In a day and age where tablets, phones, and digital products remain glued in the tiny hands of children, we are feeling lost as adults. How are we supposed to get kids to be kids? Are they losing social skills that we all learned from play and familial surroundings? As children, we had no choice but to mingle with our peers outside or with our elders at home. Sure, we had a television and a computer, if you’re a millennial, but for most of us, we didn’t get the same distractions with technology as our youth do today.
Truth is those phones they’re always on are the new form of a social life. It’s a fragile area to tell a kid to put down the phone because for them, texting and social media is all they know of developing social skills. In fact, they can be missing out on those skills if they are off their phones.
Before you get upset about that, yes, there is a limit. Luckily today parents can lock phones at certain times and place a curfew. Social media accounts can be monitored and even text messages and phone calls.
Still, our experience of a social life is drastically changing and it’s important to know that this is the evolution of socializing. It is just as crucial to send a text to a friend as it was to walk over to your friend’s house to have some cookies their mom baked. So then, if social skills are the same in that regard, how are they different?
Eye contact, body language, and everything else that comes with being with someone in person. That’s why balance is more needed now than ever before. If a young person’s idea of socializing is texting or facetiming, think about how that impacts seniors. Many elderly people have trouble using a phone. Thankfully they can handle a video call, but texting is more than likely out the window. Their eyes aren’t made for digital screens. Sure, they can be taught how to adapt to using them, but it is still not how they get their social lives exercised. And a senior without a social life is a senior who feels lonely.
Kids today need to have the skills it takes to talk with seniors. Of course, that’s not on their radar. Social media has become so quick and has shortened attention spans in every user, not just children. This means that old people are very, very boring and far too slow in speech and movement to keep a child patient. Now we have a major disconnect from the younger generations to the older ones.
Our grandparents want to be around young people – it keeps them young! If they’re lucky enough to have grandchildren, are they connecting with them? Let’s say you’re someone from the sandwich generation where you have children and you’re caring for your mom or dad. Have you noticed how your kids interact with your parents? Is it different than how you interacted with your grandparents?