Social Media
Wednesday, April 24th, 2013
 Do you suffer from the “addicting” power of a smartphone? (Photo credit: Phil Roeder) Do you know where your smartphone is? Odds are that your teenager does. A new survey sponsored by Facebook and conducted by IDC shows that the majority of smartphone users in the 18-24 year old age group reach for their smartphone as soon as they wake up. For younger teens, the smartphone has become synonymous with their social life and while they might forget their homework or lose their keys, you can bet they know where their phone is all the time.
For a generation of parents who were likely adults before they even saw their first cell phone, watching their teens near constant typing, texting, and tweeting has become a cause for worry. Is there a line to be drawn that limits smartphone use? Is all this virtual interaction impeding the development of social skills they will need as adults? Has this generation shifted from avid users to addicts?
Unfortunately, the speed at which technology is changing our world makes it impossible to gauge the long term and sometimes even the short-term effects of these changes. The previous generation of parents had 30+ years to wonder about whether or not television was bad for kids before cable came along. Meanwhile today’s parents have watched the smartphone, Facebook, texting, tweeting, skyping, and gaming change everything about how their teens interact with each other and the world around them. When it comes to knowing what is best for our teens, it is easy to feel as if we are all strangers in a strange land.
If you are concerned about the time your teen spends interfacing with technology rather than interacting with face to face friends, there are some things you can do.
1. Look in the Mirror
What many parents don’t see is that they are modeling the very behavior that is causing them concern in their teenagers. If you can’t sit at the dinner table without checking your email, don’t expect your children to have better boundaries than you do.
2. Define the Line
There is a fine line between normal teenage smartphone use and addiction to smartphone use. Addictive behavior patterns are fairly standard, regardless of what you are addicted to. If you know what an addiction looks like, it will be easier for you to see where that fine line is so that you can give your teen the freedom to be a teen or get them help if that’s what they need.
3. Remember They are Not You
It can be hard for parents to grasp that the life their teen is living is vastly different from their own. The teens of the 70s, 80s, and 90s bought CDs at the mall, watched all the same shows on TV, and spent as much time as possible together without any parents around. Today’s teens have an entire virtual world to spend time together that is parent-free. They don’t need to spend Friday night at McDonald’s or meet up with their friends at the mall in order to spend time together and stay connected. They are always connected in a way us parents can only begin to comprehend.
The best things you can do as parents is provide a good example, set boundaries you believe in, and get help for your child if they need it.
Tags: Addiction, Adolescence, Android, Doorways, Doorways Arizona, Facebook, IDC, International Data Corporation, McDonald, Mobile phone, Phoenix, Phoenix Arizona, Smartphone, smartphone addiction
Posted in Communication, Relationships, Social Media | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012
 Person uses cell phone while driving. (Image via Wikipedia)
It Isn’t Just Our Teenagers
Distracted driving is everywhere in our society and it isn’t just our teenagers who are failing to give their full attention to the road while they are behind the wheel. It is very likely that if you drove a car at any point in the last 24 hours, you did something that falls under the heading of distracted driving. When we hear “Distracted Driving” many of us think it refers to teenagers texting while they drive, which is true, but only part of the problem.
It Isn’t Just About Texting
The term distracted driving has become almost synonymous with texting while driving, but it includes many other activities as well, some of which are very common occurrences during any daily commute. Distracted driving is defined by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) as performing or participating in any activity that could divert the driver’s attention away from driving. This means that most of the things we do in the car qualify as distracted driving and increase our likelihood of being in an accident. The NHTSA lists the following activities as distractions that can cause a hazardous driving condition:
- Texting
- Using a SmartPhone for any activity
- Talking on the phone
- Talking to passengers
- Using a GPS
- Reading a map
- Drinking
- Eating
- Grooming (i.e. putting on mascara or lipstick)
- Messing with the radio
Texting is the Worst
When you write and send a text message, you have to divert attention from driving to perform the functions required to look at the screen, type in the message, make sure the message is right, and then send it. This means that you are stealing visual, manual, and cognitive attention from the act of driving which can result in very dangerous consequences.
The Hard Truth
The statistics don’t lie. In 2009, the NHTSA indicates that 5,474 people died in car accidents where the driver was distracted and 10% of all accidents that year involved some kind of distracted behavior. Teen drivers are much more likely to be in a fatal accident when they are distracted than any other age group. Texting while driving makes it 23 times more likely that an accident will occur and sending an average text message takes the drivers eyes off the road for almost 5 seconds. This is the equivalent of driving the length of a football field blind folded. Using a headset for phone calls isn’t much safer than just holding the phone in your hand because it still diverts the same amount of cognitive attention. In fact, research completed by the University of Utah found that using a cell-phone while driving, regardless of whether it is hands-free or not, causes the same delayed reaction drivers who are legally drunk experience.
What Parents Can Do
1. Set a Good Example
If you don’t want your teens using their cell phones, eating, drinking, talking, or doing other distracting activities while driving, show them by practicing what you preach.
2. Talk to Teens
Sit down with your teen and explain why distracted driving is so dangerous and what activities constitute distracted driving. Being clear about which behaviors are putting them at risk will help them to make the right decision when it matters.
3. Take the Pledge
As part of the NHTSA’s awareness campaign, they are asking individuals, families, businesses… really anyone who drives, to take the distraction-free driving pledge. Avoiding taking those 5 seconds to send a quick text while driving could literally save your life.
Related articles
Tags: Distracted driving, Global Positioning System, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, NHTSA, Smartphone, Text messaging, Texting while driving, University of Utah
Posted in Social Media, Teens | No Comments »
Monday, January 23rd, 2012
The question for parents used to be, “do you know where your children are?” Now, that question may be changing to “do you know where your child’s cell phone is?” Research on teens and texting seems to support growing concerns amongst members of the medical and mental health community that there may be a price to all this texting that cannot be mitigated with any unlimited plan.
The Numbers
A study published in 2010 by Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine Master of Public Health program found that heavy usage of texting and other social connection technology is associated with higher rates of unhealthy behaviors. They determined that teens and adolescents who sent more than 120 texts per school day fell into a category called hyper-texters.
This group was:
- 40% more likely to have tried cigarettes
- 41% more likely to have used illicit drugs
- 55% more likely to have been in a physical altercation
- 2x as likely to have tried alc
ohol
- 3.5x as likely to be sexually active
When the study data was collected, only about 20% of teens fell into this hyper-texting group. However, according to a poll taken at the end of 2010 by The Nielsen Company, the average teen now sends almost 3,400 texts per month which equates to about 113 texts per day. This means that most teens are either already hyper-texters or are nearly there.
The Concerns
While the statistics are enough to raise the concerns of every parent, there are also concerns about the long term effects these technologies will have on the health and development of teens. The constant interruption caused by receiving a hundred text messages a day makes it difficult to study, focus, and retain important information. Some doctors are concerned that teens will develop repetitive motion injuries that impact the development of their arms, hands, and thumbs and even lead to permanent damage. There are also concerns amongst those who see to the mental health of our teens that some aspects of being constantly connected to peers and parents may negatively impact teen’s social and emotional development as well.
What Can Parents Do
The most important thing for parents to do is remain involved. This means monitoring social networking use and experience, monitoring text message logs, and setting guidelines about texting in school or after bedtime. Keep communication lines open and make sure you listen significantly more than you talk. Set a standard for responsible technology use in your house and then provide a good example for your teens to follow.
Tags: Adolescence, Case Western Reserve University, Health, Mental health, Nielsen Company, Parent, Social network service, Text messaging
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Wednesday, January 18th, 2012
 What effect does media have on teens? More than ever before, the media is all around us. We experience it on our TVs, on our computers, on our smart phones, in our newspapers, and on the radio. It is our primary medium for both communication and entertainment. For teens, this is even truer. The majority of their lives, including a significant portion of their social interaction, is guided and supported by different kinds of media and the messages that media provides.
The messages that seep into their lives through these media platforms are both subtle and pervasive. They can alter opinions, change minds, encourage new experiences, and set expectations about the world outside our family. These messages are both good and bad and teens may struggle differentiating between the two.
Negative Effects
- School Performance – According to the Kaiser Family Foundation study entitled Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-to 18-year-olds, teens that spend more time interacting with media have lower grades and spend less time reading than their peers.
- Obesity –The Kaiser Family Foundation pulled together the most significant research on childhood obesity and media usage from the last 30 years and presented it in a fact sheet entitled The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity. Although this analysis found that there are several factors that contribute to the obesity problem, media usage plays an important role.
- Exposure to advertising – An article from the American Academy of Pediatrics highlights the dangerous and unhealthy messages our teenagers get from advertising about food, body image, smoking, alcohol use, nutrition, sex, and obesity. Because advertising highlights benefits without showing negative consequences it can create unrealistic expectations for the outcome of specific behavior.
- Violence – The Kaiser Family Foundation also produced a fact sheet on the relationship between media violence and behavior. Although no study has established a definitive link between media violence and violent behavior in teens, there is adequate evidence to support a causal relationship between media violence and aggressive behavior.
