment. It’s reading prosody in voice, emotions, and nonverbal cues. … The problem with communicating too much via email or text is that they have no channels for the social brain to attend to. You have nothing for the orbital frontal cortex, which is dying to get this information to latch onto, to inhibit impulse and tell you, “No don’t do that, do this.” Without more visual cues, we’re essentially flying without clear vision. (2013)
It’s hard to help our teens understand the pitfalls of texting when their impulsive nature means they may post comments before self-editing or even understanding the consequences of what they write. Many teens are learning the hard way, after the fact, after the backlash and possible public humiliation. The things your children write today have an endless shelf life. This makes it hard for our children to escape whatever impulsive irrational or thoughtless comment or photo they post. Online is public! Even a photo on Snapchat, an app that has the photo disappear in 24 hours, offers no protection. Sixteen-year-old Courtney said, “I took a picture of myself in a sexy bra and sent it to my friend Haley. Haley took a screenshot of the photo and texted it to Jeremy, who I have liked since seventh grade. He had a field day texting it to other boys. I was humiliated and haven’t talked to Haley since the incident. I can’t look at Jeremy without blushing! I thought it was safe because it’s supposed to disappear.” No one wants to be reminded of the stupid things he or she said or did as a teen, but what is posted online lasts forever.
Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and the author of Alone Together, is concerned that today’s teenagers rarely focus their full attention on a single task (Moyers, 2013). Frequently, teens watch TV, listen to music, text, and study at the same time. Not only are they not giving their full attention, they understand that it’s reciprocal because their friends aren’t paying full attention to them either. This behavior extends to parents of teens, who are also multitasking constantly. Whether it’s checking e-mail while watching their teens at a game or scanning their Twitter accounts while engaged in conversation, their attention is pulled among friends and family and the virtual world.
Turkle adds, “What concerns me as a developmental psychologist is watching children grow in this new world where being bored is something that never has to be tolerated for a moment” (Moyers, 2013). Boredom leaves necessary space for creativity and reflection. When teens are inundated with information, they miss the opportunity to explore the nuance and depth of a topic.
Jim Taylor, author of Raising Generation Tech: Preparing Your Children for a Media-Fueled World (2012), agrees that teens are dominated and shaped by popular culture and technology. The problem with popular culture is that everything from Here Comes Honey Boo Boo to 16 and Pregnant is available to teens in an instant, regardless of how base or crude it is. No distinction is made between popular culture based on positive values and popular culture based on self-aggrandizement. Popular culture is no longer confined to television, which can be turned on and off at a parent’s discretion. The characters, ideas, and themes pervade society through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, marketing, and online streaming, landing in the palms of our kids holding their cell phones and iPads.
Technology’s Grip and the Developing Self
Adolescence is a time of experimentation, and teens are both vulnerable and impressionable. To establish their individual identity, teenagers are consumed with answering the question “Who am I?” They play out this search for self-identity through interacting with friends. Their universe has exploded, a teen version of the Big Bang. Taylor (2012) tells us that this technology explosion may be interfering with teens’ ability to develop their sense of self. Technology has driven teens to focus on what others think of them instead of defining themselves based on what they think and their values, feelings, and needs. Taylor sees Facebook, Instagram, and other technology as forms of disguise. Teens are carefully curating their personas based on how they will be viewed by others. They want to ensure that their friends will see them in a positive light. Taylor believes what may begin as self-awareness and self-expression can sometimes become an unhealthy preoccupation with what others think (2012). One mother’s story illustrates this:
My son decided to forgo a tuxedo for his prom and bought a bright orange suit. He loved it and I was fully supportive of his originality. But after he posted a photo on Instagram, he questioned his choice and had some real regrets. His friends mocked it, saying he looked like he thought he was an NBA first-round draft pick. He still wore the suit, but he felt much more self-conscious because of their responses.
While social media can be a force for healthy exploration, it can also be painful if friends are critical. A teenager’s youthful exploration could end in public humiliation.
