Chapter Thirteen
Teens and Electronics
The most obvious change in the lives of today’s teenagers is the degree to which the electronic world has become the very fabric of their day-to-day lives.
Nanette is sitting in her room at home an hour after school has ended. She is listening to music through a headset.
I can see you
You little fool
Just walk away.
As she listens to her music, the above lyrics echoing in her head, she also reads a text message that she just got from her friend Eden.
“U want 2 come over tomorrow afternoon?”
“No, i have practice right after school,” Nanette texts back.
Nanette then calls her friend Danielle on her cell phone.
“Hey,” answers Danielle.
“What did you think of Valerie today?” asks Nanette. “Do you think she knows about Chuck and Marissa?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe Karyn might have said something to her. She looked kind of strange third period.”
“Do you think we should say something to her?” asks Nanette.
“I don’t know,” responds Danielle.
At that point, while still in the middle of her conversation with Danielle, Nanette sends a message via her Facebook page to her friend Gavin.
“That is so cute, you and Knight,” she writes to Gavin, regarding a picture of him and his dog she has just seen while going through a group of pictures Gavin posted on his Facebook page that afternoon.
It’s only lightning
I tried too hard
Just walk away,
continues the song.
A new text from Eden comes in. “How about thursday?”
“I guess,” Nanette texts back.
“I think maybe we should say something. I hate for Valerie not to know when everybody else does,” says Nanette, continuing her conversation with Danielle.
“Shit!” says Nanette.
“What?” asks Danielle.
“Nothing, sorry. I just lost my fucking page in my fucking biology book that I have to study for a test tomorrow.”
“Maybe it’s better that she doesn’t know,” says Danielle.
Eden texts again. “You guess? what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Yes. thursday is fine. Okay. Yes,” Nanette texts back.
Right at that moment, a different text message comes in.
“I love you,” texts Nanette’s ex-boyfriend Chas, who randomly sends similar messages to her as a sort of ongoing joke between the two of them regarding their current still-close-but-somewhat-ambiguous relationship.
“Fuck you,” texts back Nanette affectionately, like she usually does.
“Maybe you’re right. I guess we shouldn’t say anything,” continues Nanette with Danielle.
“I think it’s better if she finds out on her own—or not,” responds Danielle.
“Thursday. but thursday’s definite. right?” texts Eden.
“Yes,” Nanette texts back.
You’re not my boss
Just don’t keep looking
Just walk away
The song plays on.
“Shit,” says Nanette. “I lost my fucking place again.”
“You’re an idiot,” says her friend Danielle.
The above represents what might be a typical moment in the electronic life of a teenager. One difference, however, is that in real life there might well have been even more simultaneous entries: pictures, online comments, unfolding dramas, all within a single moment. Our kids are living in a vast network of flying images, words, and sounds. A universe hooked up to their brain. And they are in the middle of it—seeing, hearing, and reacting to it every moment. It is what they do. When teenagers are not in school, the great majority of their waking hours are spent in some manner connected to the electronic universe. At any given moment, they have multiple connections. This is their reality.
The burgeoning electronic world, specifically with the rise of cell phones, the growth of the Internet, and the prevalence of video games and other such sophisticated computer technologies, has caused a dramatic shift in the way teens exist, function, and thrive today compared to previous generations. They stay connected, talk to, or send messages to friends 24/7. They can immediately access a vast range of information and entertainment sources. Their world is simply not the same as the world of prior generations of teens. Some of this is good, some of it not so good, and the rest—who knows? Regardless, it is what it is, and it’s not going away.
So what does it all mean? What should and can you do about it? It is a major concern for many of today’s parents.
“Yes, I worry about it. Really, other than when she is in school or asleep, it’s her life. I can’t possibly follow everything that is going on, everything that she does. I worry. You hear about these sexual predators. Kids just don’t understand how exposed they are. They are way too trusting. They’re far too vulnerable, it’s easy to see how they might be taken advantage of. And God knows what she’s up to. Sex, drugs, drinking. That’s all they talk about. You don’t know what kind of trouble they could be into. And that’s not the half of it. Try to get her to come to dinner. To participate in any family activity. To help with anything around the house. Just to get her to talk to us. It’s a major battle.”
The kids have their views too.
“Excuse me. What my mom doesn’t understand is that I really am in the middle of something important. Nina—who is my best friend in the world—was really upset about what Denise said about her today. I mean really upset. And I can’t just leave Nina hanging—she’s my best friend. My mom just wants to talk to me about something that is almost certainly some chore that does not absolutely need to be done right then. I mean, really!”
To which parents naturally would respond,
“That’s what I mean. I just don’t know what to do. How much should I be concerned? What can I do, anyway?”
As always, I think taking the mystery out of things can help parents deal more effectively. So let’s look together at what your kids are actually doing when they are digitally connected.
I’ve taken the liberty of actually asking teens what they do in this electronic world they are immersed in. What follows are fictitious but very representative samples.
“Sara, what do you do?”
“I don’t do anything really wrong. It’s no big deal. I talk to friends. Yeah, we swear a lot, talk about sex, drugs and drinking—and gossip. But that’s what teenagers do. I’ve never done anything really bad.
“Most of the time I talk about what’s going on. And who I talk to is people I know. I don’t talk to strangers. Why would I want to?
“What’s the worst thing I’ve ever done? Probably a couple times when I did say real mean things to this girl, but she deserved it. And maybe some sexual stuff that I’m embarrassed to talk about. I mean it was just sex stuff—if that’s bad. It was with people my own age. Maybe the worst thing that I do is that I probably waste a lot of time, when maybe I should be doing homework or getting exercise or something productive. What I do, it’s just not really that bad.”
“Sam, what do you do?”
“It’s not a big deal. I go to different websites. Sometimes there will be like really funny videos. There’s this kind of car, a DeLorean, that they used to make and I’m really into it, and I go to websites about that. And this rock band that I like. I go to porno sites. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. But what’s so bad about that? That’s normal for guys my age, right? I use my cell phone a lot to stay in touch with kids about what’s going on. And before me and Maya broke up, we used to text each other about a billion times a day. Usually stupid shit.”
“What’s the worst thing you’ve done?”
“I guess maybe drug deals. I arranged to buy some marijuana. It was just marijuana. But I don’t do that anymore. I got nervous when this kid who I was friends with got into trouble.”
“What about cybersex?”
“I’m not sure what that really is. But when me and Maya were still together, we used to send pictures back and forth. You know what I mean. But she was my girlfriend. Was that even wrong? What I do, it’s just not really that bad.”
Repeatedly, kids say that what they do online is not that bad. Which would be great if that were totally true. But, certainly, many teenagers do cross over lines into areas that are not so good. And their judgment about what is safe or acceptable is not always the best. As I have said before, what teens will tolerate as risk in their lives is certainly more than the degree of risk that their parents will tolerate. This fact causes lots of parents to worry. Let me list the main worries before we tackle them one by one.
