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Teens Would Rather Text Their Friends Than Talk To Them In Person, Poll Shows (nypost.com)
A new poll of 1,141 teenagers shows that teenagers prefer to text their friends than talk in person. The findings come from Common Sense Media's 2018 Social Media, Social Life survey. Fortune reports: Only 15% of teens said Facebook was their main social media site, down from 68% in 2012. Snapchat is now the main site for 41% of teenagers, followed by Instagram at 22%. In addition, this year's survey saw texting (35%) surpass in-person (32%) as teens' favorite way to communicate with friends. In 2012, 49% preferred to communicate in person, versus 33% who preferred texting.
[M]ore teens said that social media had a positive effect on their levels of loneliness, depression, and anxiety than those who said it had a negative one, but it seems to have the opposite effect on teens who score low on the authors' social-emotional well-being scale. Of those, 70% said they sometimes feel left out when using social media, 43% feel bad if no one likes or comments on their posts, and 35% said they had been cyberbullied. They were also more likely to say that social media was "extremely" or "every" important, compared to their peers who score high on the scale.
[M]ore teens said that social media had a positive effect on their levels of loneliness, depression, and anxiety than those who said it had a negative one, but it seems to have the opposite effect on teens who score low on the authors' social-emotional well-being scale. Of those, 70% said they sometimes feel left out when using social media, 43% feel bad if no one likes or comments on their posts, and 35% said they had been cyberbullied. They were also more likely to say that social media was "extremely" or "every" important, compared to their peers who score high on the scale.
Kids now a days like to do microtransactions with communication. Calling up and going through pleasantries is a lot of overhead for a short, half-thought. Better to blast small thoughts.
This has nothing to do with parents. It has everything to do with how society evolves.
Keep your kid away from socializing online and they will become outcasts and misfits. You'd be proud as a parent and your kid would be fucked up.
Forbidding is easier than mentoring and guiding, of course.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
On the positive side, this could fix overpopulation within a couple of generations. Having hermits that are too fat too work, shop, have sex, ie. function in general, will eventually eradicate them and possibly their entire family trees. That is, when there's so many of them society can't provide the help they need anymore.
This has nothing to do with how society evolves. This isn't socialization, this is turning kids into hermits. Studies have shown that smart phones and social media are addictive. The instant gratification of both boosts dopamine levels.. Pretty soon you get used to those elevated dopamine levels.. That's addiction.
Or maybe this represents a solution to a problem, which is that face to face meetings, particularly with children, but also adults have some problems. Amongst them:
1) Difficulty arranging transportation
2) Difficulty agreeing on venue (particularly when parents refuse certain venues
3) Inefficient use of time when in face to face scenario. I don't know about you, but when I meet with friends I already want it to be over before I walk in, I've got shit to do.
4) Text communication provides all the actual value of interacting with another human, without messy realities and alpha-pack issues. Online anyone can be alpha, even if in a wheelchair, on a ventillator.
5) Conversations are slow and painful, you can do other things while they go on, most don't really require tremendous intellect. But it's rude.
6) You can respond when it is good for you, rather than immediately
I'm sure I've missed a bunch. While I'm not clear on the dopamine correlation, I'm also not sure that's relevant. If your body is rewarding you for efficiency or satisfying some internal pressure (that may have been artificial to begin with, built in by parents/teachers because THEY thought it was important), that doesn't seem like a problem. Addiction is a problem when it interferes with your obligations or is putting your physical health in significant immediate threat. That's not happening here. If meeting someone face to face is required to keep your job, for example, and you don't do it, then you have a problem. But if it's so you calk talk to Susie about who Sally blew last night...fuck that shit, use text.
If you're a dumbass, you'll try and fail to raise your kid according to your own values. If you're at all intelligent, you'll raise your kid to understand your values, but also understanding that your values were formed during your formative years a quarter to a half century ago, and that your kid will never have those same values because the world has changed, and they won't be growing up in the environment you grew up in.
My kid won't grow up valuing manual labor, because there won't be that much for him to do. My kid won't value freedom at the expense of pain from growing up with a whole lot of scar tissue from trying to jump a sled over a barbed wire fence, from falling down a cliff while climbing in the woods at the age of 12, from a 40mph bike wipe-out on a highway hill, etc. He's not going to be able to survive in the wild for a couple of weeks if he has to. He's just not going to grow up in that world.
Sure, I could relocate and try to recreate all that shit, but the world has changed so much that it won't matter.
My kid is going to grow up in a world where pot is legal, and he can smoke it on his 18th birthday. My kid is going to grow up in a world where you can vape discretely at school, but where cigarettes are too expensive to buy. My kid is going to grow up in a world which has pervasive surveillance, but mercifully has at least invented private browsing sessions. My kid is going to grow up in a world where if he can get a visa gift card, he can make an email account and an amazon account and order anything in the world he wants, and potentially get home before me and hide it in his room.
This world is so vastly different now that there is no hope in instilling my values onto my kid. The best I can do is let him know what they are and where I got them, and try to help him create his own value system, based on the reality of the world currently.
And if you think "fuck society's expectations" is going to help your kid, you are dead wrong. Unless your kid wants to be a hermit, then that's the right path.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor