I worry about today’s generation. Whether you know them as “Generation Z” or “iGen,” they are the people born after 1995 who have grown up with their own smartphones and social media accounts. As a Gen-Xer, I am two generations removed from these young people, and I struggle to understand and identify with them.
Am I out of touch? That’s a driving question I strive to answer every day in my classroom. When students text during my lecture, or take pictures of classwork to post on Instagram, I view it as either disrespectful or unnecessary. They don’t see these things as distractions like I do. Posting regularly to social media throughout the day is commonplace for them, while for me it’s maybe once a month.
Smartphones seem to have replaced the need for face-to-face interaction. Since about 2012-2014, kids have chosen to contact friends via texting or social media rather than hang out with them. While today’s kids are safer than ever, teen pregnancy and driving accidents are lower, and fewer teens get involved with drinking and drugs, it all may be at the expense of crucial social interaction skills.
Call me old fashioned, but kids need to experience free play to learn how to handle adversity in social situations. Like an immune system, kids get stronger through being tested, not by being unexposed. Instances of bullying would drop significantly if kids could work through their conflicts on their own, rather than retreating to a “safe space” or having an adult intervene at the first sign of trouble. Here’s an example.
When I wrote “An Open Letter to My Eighth-Grade Self,” I confronted the physical bullying that I experienced when I was in junior high school. I tried to solve problems myself before I went to anyone else for help. When I got overwhelmed, I went first to my brothers, who tried to protect me, and then to my parents when the problems escalated. It never occurred to me to talk to a teacher about it. I’m sure they saw what was happening, but they chose not to get involved. Was it because they didn’t want to bother with it? Or did they expect it to work itself out?
Either way, I have become a stronger, more resilient adult partially because of my experience with bullies as a kid. We were told to go play until the street lights came on, and we were not supervised. We jumped on our bikes and were gone for hours, and no adult asked where we were going, or told us to check in periodically. Our parents would drop us off at the mall and tell us to call when we were ready to come back home. Today’s kids go to the mall with their parents, and if they take off on their own, they are asked to text the parents with their location and activities every few minutes. How does that teach self-advocacy?
I wrote another article called “I Promise to Stop Bullying,” in which I advocated for district-wide school programs that work to stop bullying both on campus and on the internet. These programs have become widespread, but they are nothing in the face of kids’ presence on social media. I can’t imagine the social pressure on young people today who must present both an online and a real persona. That must be exhausting.
So maybe I am out of touch. I don’t understand why kids need to document every moment for others to see and criticize. When I see the alarming rise in reported cases of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicide, especially among girls in the last few years, it’s hard not to blame smartphones and social media.
Parents need to take a much more active role in their child’s internet presence. If they limit their child’s access to electronics when they are little, the internet when they are growing up, and smartphones and social media when they are teenagers, kids will grow up much happier and healthier. We should all limit the time we spend on the internet to two or so hours a day (outside of work). We should, as Jean Twenge says, “Use your phone for all the great things it can do, for about two hours a day. Then go out and live your life.”