Cutting right to the chase, there are a few things that parents of teens unanimously worry about. They include:
• Sexual predators.
• Cyberbullying.
• Engaging in or planning to engage in problem behaviors—anything to do with sex, drugs, drinking, and illegal activity.
• Getting so caught up in the electronic world that it interferes with necessary life activities such as schoolwork and sleep.
• Being so connected with others via the electronic world that it interferes with family activities such as joining family meals, doing chores, spending quality time with family, getting ready to go places, and just talking to loved ones.
There are other problems too, of course, some of which I will talk about later. But I think the above list summarizes the biggest worries. These concerns fall into two general categories. One speaks to what kids actually do on the Internet and on their cell phones—meaning the content of their interactions. The other category speaks to how much time kids spend connected to the electronic world, and the powerful pull this world exerts on them. I will discuss these two categories separately.
Let me begin first by addressing the generally troubling things—the overall dangers and bad behavior that occurs while kids are using electronic media, and what you can do—not just to alleviate your anxiety but to minimize your child’s risk too.
One source of protection from the things you worry about most are the parent controls designed and provided by the makers of the very technological devices that concern us. The best way to learn about these is to check them out on the Internet under “parent controls.” You can discover what is available, what they guard against, and how to best set them up in your home.
One common control is the website blocker. These are programs that you can install to prevent access to websites that are undesirable, such as sites that are too sexually explicit or violent in content. Computer-savvy kids may learn how to circumvent these blockers, but for the most part they are really very effective. Remember, however, that they do not always work perfectly. The adult world tries to keep their children away from potentially harmful websites, yet kids keep doing their best to outfox us. Nevertheless, the website-blocking programs on the market today tend to serve their function well with most teenagers. The Internet companies are smart too—they pay people good money to keep the website-blocking programs up-to-date. Of course, there will always be the kid who says,
“Not for me. I can get past anything. It’s a challenge. But I’m good. Really good.”
Fortunately, most teens are not expert hackers.
Another major way to control electronic use is surveillance. It is actually quite easy for you to view what your child has sent or received through their cell phones, via e-mail, or through their social media accounts. It’s all there. Texts. Internet messages. Pictures. Videos. You can learn which websites your teen has visited, and even how long they stayed on that site. You can get information about who they have had contact with—though sometimes you can only access screen names, not real names. Again, you can find out how to do all of this by Googling “parent controls.” You can also contact your child’s cell phone maker or service and ask how you can review your teen’s phone activity. Understand, however, that there is no way that you can completely keep track of everything that your teenager does over the phone or online—it is too big a job. Also, some information is protected. For example, in order to guarantee privacy, some phone companies will allow you to see times and sources of sent and received messages but will withhold all other information, disallowing the viewing of actual sent or received material.
Another obvious surveillance technique employed by many families requires that all Internet use take place in a public area of the house. Teens hate this, but they hate it for precisely the reason that many parents value it: kids want the freedom to do what they know their parents would not approve of, and to do it unobserved. You’ve heard the argument, I’m sure.
“No, that’s not it. I just don’t like people looking over my shoulder. It’s called privacy, if you didn’t know. Which, actually, I, as a teenager, deserve.”
“But you do naughty things.”
“Yes, but shouldn’t I have the privacy to do them with no one knowing about them? That would certainly save my parents a lot of worry.”
So what will this surveillance accomplish? Assuming that your child knows about it—I will talk about secret surveillance (aka snooping) shortly—they will probably try to limit, censor, disguise, or get around sending or receiving anything that you would not approve of. The net result is that fewer troubling communications will actually be sent and received. But will surveillance eliminate these troubling correspondences entirely? Probably not. When a teen knows or suspects that what they communicate online or by phone will come under your purview, they will almost certainly tone down their problematic communications—at least to some extent. There is no assurance that this will lead to less unacceptable behavior, but at least less of it will be transacted over the Internet.
“Yeah, I’ll do lots of bad stuff, but I won’t be stupid enough to talk about it over the Internet.”
Now that we’ve introduced the notion of increased surveillance, what do you do if you discover that your teen is engaged in unacceptable behavior? If the behavior is directly connected to their Internet or cell phone use—if the unacceptable activity is actually taking place via their electronic communication, for example, sending sexual pictures of themselves, making arrangements to get marijuana from a friend, spreading nasty rumors about another child over the Internet—then you would want to temporarily suspend their means of engaging in these activities by taking away cell phone and/or Internet use. And if their problem behavior is very serious and continues—if they persist in regularly harassing other teens, or connecting with inappropriate partners, or regularly engaging in illegal activities—you would need to take away their access altogether.
Assessing the value and dangers of your child’s electronic media use is not an easy thing to do, since it is such a new reality, but let me try to field some of the many questions that may have been cropping up for you lately.
Many parents ask: “What if the problem behavior is not directly taking place over a cell phone or the Internet? What if it is just something you happen to learn about because your child is discussing it with a friend online? What if you learn that your daughter is having sex with her boyfriend after school at your house? What if you learn that your son has regularly been harassing another child in his class at school? What if you learn that your son and a friend have been regularly stealing energy drinks from a convenience store? What if you learn that your daughter got very drunk at a recent weekend party? Is suspending Internet use going to be a meaningful response to your teen’s bad behavior elsewhere? If not, what do you do?”
You would probably do the same things you would do if you learned about the problem behaviors by means other than surveillance of their electronic records. You would do what parents have always done when they learned of their children’s unacceptable activities, even prior to the explosion in the digital realm. If they came home drunk, or you caught your son and his girlfriend unclothed in his room, or you heard from a parent of your son’s friend that three boys—one of them being your son—were smoking marijuana in your son’s friend’s basement, you would deal with each situation based on your child and the specific transgression in question. You would consider the problems independently, recognizing that each requires its own parental intervention.
That is, conducting electronic surveillance is but one aspect of a parent’s overall awareness of their child’s behavior.
Other frequent questions I receive include the following: “Is there more need for surveillance today? Do today’s teenagers engage in more problem behaviors than in the past (that is, prior to the Internet and cell phones)?” Granted, there does seem to be a greater variety of bad behavior—new and different behaviors that did not exist in the past. For instance, there was no cyberbullying before, no going to inappropriate websites, no sending embarrassing photographs of yourself or others over the Internet. But is there really more bad behavior occurring today than before? Or is it just different kinds of bad behavior kids are engaging in? Are we just living in a different world? Does the electronic explosion require more surveillance, or just a different kind of surveillance?
Of course, all of this naturally leads to the larger question: How much surveillance should parents be conducting anyway? This question remains one of the most discussed dilemmas in teenage parenting circles. To what extent do you need to know about everything your child is doing in order to steer them in the right direction or to best protect them from harm, versus how much do you need to know in order to allow them the freedom and concomitant risk that enables them to navigate future situations better on their own? How can they ever learn to live in the world if they do not make their own choices and experience the consequences of those choices? How can they learn to survive in the world when they are not in control of their own lives, mistakes and all? And then of course there is the slightly nasty question: When is a parent’s need to know about all of their child’s activities based on what is best for their child and when is it more about their own need to free themselves from worry? You’ve had this thought yourself, no doubt, many times:
If I know exactly where he is and what he is doing in every area of his life, then I don’t have to worry.
Parents might prefer literally being there every moment of their kids’ lives because then they wouldn’t have to worry. But their teenager is not likely to be thrilled about that prospect.
“No, you’re wrong. I actually like it that Mom comes to parties with me. And the guys are getting used to having her along when we drive around. They think she has a cool sense of humor. And you should see what she’s like when she’s really high on weed.”
The answers to all of the above questions, of course, vary from child to child and parent to parent. Some parents are far more comfortable with keeping a tight rein on their teenage child. Others prefer to give their kids more independence and to react to problems as they arise. I would not recommend one way over another—you will have to choose what you are comfortable with. Kids that are hell-bent on bad behavior will usually find a way to engage in that behavior. The bottom line is this: surveillance almost certainly curtails unacceptable activity to some degree. But, depending on the extent of the surveillance, there can also be losses, namely in your teenagers’ ability to take responsibility for his own life and to learn from his own experiences. For this reason you need to carefully weigh how and when it’s used.
So far I have been discussing the surveillance of teens’ electronic communications when teens know that the surveillance exists. But what about secret surveillance—aka snooping? Here’s an example of what can happen when the child finds out:
“Tori,” asks her mother, “how does Jerilyn feel, now that her stepfather is no longer living at their house?”
“What?”
“Uh—”
“Omigod, Mom, you’ve been reading my messages!”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Yes, you have! I never told you that her stepfather left! Omigod! How could you?”
Clearly Tori feels as if her privacy has been violated, and it has.
So should you secretly snoop on your teenage child?
One frequent response from parents is:
“Yes, of course I should do it secretly. If they know I’m going to do it, won’t they keep it all better hidden?”
The answer is: probably. The obvious argument for secret snooping is that you might discover something serious that you would not have known about otherwise. Maybe they are having sex with much older partners. Maybe they are selling drugs. Maybe they are thinking about suicide.
Because these would be serious discoveries, many parents wonder if covert sneakiness actually provides benefits beyond other risk-prevention steps. They often ask: “Do the benefits outweigh the negative aspects of going behind my child’s back?”
My answer to that is simple: secret snooping has a definite downside. It is dishonest. And if your child finds out—which they often do—they will very likely feel betrayed.
“I can’t believe it! My mom lies to me! The one person I’m supposed to be able to trust! She can’t do that!”
“But you sneak around and lie to your mother all the time.”
“Yeah, but that’s different! That’s what kids do! When you’re an adult, you’re supposed to be honest. Especially to your kids. How will I ever learn to be honest if my mother lies to me?”
The biggest challenge with secret snooping, as you can see, is this dishonesty factor. It says that, in the adult world, being dishonest is okay, provided you have a good enough reason to be. No question about it, parental snooping does send the message that dealing with others honestly and openly is not such a high priority. And that is not a good message to send to your child.
So where do I stand on the subject? I don’t like secret snooping. Ultimately, snooping is one of those “do-the-ends-justify-the-means?” deals. If I could be convinced that sneaky snooping was a significantly useful instrument in a parent’s arsenal for protecting children from significant harm, then I might go along, reluctantly. But I don’t think it is.
I have just been talking about parents trying to oversee their teens’ interactions in the electronic world by keeping track of what their child is doing. But you can play another role regarding your teens’ connection to the electronic world, which is to be proactive. You can give your teenage child a set of guidelines—safe and fair rules—that they will be expected to comply with. And you can also turn yourself into a resource for your teen when problems arise.
You can say these rules aloud or you can write them down. It doesn’t matter. But either way, it’s information that you will want to repeat, and that you should regularly repeat. Maybe your teen gets it, maybe he doesn’t, but you will want your child to hear or see these rules continually. Here, also, the Internet is a good resource. You can start by looking up “Internet safety for teens.” Let me suggest a possible set of rules for you to share with your teen:
Predators
This issue seems to crystallize parents’ greatest fears about the dangers of the Internet. It is the most prominent concern in their minds—and certainly one that has gotten much publicity.
It is here that you want to give a simple, unequivocal warning:
“Under no circumstances should you meet in person with someone you met online. Under no circumstances should you give out—other than to people whom you already know—any information about yourself that would allow someone to identify who you are or where you live. Do not give them your phone number, your address, the school that you go to, or any other information they could use if they wanted to find you.
“There are people out there on the Internet who are not who they say they are, and who could harm you. Unless you know the person you are giving such information to, do not give out any personal information about yourself.”
It is a warning that you want to reiterate again and again. Your teenager may never have any contact with a predator over the Internet. But those predators are out there. And trust is not something you want your teen to rely on when they are communicating with others on the Internet. As I said, the warning needs to be simple and unequivocal—and repeated often.
Privacy
The issue of Internet and cell phone privacy is a big and ongoing one. For starters, teens (especially younger teens) do not adequately understand how anything that they communicate can end up not being private. Even people whom they absolutely trust to keep information and images discreet cannot always be trusted. You’ve heard this lament all too often before:
“Ivan and I broke up on not very good terms and he sent around a very humiliating picture of me and him that I never dreamed anyone else would see.”
Any entry—whether comprised of words or pictures—made or sent via electronic media can become part of a permanent record that can be used in ways that one would not want.
“I said I liked a whole bunch of movies, and it turned out my social network gave that information to different companies who started sending me all kinds of spam designed for people who supposedly, if they liked those movies, would like these products. Really, it’s like people can get to know anything about me. Nothing’s private.”
The younger teens are, the less careful they tend to be about privacy and the less motivated they are to do anything about it, not that they know what to do about it anyway. As teens get older, and as they get increasingly Internet- and phone-savvy, the more aware of privacy issues they become. They are less trusting, far more skeptical, and better at (even more, interested in) employing privacy protections—not all of which are so easy to put in place retroactively. You simply cannot count on younger teens to adequately protect their own privacy.
Again, it is useful to go online and search “Internet safety for teens” to learn about specific steps that you or your teen can take to control online privacy.
Here are some basic rules and cautions to provide to your teen.
“Unless it is to someone you know, you shouldn’t give out any identifying information about yourself or our family. (The same warning as offered above regarding predators.) You should use screen names that do not incorporate your own name or initials if you are in a chat room. And you shouldn’t give out any passwords.
