Is Social Media Ruining Childhoods?

The title suggests a very intense, sweeping statement and one that many people will probably disagree with but the simple fact is that only too often you see people attached to their mobile devices and isolated from the social world. That is a sad thing to experience.

While it can be argued that the middle and older generations have reached this state through personal choice because they have been present for the whole process of going from a world without mobile phones to a world perpetually connected, the younger generations are born into this world and it is natural for them to be connected from a young age.

However, this argument hinges on how psychologically healthy this is. The age that children are getting phones and various other communication gadgets is dropping all the time. This puts them at risk from all sorts of things but arguably the most damaging implication is this paradoxical state of encouraging social interaction while oppressing it at the same time. Children need to learn the basic social skills, which they do at school, but through spending more time using a keyboard to speak to other children, their interpersonal skills are affected.

The best way to rectify this problem is all on the parents. Encourage them to have phones and communicate with their peers as this is of course important, but instil in them the understanding that sometimes the best thing for everyone is to be temporarily unavailable and that these lines of communication are most effective when used for fun and to organise meetings.

It is not uncommon to hear people say things like ‘I can’t wait to get away on holiday – I can turn my phone off!’ which implies that actually people don’t like being permanently available for contact. Obviously it has its benefits; the mobile phone was created through a demand for more efficient communication channels but it has gone a little far. The fact is though that those older generations recognise what they’re feeling and react to counter that feeling; the younger community are not always quite so intuitive and therefore end up stuck in this perpetually paradoxical state of communication and lack thereof.

Children should be encouraged to try things they’ve never tried before, to meet up with other children and learn things even when they don’t realise they’re learning. This is the only way that the human race is going to develop – children are the future – and mobile devices of course play a role in that but when they take centre stage they prevent this and that is, quite simply, a shame.

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