Social Media, the end to real conversation!

We all love our social media, don't we? I see it everywhere I go. At the doctor, sitting at a stoplight, in the line at the grocery store and even at the dinner table. It has become an accepted addition. The first thing many of us do when we wake up in the morning is check our social media apps. I'm guilty! As I talked with some professional colleagues the other day, we had a discussion on kids and this very addiction. We were supposed to be talking about how to help students take ownership of their success. We found ourselves in a rich conversation about our own children. The level of importance for their personal devices, computers and data plans are through the roof. One friend told the story of her daughter in panic because she was out of data and needed her mom's phone because the Snap streak was over a year old and just could not be broken. My own children suffer from this wide spread phenomenon of device addiction. Countless hours spent enclosed in the four walls of their bedrooms playing endless hours of video games. They live in a fantasy world. They have "friends" across the globe that game with them on a daily basis....for hours on end. We wonder why our children lack social skills, but where do the practice them? It is interesting to listen to the conversation on a video game network. It is often heated and players often call each other derogatory names when in heated battle. The conversation goes from light teasing to heated name calling and eventually someone quits the game or kicks the other players off the server. No need for social skills when you can hide behind a screen name. This brings me to my point. We as adults need to set limits on screen time. For all of us. We as adults are losing our gracious social skills as we too hide behind the keyboard. We need to get our kids out for dinner without phones and have real conversations. Conversations that are open and honest. If you grew up in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, there were no phones at the table. Just the long corded one hanging on the wall of the kitchen that was for everyone's use. You remember, the one that had an actual rotary dial or push buttons. Those were the days. If you were lucky, you had call waiting and could have two conversations going at once! If we are to help this generation learn to have real conversations, we must engage them, model for them and yes, correct them. The art of letter writing as gone to the wayside, lets not let the art of conversation see the same demise. Put the devices away, and talk.