Your Teenager Is Not Crazy by Jerusha Clark & Jeramy Clark

Author:Jerusha Clark & Jeramy Clark [Clark, Jerusha & Clark, Jeramy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL012030
ISBN: 9781493401437
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2016-03-29T04:00:00+00:00

When adolescents perceive life is better for “everyone else,” dissatisfaction with their own situation increases.

Research also indicates social networking trains teenagers to become undisciplined adults. Scientists have linked social networking to lack of self-control, since it “interferes with clear thinking and decision-making, which lowers self-control and leads to rash, impulsive buying and poor eating decisions. Greater social media use is associated with a higher body mass index, increased binge eating, a lower credit score, and higher levels of credit card debt for consumers with many close friends in their social network.”12 Obviously, those are not the character traits we want our teenagers to develop! Our teens—whose ability to evaluate cause and effect is under construction—need help recognizing that constant exposure to advertising triggers the desire to eat or shop excessively.

Adolescents also need help navigating the additional pressures ever-widening social circles can create. According to one study, the more “friends” a person has online, the quicker social media becomes a source of stress.13 As more and more “friends” or “contacts” are added, teenagers begin to treat those with whom they are “connected” as commodities. If they don’t like what someone says, they hide or “unfriend” them. There’s no need to work through relationship difficulties when you’re on to the next click. Increasingly, teenagers avoid the natural challenges of friendship by hiding behind technology. Teens who train their brains to use electronic, “srry 4 htng on u” messages shortchange their ability to interact with people face-to-face, now and in the future.14

We recommend the ABCs of handling social media well: awareness, boundaries, and communication.

Be aware of your teen’s social media habits. Even if you don’t allow your teen to be on the most widely used networks, he or she is likely watching videos online, reading posts and emails, or being exposed to social networking with their friends. Because of this, all parents—both those with strict limits and those with looser ones—need to be aware of how social media plays a role in their teen’s life.

Establish boundaries. It’s best to do this before your teen starts using social networking, but boundaries can be set up at any point. Though daunting, it’s a battle worth fighting. For younger adolescents, identify specific times when they can and cannot be online. Since older adolescents need to learn self-regulation, gradually releasing control over your teens’ choices is essential. If you’ve helped them develop self-restraint along the way, you can trust that their decisions will be good much of the time and that when they fail (which they will!), they can learn from it.

Finally, communication with your teen about social networking is nonnegotiable. Ask them to show you the funniest thing they’ve seen recently or whether they’ve learned anything new online. Eventually these conversations about social media will enable you to ask about negative things they’ve seen or experienced online. Talk about your own social networking, sharing your thoughts and emotions. This normalizes conversation about online activities, making it more likely that your teen will talk with you in the future.

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