“Realize that whatever messages you write or pictures you post, they are not as private as you may think they are. You cannot count on the people receiving them to keep these things to themselves. Before you write anything or send any kind of picture, think about what it would be like if other people—people whom you wanted it to be kept private from—saw it.”
You need to constantly remind your child that privacy cannot be counted on and that they must be careful to take whatever precautions they can. You do want privacy concerns to be a permanent part of their electronic media consciousness. A sad fact is that this new consciousness now needs to be part of everyone’s awareness. A great deal of your online communications become permanent record. Any written words or images that you send over the phone or the Internet are now out there. And those communications do have the capacity to come back and haunt you. Teens need to know this.
Dangerous Secrets
It is not unusual for teenagers—through contact with friends—to become party to information that involves potential serious harm to another. More often than not such information comes with the expectation of complete secrecy. But for teens to feel bound by this secrecy is a mistake. Where there is the possibility of someone doing real harm to themselves or others, a teen’s keeping it secret can end in tragedy. Teens often mistake an oath of silence as having moral precedence over revealing the possibility of serious danger. They are wrong.
For the above reasons, you need to instruct your teen to tell you about any of the following occurrences. Emphasize that not doing so potentially puts themselves or others at risk of getting hurt.
Tell them not to keep any of the following scenarios secret:
“If someone is threatening to harm or even kill themselves, tell me. You may have pledged secrecy, but kids do follow through on these threats, and many who harm or even kill themselves have told friends beforehand, but unfortunately their confidences were kept secret. If adults know about these plans and are able to intervene, it could prevent serious injury or even save a life.
“If you hear that some kid plans to seriously harm somebody else, the same thing applies. Keeping it a secret increases the chance that it will happen. Letting adults know about it makes a big difference in putting a stop to it.
“Tell me if you get any kind of message that worries you or scares you in any way.
“I can help with all of these things. You should not keep them secret from me. Telling me absolutely reduces the chance that something bad will happen.”
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is the sending of messages or images that threaten or humiliate another child. Kids do it out of pure maliciousness, but they also do it thinking that it is funny and not understanding how it may affect the recipient. Either way, a lot of it goes on.
A problem with all of the nasty, embarrassing things that kids communicate to one another over the Internet is that there is nothing guaranteeing it will not continue to happen. If kids are going to communicate with one another over the Internet and through texting, the only foolproof way of eliminating nasty communications is by eliminating Internet and cell phone use. For the vast majority of today’s teenagers this is not going to happen. Which is to say that if you have a teenage child, it is highly likely that your child will, at different times during his or her adolescence, be on the wrong end of such communications. Furthermore, there is much that may go on that your teenage child simply will not tell you about. Either they think they can handle it, or they fear that your involvement will only make it worse. But they are wrong.
If they are truly overwhelmed, if they cannot deal with what has been going on, telling you will help provide significant protection for them. Often you can help by removing the source of the nastiness. This may mean contacting your child’s school, contacting the parents of the message sender, or even contacting the law. Also, you can make suggestions to your child about what they themselves can do about it—for example, you can suggest that they delete messages from possible bullies without reading them, or that they report problems to their Internet service provider. Perhaps you can suggest ways to look at what’s been happening so it is less disturbing to them. Here is an example of one dad helping his daughter put the nastiness in perspective:
When Elena got a mean posting from her classmate Jeannine, Elena’s father said to his daughter:
“All of your friends know that it’s not true. So what Jeannine posted doesn’t really change anything with all the kids you hang out with. They’re not going to look at you any differently. All that will happen is that they’ll feel bad for you because Jeannine was so mean. Really, nothing changes. And then everybody forgets about it.”
“You think?”
“Yes. You’ll see, tomorrow nobody is actually going to say anything except in support of you.”
“You think? You’re not just saying it?”
“Yes.”
But let’s say that the nastiness already happened and it created a situation that is tougher to deal with: an embarrassing picture sent out over the Internet accompanied by details that were unfortunately true and now everybody knows. The meanness has already gone out and had its effect. We can feel Elena’s pain:
“Too many kids know what happened. They know what I did Saturday night. And now they’re saying all this mean stuff. Kids I thought were my good friends. They’ve been saying stuff and they do look at me differently. I can tell.”
This is one of those situations where you can’t make it “all better.” Yet you can still have a very powerful role in helping your child get through it. You can make a big difference by simply getting them to share the event with you. Then you can help them know that they are not alone with it. That you are there for them. That you are unequivocally on their side. And that you genuinely understand how it makes them feel.
The secret to getting past the really bad things that can happen in your kids’ lives often has less to do with figuring out good resolutions and more to do with the inevitable passage of time. You do not want to invest too much effort in trying to resolve the problem. You simply want to be there for them. And the situation—just with the progression of time—will get better. Although this is not something you can convince them of.
“You’ll see. In a week it will feel different. People will start to move on to other stuff. Gradually, you will feel different. You really will, even though you can’t see it now.”
“No, you’re wrong! You don’t understand! Everything has changed! Nothing will ever be the same!”
Although you may feel as if there is nothing you can say to comfort them, you can still potentially be very useful in helping them get past the moment—just by being there and being sympathetic.
All of this, however, is predicated on your child telling you about it. You can’t help if you don’t know. So what should you say to ensure that your kid will talk to you? What should you do to maximize the possibility that they will come to you? Here’s a suggestion: every so often, just remind them.
“Because you’re a teenager and are often online, you may end up on the wrong end of cyberbullying. If people say things to you or about you, or people post things that are embarrassing or hurtful to you, and if it’s really upsetting to you, I really want you to tell me about it. Let me know. I can’t promise that I can make it all better. But I do know that, even though it might not seem like it, if you share it with me it can help make it easier. It will help make it not hurt as much. It really will. If it’s really upsetting, don’t try to deal with it all on your own. It’s too hard. Please tell me about it. I promise you that you will not get in trouble for what you tell me. If it’s upsetting, please tell me about it.”
I strongly recommend including the part about their not getting into trouble for what they tell you. You have to decide if you are comfortable with that. But bear in mind that if this is not part of the deal, they will be much less likely to confide in you. Again, you can be significantly helpful to them in the face of cyberbullying, but you cannot help if they don’t tell you about it.
Bullycide
The great fear regarding bullying, of course, is that whether it is done in person, texted, or over the Internet, it will ultimately become so painful that your teen may think about killing himself. An overwhelming fact about adolescence is that the adolescent mandate tells kids it is no longer acceptable to experience yourself as a dependent little kid. Ready or not, they must cut themselves off from what has previously been their number one source of support—namely, you. Now, in dealing with all of the pain that the world dishes out, they often feel very much alone—too much alone.