Now that we all have a camera in our hands at all times, many of us spend our lives looking through the lens of our cell phones instead of using our eyes and being present. Many teens post videos of singing with girlfriends in pajamas at sleepovers, others pose in their seats at sporting events, and every moment that is recorded can detach us from the event. Teenagers who are not part of an activity are reminded by a friend who posts the event, making them feel more excluded and exposed. Of course, teens have always felt excluded, but now it’s broadcast to any teen at school who follows the online posts of the kids at the party.
Talking, posting, and texting engage teens while they are coping with their sexuality and changing bodies and are forming their personal truths. What was once a personal journey is now public because so much of their personal story is exposed online and through social media. Marc Prensky, author of Brain Gain who first coined the phrase Digital Natives, argues that technology creates a new way of thinking. Today, the capacity of our minds may not be enough to negotiate our complex world. We rely on technology to perform functions that aid us with the growing complexity, fast changes, and ambiguity of modern life (Price-Mitchell, 2012).
Larry Rosen, author of Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn, views Twitter, Instagram, and other similar social media as a positive force in teenage development. He argues that teens use social networking to help them forge their identity in the world. For example, they can experiment with different personas, behaviors, and sexualities online. In this way, teens get to “wear” different identities without making a permanent commitment (Price-Mitchell, 2012). One mother said, “My 15 year-old daughter, Ellen, is a good writer but never shares her work with friends. She worries they will laugh and mock her and she will lose her desire to write. Ellen started submitting her stories to a website called Fanfiction and has received a lot of positive feedback. Being able to navigate the Internet anonymously gave her the confidence to share some stories with friends.” Online, teenagers are confronted with endless opportunities to discover who they are and who they want to become.
Parents also curate their lives using social media. They select what photos to post and which parties to mention to create a public self for others to view. We mold the image we want the world to see, posting only the selfies we find attractive. Teens put what they choose online and wait for others to react. One father said, “My son posted a video of his band playing a song they wrote and was embarrassed when he hardly got any ‘likes.’ The embarrassment is not as bad as his loss of confidence. He’s no longer as proud of the music.” Teens are vulnerable, so when someone doesn’t press like about what they’ve posted, they can spiral down. However, online interactions can work both ways for our kids. Negative experiences may inhibit teens, and positive ones may increase teens’ self-confidence. Only by understanding the totality of your teens’ digital experiences can you play an influential role in their digital lives.
Come One and All
One remarkable aspect of the Internet is its public availability to everyone, regardless of wealth or class. Yes, you need to have access to the Web, but schools and libraries have public computers, as do many local coffee shops. The World Wide Web is an open system.
Accessibility both frees our children from the confines of their community and can transport them into neighborhoods that are developmentally inappropriate. There is a community for everyone. Once you turn on your computer, you have easy access to everything. When 15-year-old Sara did an Internet search for the keyword breast to learn more about her mother’s breast cancer, she found as many hits for X-rated porn sites as she did for breast cancer. When Joey did a search on the Holocaust, he had access to thousands of links, including first-person accounts, historical films, and original documents. The Internet can be dangerous and enlightening. There is no denying the wealth of information and its centrality to our lives. In fact, teens generally consider access to digital literacy as necessary for obtaining successful cultural knowledge and development.
Besides offering teens insight into other cultures, the Internet brings a community to those teens who may feel isolated. In this way, access to the Internet mitigates social isolation. Even shy, socially awkward teens report that they find using social media an easier way to communicate. It’s less intimidating than talking face-to-face.
The Internet addresses another cause of isolation. In the past, teens had more mobility to wander and roam in the physical world. Today’s parents are more protective from early childhood to adolescence, making teens less able to seek opportunities for connection by themselves. Danah Boyd, author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens, argues, “Teenagers aren’t doing much online that’s very different from what kids did at the sock hop, the roller rink, or the mall. They do so much socializing online mostly because they have little choice. … Parents now generally consider it unsafe to let kids roam their neighborhoods unsupervised” (2013). They have much more mobility and freedom online than they do in their day-to-day lives because, until they drive, teens are dependent on the kindness of older teens or their parents to drive them places. Spending time online is the way teens hang out today.
