mental-health

How Are Parents Supposed to Learn How to Parent?

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

In hundreds of thousands of homes in our country, parents are reinventing the wheel … of parenthood. 

Upon having a baby, many parents realize that they do not have the slightest idea what to do. They do not feel prepared to care for that baby. Often, after years of feeling competent at work, they suddenly feel incompetent – – – and anxious. 

Donald Winnicott, the famous and beloved British pediatrician and child psychoanalyst wrote, “The most important element at any one moment is the ordinary home in which ordinary parents are doing an ordinary good job, starting off with infants and children with that basis for mental health which enables them to eventually become part of the community” (The Spontaneous Gesture,1950, p. 21).

However, in our country, and I suspect in other places as well, there is no “ordinary” way to raise a child. This sort of communal knowledge or this set of common values has been lost. 

And the mental health of both infants and parents is affected by this.

Many new parents have focused on their own lives and education and have just not had prior experience with babies or young children. They really don’t know what to expect from a one-year-old or a five-year-old and, as they become parents, they are at a loss when called upon to meet the ordinary situations of child rearing.

Henri Parens, another child psychoanalyst, advocated for parenting curriculum to be instituted in every school. As one of my psychoanalytic mentors, I often heard him talk about this, and quite honestly, at the time, I didn’t see the point. But now that I am working daily with first-time parents, professional parents, and harried parents, I do. 

I see that the parents I come in contact with are desperate to know what is developmentally “normal” at each age as well as to know how to handle the inevitable challenges of raising children at all of the various stages of development. 

Given the much heralded death of the extended family and the loss of true community for most young families, questions arise: where are people in the early years of parenthood supposed to learn how to parent? Where are they supposed to learn about child development? And where are they supposed to learn how to manage their own internal reactions to the extraordinary stressors of normal parenthood?

Somehow, we have come to a place in history where many kids grow up never once having to take responsibility for a younger sibling or cousin and never having worked as a babysitter. We have put the emphasis on children doing well in school and going to college, and in some cases, even graduate school. In this march toward “success”  many young people never learn about babies and children.

I do not know if Henri Parens had the right solution – teaching about parenting in the schools – or if there are other solutions to this problem. But what I do know is that right now, right here in our country, hundreds of thousands of parents are struggling – more than in other generations, I think – to figure out how to do even “ordinary” parenting.

Winners aren’t people who don’t lose, they are people who keep trying: a personal essay

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When I was a child I never won anything. I mean never. I went to an academically competitive school and while I suppose I was smart, evidently I wasn’t smart enough to win any awards.

This was in an era, long ago, when it had not yet come into vogue to tell children they were doing a good job. My school was big on telling children they were not trying hard enough.

Often, my parents were told that I was not living up to my potential. And once, my mother was told that I always sat in the back row – and this was in a classroom that only had two rows. This kind of feedback was crushing to my self-esteem, not to mention other aspects of my self-confidence. 

It made me feel badly about myself. And you could easily think that this was destructive. However, what actually happened is that it made me mad, really, really mad. And I decided to show them. In high school, I got interested in psychology and in theories of education. I decided I could understand and help children in a way that I had not felt helped or understood. I went to a college that was as different from my high school as possible. It was a wonderful antidote. And then it went bankrupt. I had to find another college. And then I had to convince that new college to accept the credits from my beloved and highly non-traditional, now defunct, former school. Then I decided to go to graduate school to get a doctorate, something the director of studies at my high school would not have predicted. I didn’t succeed the first year. I didn’t succeed the second year. I had to try three years running to get into a program I wanted to go to.

If I wasn’t as “smart” as the kids who had won the awards early in my school career, at least I had perseverance. 

And then, at a time when psychologists were not allowed to enter clinical psychoanalytic training at most institutes, I decided I wanted to become a psychoanalyst. Of course. 

I say all this for a purpose. Telling kids they are doing a good job is now in fashion. Shielding children from criticism, protecting them from failure and helping them to feel they have succeeded is something parents routinely do. But it is important to keep in mind that motivation and drive do not necessarily come from a lifetime of success. And success is not defined by always succeeding, or by a life lived without suffering.

Henri Parens, a child psychoanalyst and Holocaust survivor, revamped the psychoanalytic theory of aggression. He wrote that aggression comes from an overabundance of frustration. But he also said that there are two kinds of aggression: hostile, destructive and non-hostile, non-destructive. And, it turns out that this latter type of aggression is what motivates us to move forward in life. We need SOME aggression to motivate us. And we need SOME frustration, in addition to our inborn, natural aggressive impulses, to generate that motivation.

So, frustration is necessary for children. Some frustration can lead to a feeling of wanting to do better next time. Shielding children from experiences of frustration and even occasional failure is not beneficial. And telling kids that they have done a good job when they actually have not is not helpful. Kids need to feel motivated by not doing well sometimes and the frustration that comes from that in order to want to try again and try harder.

If you have any doubt about this, read Ernst Papanek’s Out ofthe Fire about the hundreds of children he housed and educated during the early days of World War II in France. These children were separated from their families; some walked across Europe, some went from hiding to hiding until they reached one of Papanek’s homes for children. And what did those who survived become? They became lawyers and doctors and writers and professors. 