What am I supposed to do? I just can’t continue to go out in the world and face what I’m supposed to face. It’s too hard. I’m sorry, but I just can’t deal with it.
The tragedy is that some kids cannot imagine how they can go out into the world and continue to exist being on the wrong end of such hate and scorn. They feel they are alone and do not see how they can continue into the future feeling as they do, being in their world and experiencing it as they have. They feel that their future is impossible. Yet there is a hopeful piece in all of this. If they can just feel attached at this time to others who they know are on their side, who do not see them at all as defective, who like them and support them—this can make a big difference. These others can be friends, but they can also be parents. This connection can go a very long way toward their not killing themselves. The problem, of course, is that they have to be willing to share their thoughts—their intense pain and their humiliation. This is why, despite how hard they may try to push you away or keep you out of their lives, it is always good to be there anyway.
“Hello. Is there anything bothering you?”
“No, and I can handle it if there were, which there isn’t. And even if there was something bothering me you would be useless because you wouldn’t understand. And I’m not planning to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worrying about, so please get out of my room.”
“No. I think I’ll stay a little more, just in case you may feel like talking. I’ll just wait around a little. You and me.”
“You just don’t get it. Of all your stupid things that you do, this is the stupidest.”
But it’s not.
Which is why if there is bullying going on, you definitely want to hear about it. Maybe you can be helpful, and maybe not. Maybe you can understand what it’s like, or maybe you can’t. But you are there working on it with them. They are not alone with it. Which is a very big deal.
It is hard to know whether more teenagers kill themselves these days due to being bullied than they did in the past—though it is true that you hear about these instances more often. Either way, the problem of teenagers killing themselves because they have been the victim of bullying, or because they fear the bullying, is very real. There will always be bullies and meanness. That is not going away anytime soon.
Teens as Perpetrators
It’s difficult for many parents to acknowledge this, but the truth is that your kids are not always just the victims. Your teenage child may at times do the very things you absolutely do not want them to do. It’s a good idea to tell your teen exactly what he may not do when using electronic media. It’s possible that he’ll do some of these things anyway, but telling him what the rules are does make a difference. I offer the following rules as a suggestion, but you should use your own discretion when deciding which rules you think are important for your teen to hear.
“You may absolutely not threaten any kind of harm to anyone else.
“You may not say anything that would be hurtful to, or about, someone else. You may not spread rumors about somebody. You may not talk about others in a way that would embarrass them. You may not show pictures or videos that would embarrass them either. It is wrong. It is cruel. It is as bad as if the same thing happened to you. Also, you can get into serious trouble if you do any of these things.
“You may not send or receive any messages that would involve your getting any kinds of drugs or alcohol for yourself or for someone else. Also, if you do, you could get into serious trouble.
“You may not send or receive any pictures of yourself or of anybody else that are of a sexual nature. This includes any pictures of naked body parts. You cannot assume that they will be kept private. Also, you can get into trouble for sending or receiving them. In many states it is a crime to send or receive underage sexual images, and since you and your friends are all underage, sexual pictures that you might send to each other are considered child pornography. In many states that is against the law.
“You may not send or receive messages that describe sexual behavior. The main reason here is the same as with pictures and videos: you cannot be sure that they will be private.” (It is less clear whether sending these messages is against the law. However, since they and their friends are underage, sexual communications may be categorized as child pornography as well.)
Last, regarding an issue that applies more to teenage guys than girls, a guy should never send sexually tinged messages, even if he believes the message to be inoffensive, or even if the message is intended as friendly teasing or is extended in a way he perceives to be a nice way. For example:
“You’ve got nice tits.”
Even though he may know other guys who sent similar messages and it seemed to be fine for them, there is always the possibility that the girl who receives this message may not find it the least bit friendly or amusing, and in fact may report it to an adult, which can lead to charges of sexual harassment against the guy who sent the message. You want to expressly warn boys:
“If you send what you think is a friendly message to a girl, but it includes what could be considered sexual content, there is a risk. You may think that it is harmless. That you are only joking. That you are being friendly. You may know other kids who have done the same thing and it wasn’t a problem. But you cannot count on the girl’s seeing it that way. She may not like it at all. And if she reports it to an adult, you could get into serious trouble for sexual harassment.”
Sexting
A more specific problem that is not going to go away anytime soon also involves “sexting”—the back-and-forth sending of frankly sexual material among teenagers. One of the greatest challenges with current technology is that it allows for the very easy, instantaneous sending of any messages and images that one feels like sharing at that moment. These words and images can be sent to someone’s cell phone—or over the Internet so that anybody can see them. The impulsive and immediate nature of the medium does not encourage kids to think first before acting.
To complicate matters even more, just about anyone can now take out an electronic device and snap pictures or capture brief videos of whatever they choose to point their lens at.
“Cool, I just took a picture of my school desk. Cool, I just took a picture of the ceiling.”
You can take a picture or video of another person or persons.
“Cool, I just took a picture of Melissa.”
You can take a picture of yourself.
“Cool, I just took a picture of me making a silly face.”
“Cool, I just took a picture of my stomach.”
In an instant you can send the pictures to anyone you want.
“Cool, I just sent all these pictures to Sondra.”
Besides visual images, you can send word messages via your device. All you have to do is type in text, and then those words are sent or posted for others to see. These words can include any obscene expression or a description of any of a range of sexual acts that you can think of. And all you have to do to communicate these messages to another person is hit the send button.
“Cool, I just sent a private message to this girl I’m friends with where I used a lot of obscene words and described two cool sex acts. Really cool.”
Whether we like it or not, teens are sexual beings. Teens have always been sexual beings. But now the technology makes it very easy, extremely easy, to communicate words and images of a frankly sexual nature to anyone, anywhere, anytime. It is a problem that is pervasive and persistent. The best that parents can do is to try to monitor what goes on and warn their teenage children about the inherent risks of sending such messages themselves. But advanced communications technology combined with inherent teenage sexuality makes for what is always going to be a certain amount of trouble. Here again, as elsewhere advised in this book, communicate your concern to your child so they hear the message. You never know if the echo of those words will keep them from making an impulsive mistake that can have long-term effects.
So far, in discussing teens and the world of electronics, I have mainly been talking about what they do—addressing whether it is a problem or not, and what you can do about it. But separate from the issue of content is the subject of just how much waking time our kids are spending connected to the electronic world. It is more than integral to their life—it has become part of the very fabric of their lives.
Teenagers today can gain access to a vast quantity of information in ways that did not exist even in the relatively recent past. Very quickly, they can learn about:
The prices of different headsets
Specific Civil War battles
A rock star’s current activities
The newest look in fashionable jeans
Answers to very specific questions, for example:
Question: What are the names of the members of the 1970s rock band KISS?
Swift Answer: Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss
Question: Who was the king of France in 1748?