Social networking has become an extension of our teens’ friendships and helps them make their social plans. A mother of two teens recalled how this used to work:
I can vividly remember trading phone calls with three to four girlfriends on Saturday afternoon to make the final plans for the evening. The calls started late afternoon, around four o’clock, and continued back and forth, between me and my friends until seven. Inevitably, my mother would finally intervene after she watched this play out with no clear decision whether we were going to a movie, shopping, or just to one of our homes. She was endlessly frustrated by the indecision. Now I watch my kids text back and forth, and because it transpires mostly under my radar via texting, it’s not frustrating to me because the chaotic process of teens making plans is less obvious to me.
Today’s teens continue to make their plans and hang out like they always have. The difference is that they now connect to more friends and at a faster pace.
The Internet also provides teens with a community with which to share their unique interests online. Teens with disabilities, chronic conditions, or other challenges can connect with other teens with similar difficulties. There is comfort in finding other teens struggling to overcome challenges; they no longer feel so isolated and can enjoy the support of their peers. In the past, if you were an LGBTQ teen in a rural area, there might have been no place to turn to find a community. According to the website of the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN.org), the Internet helps LGBTQ teens handle negative experiences by offering important tools to help them cope. The site also gives them access to supportive friends and crucial information that they couldn’t find elsewhere (GLSEN, 2013). For those teens keeping a secret like alcoholism, drug use, or sexual abuse, there are forums and sites where they can get anonymous support. In general, teenagers say they feel more connected to their friends and with a larger group of others who share common experiences.
Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something, the largest organization for teens for social causes and change (over 2.4 million young people who comprise the teen-oriented social impact organization www.dosomething.org), created a site called Crisis Text Line (http://www.crisistextline.org) in 2013. The site invites teenagers to text a problem, and the site will connect the teen with resources and counselors. Lublin’s expectation is that teens love texting, and she hopes to encourage them to use this form of communication to save lives. In the first month after the site’s inception, she said that teens texted things like, “The kids are mean, I don’t want to go to school,” with the most serious being, “He won’t stop raping me, it’s my dad. He told me not to tell anyone, are you there?” (Lublin, 2013). According to Lublin, “Success is measured by messages like, ‘I don’t know if you remember when I took some pills and went to hospital—I want to thank you guys, you saved my life.’”
In general, technology connects teens with an important community and can provide a precious safety net. Technology is also a stand-alone activity, however. While hundreds of “friends” are at our fingertips, sometimes it feels like we’re all just “bowling alone.” Thus, one feature of technology is how many of us, parents and teens alike, spend time together alone. A dad of a high-school freshman commented about this concern:
It’s not uncommon for my wife, my son, and me to be together in the den with a device on each of our laps and our eyes looking down. And I know this scene plays out in millions of other homes. I’ve tried to institute no-tech Saturday, but we haven’t been successful. I’m as tethered to my BlackBerry as my son is to his iPod, and I worry that I’m not interacting face-to-face enough with him.
Similarly, the mother of three girls said, “Yesterday my oldest daughter said she wanted to spend some time with me. So we got in the car to drive to the mall, and she immediately took out her phone to text a friend. I got the sense that even though she had her face down in a screen, she had the sense that we were together.” It’s as if parallel play, the developmental stage when two-year-old children play sitting side-by-side but not with each other has extended into adulthood. This is precisely why Sherry Turkle titled her book about our relationship with technology Alone Together. However, while the proximity of another person is a comfort, even if you’re both doing something different, what we miss today is having someone’s full attention.
What’s a Parent to Do?
How do we sort through the pros and cons of technology, using the benefits to our advantage while not ignoring the negatives? The answer is simple yet extraordinarily complex: Parents need to find a comfortable balance between monitoring technology use and teaching values that will mitigate misuse. Parents also need to find a balance between being punitive and abdicating responsibility. Going overboard in either direction will be detrimental to your children. Most kids view taking away their phones as the worst possible punishment they could receive. Use this information wisely!
We don’t have enough information to know definitively how this new digital world will affect our children’s lives over the long term. No one knows how the new methods of accessing and retrieving information will affect our relationships, our means of communicating, and the developing brains of our children. The jury is still out. However, while still debating these issues, parents have to make the best and most informed decisions for their teens.
