I know it seems like a lifetime ago, but remember what we were concerned about before COVID? It was screen time. And what did we do during COVID? We cut kids off from their friends EXCEPT through screens. Social media platforms like Facebook, Tick-Tok, Instagram etc. have not changed. They have always been a problem. Watch "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix. It's truly excellent and so, so scary!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma
That latest uptick since COVID started is no surprise to me. My DD was severely depressed during the shut-downs. The only thing that took her out of the tailspin was when we were able to get her back on the lacrosse field. There are a couple of other troubling things that came from the COVID shutdowns that I have not seen discussed anywhere;
- The prevalence of teens, and especially girls that now identify as trans. I am not saying that there are no people who are trans, but it's a fraction of a percent. Teen girls, especially those that were high-school age during the shutdowns are identifying as trans at an astonishing rate. I don't have the exact data, but anecdotally we are seeing double digit percentages.
- Teens don't date anymore. I have an 18 and a 21 year old and neither has had a partner - ever. This is the norm, not the exception. My 18 year old will spend long hours communicating with her friends on-line, but when we suggest that they go see a movie, or go to a school function you would have thought we'd suggested they move to the moon.
So to anyone who supported the closure of schools because "kids are resilient" and they'll recover, no, that's simply not true.
I’m not seeing this at all.
To give you some context, I have a 21-year-old daughter, and a 16 year old son. My daughter went to a residential HS art school where Hunter Schafer went while she was in school. Hunter was one of two open trans students (I say open because I am unsure if there were more) however, being an arts campus there were a lot more people identifying as LGBTQ+ . Now what they didn’t have a lot at her school was bullying. One kid chose to wear a cape every single day to class, and nobody said a word. It was the type of school where a student dressed up as Steve from blue‘s clues and spent his free period knocking on classroom doors, asking if anybody had a clue from blue. (It was also a school that provided my daughter with the education my that earned her all fives on her AP exams and a full ride to college.)
People absolutely had boyfriends and girlfriends (same sex and opposite sex) there. She is now in a college that is extremely conservative in comparison. There are absolutely people who have boyfriends and girlfriends. In fact 80% of her friends are in long term relationships. Until recently, my daughter was in a relationship for over a year.
What teens don’t have is safe places to just hang out together and make mistakes. There is no going to the mall in groups. Most malls don’t allow teens to be unsupervised anymore.
Movies cost a fortune vs all the free (because parents are paying for it) streaming services they have access to.
They can’t really gather in parks without getting harassed.
It’s definitely not my generation where we would all sneak away and have bonfires and get drunk. In fact, most of them can’t get away with anything because their parents are constantly tracking their phones. This tracking of everybody is causing teen to make some more dangerous choices. Several times my daughter would wanted to leave a party, but had to wait for another group of four to join her group and when I suggested that they just split off and have two separate groups to head home (making sure somebody at least had a friend with them no matter what). She would explain that they couldn’t because that entire group of four had to leave their cell phones at the dorm because their parents had Life360 on it, and they didn’t want them to know that they were at a fraternity party because they would flip out.
My daughter got lucky because she was in a residential high school so every place on campus was a safe, awesome place to just hang out and talk. These were the type of kids who would go to the library rooftop with permission and watch the sunset over the skyline. Take arts photos in the fields, walk into downtown to have coffee at 10pm on a Saturday night- things most parents would never allow their kids to do without an adult watching over them.
Plus her and her HS friends didn’t have to really plan anything because they all lived together so they just kind of went like- yeah let’s go. Planning nowadays is actually harder because it’s so easy for people to pick up a cell phone send a text and cancel.
There is also so very little wiggle room for them to make mistakes today. Especially if you need a big scholarships for college; one bad class grade can sink your chances. Everything is highly competitive.
Plus, we don’t teach them how to socialize properly when they’re very little. We don’t let kids roam around the neighborhood and meet and find friends like they did when we were kids even though it’s actually safer now according to statistics. So they grow up isolated, where it’s hard to find friends or know how to make them.
When they do have friends, it’s stuff that we put together for them- activities, play dates, things like that . When that goes away as they get older, it’s so much harder for them to figure it out on their own as a teen.