Swift Answer: Louis XV
Kids today are a different kind of creature than they were in the past. It’s as if their brains extend outside their bodies and are linked to a giant sea of information via millions of tiny invisible wires. Without going anywhere, just by giving instructions to a small machine, even a very small machine, they can call up this vast reservoir of information. It is what their brains do naturally now—giving themselves constant instructions to pull up specific information—but the data collection process goes on outside of their bodies rather than inside their heads. They can know a lot of stuff—quickly. The bottom line about easier access to all this information is that, if knowing more is good, then this is very good.
“Yeah, my dad thinks he knows everything. But, actually, everything that he knows I could know if I wanted to, but most of it is stupid shit, so why would I want to know it? But I could know it all if I wanted.”
The interesting thing about kids gaining such easy access to all this information is that the world of their future requires that they be fluent in these skills. Their current extensive involvement in this electronic world means that they are acquiring this fluency almost by osmosis. Reading, writing, and arithmetic were once the three basics of learning. Now there is a fourth: technological fluency—knowing how to use these devices, and also knowing how to navigate and mine their content.
Also, in case you hadn’t noticed, virtually all kids know how to type out messages, swiftly—with their thumbs and on teeny tiny keys no less!
Not only are teens better at getting information than the rest of us, they also seem able to receive and react to a great variety of information all at the same time. Their multitasking abilities are legendary!
“Yeah, it’s cool. I can watch a video, text a friend, go over my football picks for this coming weekend, and yell at my mother to get off my back about taking out the trash—all at the same time.”
Multitasking is not new, of course. People have always juggled busy lives. Preparing supper while talking on the phone to a friend and also watching one-year-old Herman crawl around the kitchen. It is just that now, however, with the expansion of the electronic world, today’s teenagers have developed the capacity to multitask well beyond what we were able to do before. Very well beyond. Again, this is not a bad thing. It is good. Multitasking is definitely a useful skill.
But there is a criticism of today’s multitaskers. Although they may be better able to deal with an increased amount, variety, and speed of incoming stimuli, they may now actually require that intense level of stimuli. They actually seem to need more and more diverse and fast-paced information and activity to keep themselves occupied and entertained. It’s as if they have much less tolerance for a slower, one-track world.
This account of Dwayne trying to watch an ancient rerun of The Jimmy Desmond Show says it all.
“It’s The Jimmy Desmond Show with your host, Jimmy Desmond” (audience applause).
“Hey, everybody.”
“Hey, Jimmy,” responds the audience.
“Do we have a great show for you today, or what? The Curdie Brothers with their talking dog Frances and, straight from Mongolia, the Mongolian Fire Dancers—you’re in for a treat with them! And, for you kids, Slappy Lappy and his clown cousins and, this is really going to be great—”
“Jesus,” says Dwayne as he switches to another program. “Is he going to announce the whole show? I tried, but I just can’t watch it.”
Dwayne had been fidgeting wildly almost as soon as the show began. “Maybe the Mongolian Fire Dancers would have been cool, but I’m never going to find out. There’s no way I can wait.”
It is said that we have created a world of short-attention-spanned teenagers—an ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) generation. That they have grown accustomed to a constant barrage of images, words, thoughts, and concepts, which has made them less tolerant of anything that is not as fast-moving. That they do not have the same degree of patience as those before them.
This may be true—at least to some extent. Teens today may have less patience for “nothing.” For “dead time.” Less patience for that which moves slowly. There’s no question that they read less—that is to say they read fewer books and magazines. And maybe, just maybe, they have less patience for work—which would be a problem for a productive society. To see the impact of this trend better, let’s look at some of the differences between boys and girls.
A very noticeable trend in the United States during the last twenty years or so has been the shift in who is attending college. It used to be that significantly more guys went to college than girls. But now the trend has reversed. One possible reason for this shift may be that women increasingly see the need to be self-supporting and to get good jobs in order to have a fuller and more secure adult life. But there is another possible reason.
Guys—at least as kids—tend to be more hyper, antsy, and less patient than girls are. I have already mentioned the statistic, which has held up over the years, that four to five times as many guys as girls are diagnosed with ADHD, and before the existence of that diagnosis, as having hyperactivity disorder in childhood. If you’re a guy, you somehow have to overcome being antsy and force yourself to patiently do schoolwork so you can excel enough to go on to college. But what if there were something that actually interfered with a guy’s ability to exert that patience? Might that be a problem?
Let me talk about one specific electronic medium that has impacted the lives of boys in recent decades: video games.
It really is pretty obvious that when it comes to video games, guys as a group are profoundly different from girls. Video games are definitely a guy’s medium. Teenage girls also play video games, but for whatever reason, this genre of game playing simply has not captivated girls to the extent that it has guys. Not only are video games extremely entertaining but their game design also naturally appeals to guys, so you can easily see why they are so compelling. Which they are.
The people who make video games do a very good job. The best video games can be years in the making. And they just seem to be getting better and better. The graphics are more realistic; the story lines more imaginative, complex, and sophisticated; and the game play—how you control the action—is ever more challenging, ever more clever. The video games marketed to guys are very good. Excellent, in fact. Very entertaining. Very absorbing. I’d even venture to say very, very absorbing.
Anyone with a teenage son knows how difficult it can be to get them to interrupt their video game playing even to come to supper.
“I will. I’m coming,” they assure us over and over while we wait.
And how angry they can sometimes get.
“Listen, just leave me the fuck alone! I’ll do my homework. Just get the fuck off my case! Get out of here. Leave me alone!”
I mean, they can get really mad.
So is playing video games addictive? If “addictive” means that this is something that has a powerful hold over them, leaving them with little control over it, then maybe the answer is yes.
“That is such bullshit! I’m not addicted to video games. I choose to play them because they are fun. If there was something else that was more fun, I would do that. I could stop playing if I wanted to, but I don’t want to.”
“But you do play a lot, don’t you?”
“Yeah, so what? Your point is?”
“Do you think it affects your schoolwork?”
“No.”
“But you have homework tonight that you need to be doing, don’t you?”
“Yes, and I will.”
“You don’t sometimes fail to study when you should, or miss assignments, or more often than not rush through them?”
“You’re getting really aggravating, you know.”
“Just a couple more questions. What’s the worst thing about school?”
“That’s easy. The work.”
“What’s so bad about the work?”
“It’s fucking boring.”
“Last question.”
“It better be.”
“Do you think you’ll want to go to college?”
“I don’t know.”
My only point is that something is causing the shift in the number of guys versus girls going to college. Could video games be a significant factor? It is certainly a thesis worth bearing in mind for the sake of the young guys in our lives.
Productive vs. Nonproductive Time
I would like for you to imagine something along with me for a moment. It is the year 2071. Fifteen-year-old Bradley is in his room. He is always in his room, as all that exists of him is his head. Like all of his friends, at age thirteen he has had cyber-head-transplant surgery, whereby his brain has been directly hooked up to the Internet without the need for intermediary devices.
