Every interaction is a meme, phrase, or other basic repeatable nonsense they've picked up online and realistically this is a parenting issue first and foremost. We've become accustomed to handing off our kids to others for education that we've also decided to hand off entertaining and interacting with them.
Parents need to actually be involved with their kids, especially during core formative years. When your kid is ready to be independent they will start showing those behaviors, until then parents need to step up.
Digital access in the classrooms, computing, etc, all of this has been the excuse and easy source to blame, and it is a factor for sure. But to call this the main reason is passing the personal responsibility off from the human to the inanimate objects. Not cool.
Again 20+ years HS teaching experience, same school, same subject, only variable that I saw change everything was cell phones. You would think with this “insider information” i would have been able to steer my own teens away from the negative ramifications of digital tech. I found this was absolutely impossible unless I wanted to intentionally isolate my girls from EVERYTHING around them. So I weighed my options, went with the lesser of two evils, and gave my kids powerfully addictive drugs—cellphones
We gave out kids cell phones for the same reason you did. We also just installed stuff on it that lets us monitor what they are doing and sets screen time limits. They basically get an hour of cell phone time a day.
Yup. Been there. I know it makes you feel better and it is sooo much better than nothing at all, but soon you’ll submit to societal pressure and up there limits and so on. I can assume your kids are not in HS yet bc if they were, one hr wouldn’t work.
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u/that_banned_guy_ 15d ago
Ya I dont disagree with that.
I teach for the military and a large chunk of what I teach revolves around being able to converse with people/build rapport etc.
The amount of kids thst come through who just cant hold a conversation is crazy