- Sex – A study conducted by the RAND Corporation found that teens with significant exposure to sexual content in the media were more likely to become sexually active and had a greater risk for teen pregnancy.
What Parents Can Do
The American Academy of Pediatrics says there are some steps parents can take to minimize the effect media has on their teens. The most important factor is to stay involved and participate with your teen, especially when they don’t want you to. For most teenagers, elimination of media, if it were even possible, is not necessarily the right solution. Media is so pervasive in our culture that providing teens with the skills necessary to question, evaluate, analyze, and discuss the messages they see in media is more effective than outright bans. By teaching them to process the messages they are being bombarded with everyday, parents are giving them the tools to mitigate the impact of media on their lives.
Parents can also work with their teens to create a media plan that includes watching TV and movies together, limiting media time, restricting programs and content that are not appropriate and setting aside media free time for school work and family meals. Parents can also limit media usage by keeping televisions, video games, and computers in common areas and out of bedrooms.
Tags: Adolescence, American Academy of Pediatrics, Kaiser Family Foundation, Media violence research, Parent, RAND Corporation, Social media, Television
Posted in Social Media, Teens | No Comments »
Friday, September 2nd, 2011
How Social Media is Affecting our Teens-
Since computers starting coming into the home and video games left the arcade, parents have expressed concerns about how much is too much and how these virtual interfaces will impact the lives of our children over the long term. For years, the main concerns around overuse of electronic media have centered on physical activity levels, studying, and the effect of violent, sexist, and racist themes on young minds. Recently I was asked my thoughts on the impact things like Facebook, Twitter, and video games are having on today’s youth. My answers might surprise you.
One of the main problems that I see is an increase in teens and young adults with significant social anxiety problems that seem to stem from spending too much time interacting with a computer and not enough time interacting with actual people. This is especially pertinent for teens that are in the 12 to 15 year old range that are actively developing and refining the social skills that will help them throughout their lives. The more time a child spends in isolation posting on Facebook, playing Xbox, chatting online, texting, and watching YouTube videos, the less time they spend interacting with their peers and families. These real-world interactions are necessary for developing social skills, understanding social protocols, and building interpersonal relationships.
What Parents Should Look For
- Parents should trust their instincts and if they are concerned there might be a problem, seek the opinion of a professional.
- Parents also need to make the distinction between what is normal behavior and what is healthy behavior. Your son might spend 12 hours a day playing video games which seems normal when compared to his friends, but most health professionals would agree that even if it is normal, 12 hours of video game play in a day is definitely not healthy.
- Watch for resistance to social situations and avoidance of social interactions. If your child is having a significant emotional response to a situation that requires social interaction, there may be a social problem that needs to be addressed.
What Parents Can Do
- The most important step parents can take is to start young. Set expectations and ground rules about media use early in childhood which will help your child develop good habits as they grow into teenagers.
- Provide multiple social outlet opportunities for your children through church, community, sports, and educational activities. But, beware of over-scheduling; children need downtime too.
- Don’t accommodate their anxiety; it’s ok for them to be uncomfortable in social situations because they are learning how to manage those types of interactions. Giving in and allowing them to avoid socializing only reinforces the avoidance behaviors.
Tags: Adolescence, Facebook, Interpersonal relationship, Licensed Professional Counselor, Social anxiety, Social media, Social skill, twitter, Video game
Posted in Social Media | No Comments »
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011
Few parents escape the teenage years without dealing with daily doses of drama that are an inescapable part of growing up. But how do you know when your teen is just being over-dramatic, when they are hurting but healthy, or when the drama is a sign of clinical depression?
Many teens today are dealing with the relationship drama that is part of being a teenager and mood difficulties can be the result of all the drama. Many teens are struggling because they find themselves in relationships, romantic or not, that they aren’t equipped to handle. Depression can result when a relationship fails or does not work out as they expected and the drama associated with sudden changes in relationships only complicates the situation.
Many teens find themselves in relationships that got too romantic too quickly, and not just in the physical sense. The end of a whirlwind relationship can be just as devastating if the connection wasn’t physical, if there was an emotional aspect, that’s enough. The emotional highpoints of a new relationship and the emotional drama experienced when the relationship suddenly disappears can lead teens to feelings of depression.
Social networking, online friendships, and electronic communications have also changed the rules of the teenage game. Unlike the teen years of their parents, today’s teens are hyper-connected to everyone they know, every minute of the day. Twenty years ago, a fight between two friends may have resulted in a flurry of phone calls and drawn in three or four other people. Today, that fight is played out on Facebook in front the entire school. We know as therapists that human beings are not designed to participate in a hundred relationships at the same time which is in essence what social networking sites like Facebook ask us to do. As a result of all of these relationships and the hyper-connected nature of their lives, teens today are bombarded with an exponential amount of relationship drama that is playing out like a television soap opera 24 hours a day.
