Attention is NOT friendship…
Recently, I have noticed something. SO MANY young people are struggling. This is NOTHING new! What is new, at least for me, is the realization that many young people are feeling isolated and without TRUE friends because they are spending more time simply trying to be NOTICED by their peers instead of ACTUALLY creating friendships. Many, many young people are equating attention from their peers as friendship with their peers… the APPEARANCE of a friendship with NONE of the benefits! They are suffering because of this! No wonder our kids are suffering… Our kids really don’t have friends anymore.
Interesting observation. Aside from school interactions (where practicing and learning social skills is limited), middle and high schoolers nowadays have for years been connecting digitally outside school hours. Phones and apps are a convenient yet false way of interacting. I think these kids misinterpreting attention for friendship would be shocked to feel an actual true and meaningful interpersonal peer relationship. They just have no foundation on which to build that knowledge—those who are teens now, have been influenced by technology their whole lives. They don’t know life without iPads and TV.
How do we teach them the benefits of authentic social relationships when it takes so much work to maintain and nurture, when technology presents such a simple, convenient, and easy—but false—sense of a social relationship?
Betsy, I am a pretty simple man with pretty simple and limited knowledge. Why do you ask me such complex and complicated questions with no real good answers… dang! 😉 I appreciate this comment though and I ACTUALLY DO have something… but I don’t think it is REALLY an answer to your TOTAL question. I think that you are absolutely correct in your observation of how do you get someone to expend energy, time, and valuable resources on developing “real” friendships when social media “connections” are so easy? Totally agree! The only “solution” I have in this particular area of the world currently is to be an adult who actually CARES and CONNECTS and SHOWS what it is to have a connection with someone on a much deeper level than social media or other venues can ever provide… with the hope that such a connection will inspire the desire and willingness to create such connections with their peers… with whom these types of connections are MOST BENEFICIAL at such an age. This is not the perfect answer, I know, but it is all I got at the moment. Thank you again for actually reading the post and taking the time to comment. You will never really know how much these comments actually mean to me!
I recently heard about a school that printed out their entire roster of students. Each adult put their name next to a child that they have some kind of personal connection with (more than just s/he was a student of mine). Then they purposefully made a staff plan to have a member personally connect with the children who did not have any names next to theirs. Cool, huh? 😊
That is AWESOME!!! I WANT TO DO THAT!!! So cool!!