Screens and Teens by Kathy Koch

Author:Kathy Koch
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Moody Publishers

I once watched Charlotte with a four-year-old boy, who was drawing. When he stopped and looked up at her—perhaps expecting praise—she smiled and said, “There is a lot of blue in your picture.” He replied, “It’s the pond near my grandmother’s house—there is a bridge.” He picked up a brown crayon, and said, “I’ll show you.” Unhurried, she talked to the child, but more importantly she observed, she listened. She was present.22

Popova writes that psychologist Stephen Grosz argues that presence “helps build the child’s confidence by way of indicating he is worthy of the observer’s thoughts and attention—its absence, on the other hand, divorces in the child the journey from the destination by instilling a sense that the activity itself is worthless unless it’s a means to obtaining praise.”23

Being present and directing our attention to kids can be something better than praise. People of all ages respond to the feeling that someone is thinking about them, focusing on them, valuing who they are and what they have to say. Tune in to your teens. Close your own laptop or iPad so you can give them your eye contact.

We Live in a Culture of “Like”

The culture of “like” is also alive and well and contributing to the pursuit of happiness. Pictures, videos, and details about teens’ days can be immediately “liked” and shared through social media sites. It’s more important to many to be liked in an online community than in person. They also may think it’s more realistic to be liked digitally because they’re not totally known—warts and all—by their online “friends.” Placing an inappropriate emphasis on technology and their digital “friends” is part of the worldview lie that “I am the center of my own universe.” Unfortunately, for many, being paid attention to is more important than paying attention. Technology allows for endless self-promotion. It’s become the adult version of show-and-tell.24 What happens may feel like true belonging, but it’s often not.

When you were in high school, how did you know if you were “cool”? Maybe popular students asked you to sit with them at lunch or tucked invitations into your hallway locker. Maybe someone else would notice that. As Sarah Brooks points out, “There may have been a few eyewitnesses and it was pure joy.”25 A major difference for our kids today is that their popularity status can be determined by a numerical value provided by their peers. They can rank themselves. Brooks writes, “Let me explain … Your daughter has 139 followers, which is twenty-three fewer than Jessica, but fifty-six more than Beau. Your son’s photo had thirty-eight likes which was fourteen fewer than Travis’s photo, but twenty-two more than Spencer’s.”26 As she points out, there’s less mystery. Today’s teens can’t assume they are or aren’t popular based on face-to-face interactions like we did. Popularity is now quantifiable and explicit.

Young people have probably always had a tendency to pay more attention to themselves than to others. It’s just easier for today’s youth to be self-centered because of the constant connection and temptation technology provides.

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