The implied intimacy of knowing the thoughts, feelings, and everyday activities of the people in your life provides the façade of friendship where no real relationship exists. Many of these online friendships and relationships weren’t built the way real relationships need to be built in order to be sustained. Pair this with the fact that most people will say things to others online that they would never consider saying in person, and it is easy to understand why all this drama can drag our teenagers further into potential mood problems.
Even more concerning for the long term is how social networking impacts the skills teenagers need to develop in order to be able to handle relationships as they move into adulthood. Today there is a whole generation of people who have developed friendships online through platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and chat, but these relationships are not the same as relationships that were formed and built in person. This group of teenagers doesn’t understand how to build real relationships and sustain them over time. As a result, when a real relationship comes into their life, they don’t know how to participate in it or how to take care of it, because the skills they need are missing. And when they lose that real relationship, they don’t know to handle the loss because it isn’t the same as having someone de-friend you on Facebook.
So what should parents do to help their child have healthy relationships and avoid relationship-caused mood problems?
- Encourage your teenager to get involved in extracurricular activities at school, church or other organizations. From participating in sports or youth groups or volunteering for a community organization, all of these live activities provide teens with important one-on-one interaction and the opportunity to develop relationships with people.
- Monitor computer and cell phone usage; set boundaries. I’ve heard some parents say that they insist that their kids share their passwords and give their parents 24 hour access to their social media accounts or text messages. While some might think this is extreme, as parents who are responsible for the well being and safety of our children, it might be a good idea.
- Have regular family time. Another family started a tradition when their children were young of going out to pizza as a family every Friday night. Often times they would invite friends of the kids. Even though the children are now teenagers, and one in college they still look forward to going to dinner as a family every Friday night when the can. The benefit was that the family and kids spent the time eating and having conversation, something they didn’t do when they were all running in different directions.
- Encourage your teen to go out with groups of friends instead of just dating one person exclusively.
Related article
Tags: Adolescence, Facebook, Health, Parent, twitter
Posted in Relationships, Social Media | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 27th, 2011
 Image via CrunchBase
Since computers starting coming into the home and video games left the arcade, parents have expressed concerns about how much is too much and how these virtual interfaces will impact the lives of our children over the long term. For years, the main concerns around overuse of electronic media have centered on physical activity levels, studying, and the effect of violent, sexist, and racist themes on young minds. Recently I was asked my thoughts on the impact things like Facebook, Twitter, and video games are having on today’s youth. My answers might surprise you.
One of the main problems that I see is an increase in teens and young adults with significant social anxiety problems that seem to stem from spending too much time interacting with a computer and not enough time interacting with actual people. I call this “Social Phobia.” This is especially pertinent for teens that are in the 12 to 15 year old range that are actively developing and refining the social skills that will help them throughout their lives. The more time a child spends in isolation posting on Facebook, playing Xbox, chatting online, texting, and watching YouTube videos, the less time they spend interacting with their peers and families. These real-world interactions are necessary for developing social skills, understanding social protocols, and building interpersonal relationships.
What Parents Should Look For
- Parents should trust their instincts and if they are concerned there might be a problem, seek the opinion of a professional.
- Parents also need to make the distinction between what is normal behavior and what is healthy behavior. Your son might spend 12 hours a day playing video games which seems normal when compared to his friends, but most health professionals would agree that even if it is normal, 12 hours of video game play in a day is definitely not healthy.
- Watch for resistance to social situations and avoidance of social interactions. If your child is having a significant emotional response to a situation that requires social interaction, there may be a social problem that needs to be addressed.
What Parents Can Do
- The most important step parents can take is to start young. Set expectations and ground rules about media use early in childhood which will help your child develop good habits as they grow into teenagers.
- Provide multiple social outlet opportunities for your children through church, community, sports, and educational activities. But, beware of over-scheduling, children need downtime too.
- Don’t accommodate their anxiety; it’s ok for them to be uncomfortable in social situations because they are learning how to manage those types of interactions. Giving in and allowing them to avoid socializing only reinforces the avoidance behaviors.
Tags: Adolescence, anxiety, dating, depression, Facebook, Interpersonal relationship, parents, Social anxiety disorder, Social media, social phobia, teen relationships, twitter, Video game, YouTube
Posted in Social Media, Stress, Teens | No Comments »
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