Settlement Instead of Complexity | Article Analysis: “The Parent Trap: How Teens Lost the Ability to Socialize”

  Clive Thompson, the writer of the article, “The Parent Trap: How Teens Lost the Ability to Socialize” believes that the parents should blame themselves for making their children stare all day on their phones, chatting online, instead of doing that in real world communication. Parents want to protect their children from any danger which leads them to use strict rules to eliminate their worrying. However to blame parents only for such an action is unfair, and teenagers should convince their parents that they are over protected and should give them some freedom and trust.

  Parents are putting the blame on social media for making their children less socialized. Naturally, technology makes life simpler and easier to live. It helps everyone whether adults or children and people are dependent on them since it’s the shortest way to get out from whatever problem they face. It is normal for adults to use technology more than children since they have bigger responsibilities, while teenager they don’t have a reasonable cause for their over using it. That is why parents think it is a waste of time and harmful for their children to sit down and chat online without actually saying words and using their own communication skills.

  However, children attitude shows that they want to interact with their friend face to face, but the only way to do so is to chat online. Parents never think of the reason for their children to keep on chatting online. According to Thompson, Danah Boyd, a Microsoft researcher, “found that many high school students flock to football games not because they like football but because they can only meet in an unstructured context,” that itself proves how parent’s decisions are affecting their children’s way of socializing. Obviously, children trying to say that their parents are the reason behind using the social media because of their limit places that they can go to.

  Teenagers should show their parents that they are the ones who are causing them to use technology in order to keep being in touch with their friends. Just like Yzzy Gonzalez said, people should try to take a break from technology and enjoy real life a little more. Teenagers would be able to do this if they had more freedom, so the solution in the hand of guardians. Phones should be for parents to make sure their children are safer rather than to connect with friends.

  Guardians should take advantage of the technology for their children and own benefits. They should make sure about their children’s safety and takes them away from social media by giving them the time they need to socialize and tracking them by using the same tool that made them away from the face to face interaction. Instead of searching for someone to blame, they need to seek a compromise for them and their children. Social media trapped the parents and their children in its cycle; it starts with it by making the guardian more concern about their children which affect the teens and made them go back to social media as a solution to their dilemma.

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