They probably won’t really have head transplants by 2071—but we sort of already have the equivalent. Kids’ brains don’t have to be wired up to a central computer—they can now carry the means to be connected at all times with them everywhere. And their little mobile devices even come in cool little cases, in personalized colors and designs.
“Do you want to hear my ring tones?”
So is all that time that they spend connected to the electronic world—just the time itself, the large proportion of their waking hours—bad for them? Are they somehow missing out on having a richer, fuller, more productive life? Let me pose a few other questions that might help answer this larger one: If they weren’t linked into those devices, what would they be doing instead? What did teenagers used to do before the world of electronics was so accessible and pervasive? Was what they used to do really so much better?
When I was a teenager, we didn’t have the Internet or video games. What did I do to pass the time? I’m not saying I was typical. But here’s what I enjoyed.
I played outside, mainly by myself, at whichever sport was in season—baseball, basketball, football—even in bad weather. I watched TV; I went through periods of watching a lot, or watching very little. I didn’t talk much on the phone with friends. But when I turned sixteen I got a driver’s license, had access to a car, and spent a great deal of time over at different friends’ houses, hanging out. I rarely read—occasionally I picked up science fiction stories. I often looked through the world almanac at sports statistics. I listened to music a lot—on the radio and on a 45 rpm record player. I had minimal contact with either of my two sisters (once we got to be teenagers, we seemed to have stopped our incessant fighting), or with my really quite nice parents—my choice.
Was what I did—what kids used to do in the days before the Internet or cell phones—any better than what they do now? I don’t know.
Does being connected to the electronic world so much of the time take away from physical activity? Yes. Does it take away from family time? Yes—to some degree. But it’s not as if teenagers were dying to hang out with their parents before the Internet entered the picture either. I certainly wasn’t, and like I said, I had nice parents.
“This family time has already gone over three minutes. Can I leave now? Please.”
Does their constant connection to the electronic world intrude, at least somewhat, on a teenager’s willingness to participate in after-school activities or maybe to go over to friends’ houses, because they can’t wait to get home to resume their online or video game activity? Probably. But they still do like to go over to friends’ houses.
One criticism is that so much time on the Internet eliminates the possibility of developing skills and interests that require a lot of consecutive time. Getting good at playing a musical instrument. Getting good at a sport. Learning how to fix a car. Developing skill at carpentry. Working on a creative science project—though any science project today would almost certainly utilize the Internet. Probably, at least to some extent, this is true.
Another criticism of being so constantly hooked up is that kids become less skilled at knowing how to entertain themselves, knowing how to fill their time without having to rely on outside resources. This, almost certainly, is true. Of course, kids would argue,
“Yeah, but why do I have to know how to find stuff to do that isn’t on the Internet or playing a video game? The Internet has so much more stuff on it—and not all of it is stupid. You can really find out a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff if you know how to find it, which of course I—or any kid my age—can. They say I should read a book. Did they read a book? Besides, I read stuff on the Internet, like about how escaped Burmese pythons—that get close to twenty feet long—are now showing up in many parts of Florida, and are becoming a problem. How is that worse than reading Harry Potter books, which I actually did when I was a kid?”
The above, I think, is a valid counterargument. The bottom line is about the quality of time. Many kids challenge us to show examples of how being hooked up to the digital world so much of their waking time is any less productive, less fulfilling, less meaningful, or less contributing to a richer life than what teenagers did before the current electronic explosion. I think it is helpful for each of us to think back to the activities of our own childhoods and ask: Is whatever our own kids are doing instead, as they move back and forth within the electronic universe, somehow less good for them? If you really are concerned about it, maybe you can think of and direct them to Internet activities or websites that you believe would be of interest to them and that may contain a little more intellectually broadening substance. What do you find interesting? Yet the question remains: Are today’s teens learning true skills—skills relevant to a richer and more productive life?
“I have a skill: I can do Dragon Buster III to the eleventh level. Trust me, you have to be really good. It is a real skill that takes lots of practice to get to the eleventh level of Dragon Buster III.”
On another more serious level, today’s teenagers are learning the skills necessary to succeed—and in some cases, just survive—in their universe. They’re learning how to communicate with others in the language of the world they will inhabit. They’re learning how to find information. Most kids are better at navigating this world and maximizing its resources than we are. Will what they do now, with whatever skills they acquire as they chart these new frontiers, be less productive, less enriching, less useful in the future world—the world where they are going to live their adult life? I honestly don’t think that it is possible to answer that question yet.
One profound way that teenagers’ lives have been affected by their connection to the electronic world is through their connection with others.
Besides connecting teenagers to the universe of information, the world of electronics connects them to a universe of people. And not just any people: it connects them to the people who make up their daily world and network of friends—their peers. In addition to connecting them with other kids, the electronic world also connects them with events involving people they are close to or interested in. People they like. People they don’t like. People they think are noteworthy—like the very popular junior basketball player whom they don’t know personally but whom everyone knows about. Or the girl in the grade before them who they heard was a great singer and now has videos of her performance posted on her Facebook page. It’s where kids find out what went on today. Especially, who said what to whom. Unfolding story lines with many, many interwoven plots and characters can be found. This universe is richly textured. And every day, every evening, the drama unfolds further—sometimes with visuals—on a screen right in their own room, or via a phone right in their hand. These are real-time plot twists they’re engaged in.
“There’s this kid Eddie, and he really liked this cousin of Kay’s, but she broke up with him and he was really upset. And Eddie started talking to Kay about it. But then Eddie and Kay sort of started liking each other, except that he is apparently into serious drugs—at least cocaine—and is a pretty tough kid. But now maybe Kay’s cousin is back to liking Eddie.”
“Today in school there was this almost fight between Danny and Cameron because Cameron called Danny a punk bitch at some party Saturday night where he had been drinking, and Maria, who is Danny’s younger sister, has this wicked crush on Cameron.”
“Gaby and Greg are maybe breaking up again like they always do. But today at lunch Greg was talking to Karina, and was like being consoled and Gaby got really pissed at Karina because she thought she was coming on to Greg which she wasn’t, because I [Amanda] was there and I saw that it wasn’t that way. But now Karina is really upset because you know how she is if she thinks anybody is mad at her. And I just got a text from Karina saying that Gaby wants to talk to her—on the phone—like Gaby is going to call her in five minutes, and I don’t know what that’s about.”
It is a world of continuously fascinating stories. You can’t miss out. You can’t not be part of it. It is always out there happening at every moment, and maybe you are even directly connected to it, a player in the story, just through your electronic devices. Imagine what it would be like if you were not connected. Imagine if you didn’t know what had happened when you met your friends tomorrow at lunch.