Keeping teens safe is the priority. Parents justifiably worry when their teens wander through the unsupervised terrain of the Internet. They worry about bullies, posting or receiving a sexually provocative text or photo, as well as the cumulative effect of all the hours their children spend online. While most children who use the Internet do not interact with predators or experience cyberbullying, parents can best protect their children by teaching them to be “cyber-street-smart.”
You need to discuss these topics with your children and teens. Teach them that a text or post that was supposed to be private may end up in public. Help them understand that sending anything over the Web is like taking out an ad in the newspaper. It’s just that public. Talk to them about sexting and how embarrassing it is to see their indiscretions shared online. When something private becomes public, it’s usually embarrassing. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been private!
There is no way to retrieve mistakes after pressing Send. Parents need to impress on their kids the permanence of posts, even those that are sent on Snapchat, the app that erases a post in 24 hours. Josh, the father of a 13-year-old, told how he did this:
I told my son, Nate, the Delete function works only before you click send. If you’re counting on what you send on Snapchat to disappear, think again. I want you to imagine Grandma Sarah seeing everything you send. Nothing disappears on the Net! Twenty-four hours is plenty of time for someone to take a screenshot and forward it to someone else. Remember, think of Grandma reading and seeing everything you post!
Teenagers don’t foresee consequences, so parents have to be their teens’ frontal lobe and help them see the unforeseen damage that provocative photos, bullying, and sexting can create. Just as Nate’s father did, ask them how they would feel if their teachers or grandparents saw what they text. Help them protect themselves.
Also help them become information literate, knowing how to decipher fact from opinion. Stephanie, mother of a high-school freshman, gave this example:
Andrew had an assignment to write his first paper with references and was shocked to learn that Wikipedia was not a credible source to cite. I had to convince him that just because he reads something online, doesn’t make it fact. I was able to help him understand that primary sources are vetted and Wikipedia is opinion written by random people, which is very different from verifiable fact. I even read online that a college professor gave a student who cited incorrect information from Wikipedia an F. Telling Andrew about the F was enough to convince him to broaden his research.
These are the years when our teenagers are forming their own ethics and values, which are highly influenced by their parents as well as their friends. They are in the process of individuating, often in conflict with parents, and need skills and information to keep them safe on the Internet. Even with the normal conflict with teens, staying engaged with them is essential to support and help them to navigate the vastness of the World Wide Web.
Every family is different. Some parents may require their children to “friend” them on Facebook so they can monitor their exposure, while others may rely on parental controls and software to limit their children’s access. In each family, parents need to find a way to monitor their children that is consistent with their parenting style and the individual needs of the children. Some choose to limit the amount of time teens spend online, and others do more minimal monitoring. Unless the entire family lives off the grid, a parent is not likely to try to prevent a child from accessing and participating in the e-universe. Indeed, denying access may assure their children’s social isolation at school. Regardless of what limitations you choose, you must educate yourself about digital media and have conversations with your teens about their online use.
Parents should model and encourage a healthy and balanced relationship with technology by assisting teenagers to use social media as a positive force in their lives. Remember, your children learn from your behavior. Think of this when you find yourself too engrossed to take your eyes off your screen. Everything is better in moderation, including technology.
In her blog on the Huffington Post, Lisa Belkin questions whether her love of technology is having a negative impact on her children. She sums up her philosophy with the following thought:
Every generation is a social experiment with no control group, resulting in young adults who are products of their times and who then go on to raise children who, in turn, are products of different times. As parents we can only learn what we can, then do our best, with no do-overs and no way of knowing what would have happened if we’d done differently. (2012)
We may not know what is the right way, but we can educate ourselves, communicate values, and help our children learn to use the new technology to their advantage. Be diligent in staying current, and understand the ramifications of the digital world. Help teens to think a step ahead of what comes naturally to them. Be an anthropologist in your teenagers’ world. Be genuine and curious; study the digital world as if you were a visitor to a new and interesting country. When teenagers know their parents understand this part of their lives, they are more likely to include them in their online world. There is no going back.