“I [Amanda] go in, and there’s Gaby and Karina and Greg and they’re sitting there looking at each other and making polite talk and I have no idea what is going on. I’m clueless. Unless somebody catches me up as to what went on.
“Gaby says to Karina, ‘Don’t you like Greg’s shirt?’ Is she being serious? Is she being sarcastic? Did they work things out? I just don’t understand anything.
“That’s why I can’t not stay in touch all the time because if I don’t, everything will pass me by. And, let me tell you, don’t think for a minute that anybody is going to bother to catch me up. It doesn’t work that way.”
It’s what’s happening. And what’s happening makes up the fabric of most teenagers’ daily life. The way kids know and participate in what’s happening is through their connection with the electronic universe.
But there is another aspect to the connection that is not about needing to always know what’s going on. It is about the connection itself. Just being connected to another human, especially one with whom you are comfortable.
It is not at all unusual for a given teenager to send or receive five hundred text messages a day. Five hundred text messages? That’s preposterous. What can they possibly be talking about?
Tricia texts her friend (not boyfriend) Eric:
“guess the number of my house on my street”
“39?”
“no, that’s a stupid guess. much higher”
“439?”
“way better”
“give me a hint”
“the first number rhymes with live”
“give me more hints”
Or the classic: James texts his friend Danny,
“what’s going on?”
“nothing. what’s going on with you?”
“nothing”
“so why did you text me?”
“i don’t know. i just wanted to see if you were doing anything”
“i don’t know. are you doing anything?”
It is simply about being connected at any given moment. Or if you are not at that moment connected, it’s about having the immediate capacity to be connected to another person when you want to be. The beauty of both the Internet and cell phones is that they can eliminate—or at the very least keep to a minimum—the times when our kids feel that they are truly alone.
“Caroline, are you talking on your cell phone in the shower again?”
“I’m talking to Jennifer. Do you have a problem with that?”
“Yes, you already ruined two cell phones that way.”
“I’m holding it out of the shower spray. Okay? Please, I’m taking a shower.”
By carrying a cell phone on their person, or sitting in front of a computer screen, our kids, in effect, are running invisible lines from them to all the people in their life whom they care about, to whom they want to be connected. They are not alone.
Being alone is a very real psychological state. It is being completely separate from another human. And this psychological state of being alone is profoundly different—at any given moment—from that of being connected. When you are truly alone, you experience vulnerability in a way that you simply do not if you are not alone, if you are connected. What the constant presence of cell phones and potential Internet connection provides is a means of bypassing, during your waking hours, ever having to be alone.
This capacity to circumvent aloneness is good in the sense that connection to other humans is probably—more than anything else—the best thing that life has to offer. It is certainly not wrong or bad, when feeling alone and vulnerable, to want a connection to another person as a means of coping with those vulnerable feelings. But it is also possible that never having to be alone may create a lack of practice at, or even an intolerance for, ever being alone. Which is perhaps not so good. Maybe if aloneness, even for brief periods of time, becomes a little too scary for a child, their constant connectedness should be reconsidered.
“Hey, Jeannine, are you there?”
“Yeah, what? This better not be one of these ‘I just want to make sure I’m not alone’ calls.”
“Well, actually it is. Thanks for being there.”
“Shit. Don’t you dare call again within the next five minutes.”
“I promise I won’t. Maybe.”
So if being connected to the electronic world all of the time presents such potential drawbacks, what would happen if we made our kids do it less? How about if we took away their connection to the electronic world? At least at times other than when they are doing legitimately school-related work? Not that you could ever make that differentiation. But let’s say you could. What would happen then? Let’s take a look at that scenario:
“Okay, Viv. No Internet. No cell phones. No video games. You can call friends, but only to make plans. And you can have an hour of TV a day. No more.”
Let’s see what happens.
“What is it, Doctor? Her mother and I are so concerned. She doesn’t eat, and all she does is make these sighing noises and stare at her blank computer screen.”
“I’m afraid she’s lost the will to live.”
“Oh, dear! Does this mean we have to give her back the Internet and her cell phone?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Well, it was worth a try.
“Come to supper.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“You’re always in the middle of something.”
“Yeah, well, I’m in the middle of something.”
“You can’t always be in the middle of something. I want you at supper.”
“I told you. I’m in the middle of something.”
So what can you do to achieve a happy medium? Especially when you want to talk to them? When you want them to clean out the tub in their bathroom, which they were supposed to have done two days ago? When you want them to come to a meal?
“Jesus, I can’t believe you! I said I was in the middle of something! I’m not lying! I’m in the middle of something!”
What often works best is setting a rule that states: if you do not detach yourself from your computer, cell phone, or other electronic device upon my reasonable request, I will temporarily suspend the use of those devices for a full day. In effect, they can use the Internet, their cell phone, etc. It is just that they have to do it while following your rules. These rules, by the way, can include periods of time where you simply want them electronics-free—just because that’s what you want. This is an effective response you can use with those teens who tend to ignore requests to unhook themselves to do what is being asked of them. If you insist, if you do not back off, and if you do follow through with your rules, kids see that you are serious. Also, because they know in their hearts that what you are asking of them is not unreasonable, more often than not they will comply. They most likely will not do it immediately. They will also probably do it begrudgingly. But far more often than not, they will abide by the general rule.
This, of course, is no different from the way it is with virtually all teenage compliance issues. You need to persist, and then, having persisted, you won’t exactly win. But you won’t exactly totally lose either.
“You didn’t have to hound me so much. I said I would come to supper.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, here I am. I don’t get what the big deal was. I told you I was in the middle of something and now I’m not in the middle of it anymore, so I can come to supper. You didn’t have to keep after me like you did. I was going to come.”
Actually, she wasn’t.
Teenagers and the electronic world. Where is it all going? What does it mean? What can you do about it?
Given how far we’ve come electronically already, it is hard to imagine that teenage kids will ever have even smoother, swifter access to others and to information than they already have. But they will. They’ll be more dependent upon the electronic world than they are now. Their dealings with the world in which they live will be less directly between them and that world. Instead, through the intermediary great electronic mind that knows so much, they will be hooked up to so many more specific places and people than they could have been otherwise.
They almost certainly will have less capacity to function as a lone unit out in the world. But they may not need to. They will not necessarily know more—that is, have more information stored in their brains—but they will have quick access to more information, enough to know more at the moment when it is immediately useful to them. As I said, it will be their world.
What should you do? As a parent you won’t exactly be able to control all that goes on between them and the electronic world. It simply cannot be done. But you will be part of that world too. Maybe one step behind, but that can’t be helped. Your role as an incredibly important person in their lives will still continue. You cannot so much change their relationship with the electronic world. But you, as has been true all along, can continue to be a huge part of who they are and who they become. That does not change.