Winners are not people who do not lose – or suffer – they are people who keep trying.

Parental Expectations: Do They Help or Hurt?

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We all have expectations of our children. We are conscious of some of these – and less conscious of others.

I want to talk about several issues regarding these expectations:

First of all, expectations are not necessarily good or bad. They just ARE. And they start even before conception. As soon as we think about having a baby, we imagine what that baby will be like, what they might look like, what their personality might be like, what talents and abilities they might have.

This is universal – – and it is normal. It is part of the process of becoming a parent. 

Often we hope for a child who will be a particular way, and have particular skills and abilities. Whether school was important for us, or whether we missed out on going to college or graduate school, we might hope for a child who is “smart” and does well in school. Or, if we were shy as a child, we might hope for a child who is gregarious or assertive. If we love sports, we might hope they will be talented athletically.

In one way or another, our expectations will be formed by our own histories, values and wishes. And to the extent that they are unconscious, it is a good idea to try to make them more conscious. This allows us to decide whether they want to act on these expectations – or to rework them.

Because our expectations WILL affect our children. 

Children naturally want to please their parents – and this is good motivation for them. But when we expect things of our children, we also want to make sure that our expectations are realistic, and that we leave room for our children to be who they are, and to establish their own goals in life.

So, small expectations – like helping around the house, being kind or doing homework? That’s a definite YES.

But regarding our deeper fantasies of what we want our children to be as people? We need to ask ourselves if these are reasonable. For example, if we expect our children to get all A’s, what happens if our child turns out to have a learning disability? What happens if reading or math just doesn’t come easily for them? How will they feel about themselves when they come home with B’s or C’s…or worse?

And how will WE feel?

Will we be disappointed? And will our child pick up on that disappointment? What will this do to their motivation? Will they try harder? Or give up? Will they feel badly about themselves? Less confident?

For a while, everyone was talking about Oscar winning actress, Bri Larson’s YouTube content. She said, famously, “my job is 98% failure”. She talked about how many times she was turned down for parts in TV and movies before she got anything significant at all. 

Perhaps we need to spend less time expecting our children to be a certain way and more time helping them to learn how to handle the times when they don’t meet our expectations – or their own. Perhaps we need to help them to be more like Bri Larson. And maybe we need to think less about our own wishes for our children’s success, and instead, help them to learn how to fail – and to survive through failure. Because, after all, Bri Larson is right. Life is full of failures, both little and big. And, if our children are to be successful, we have help them to learn to keep trying, and not let individual failures define who they are.

Perhaps it is more helpful as a parent to think about how we are going to talk to our children when they don’t get an A or when they don’t make the team or get the part in the school play. All children experience these disappointments and all children feel badly about them. 

Here are some things you can do as a parent:

1. Make goals small. Starting in infancy, when your baby is trying to learn something new, encourage them. But also, watch out if you notice yourself comparing what your baby is doing to what other babies are doing.

2. Concentrate on your own child. Stay in the moment with your own baby or child. Stay with them where they are.

3. Make your goals small for your child. Help them to accomplish tiny milestones; for example, an extra minute of tummy time, one new word, one spoonful of a new food, or for an older child, getting a B when their last grade in that subject was a C.

4. Help build frustration tolerance. The famous psychoanalyst, Heinz Kohut, coined the term “optimal frustration”. He talked about how important it is for people to learn to tolerate some frustration – not so much that they feel like giving up – but enough that they feel challenged. When your baby or your child gets frustrated, whether it’s building a tower that won’t stay up, or learning the letter R, just tell them, “It’s hard. But it’s OK. We’ll try again later.” Build in the idea that some things are difficult but you can take a break…and then keep trying later….after you’re done being frustrated.

5. Check your own expectations. As children get older, keep checking your expectations, keep setting your goals small and keep helping your child to keep their goals small. For some kids, a more appropriate expectation than getting all A’s is establishing longer and longer periods of doing homework. For a child who can’t sit still for an hour, success might mean doing 20 minutes of homework when they only used to be able to do five.

6. Normalize failure. Tell your child your own stories of failure. Tell them how you reacted. Tell them about Larson and what she said and how she persevered through lots and lots of failure.

7. Talk to your children when they are not in the middle of feeling frustrated. Talk about how hard it is to not get what you want or to succeed in the way they want. Talk to them about frustrated feelings and how hard they are. Encourage them to take breaks when they are frustrated with a math problem or with their average when shooting baskets. Encourage them to come back to the activity later when they feel less tired and frustrated.

We want our children to learn how to live in the real world and to endure both the downs and the ups of life. It is important that we think about how to best do this — and how our own expectations may play a part in how our children do or do not “succeed” and ultimately feel about themselves as people.

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Related posts:

The Importance of Failure

Do Smartphones Encourage Anxious Attachment?

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

This week, we were talking about smartphones in our parents’ group. Specifically, we were talking about how parents use them to contact their kids all day long. Afterward, one mother commented that perhaps our fondness for our phones has to do with attachment.Maybe having a phone with us, and being able to contact our loved ones at a moment’s notice, has to do with our need to stay connected, and in particular, our old, infantile wish to always be able to be in close proximity to our mothers. As John Bowlby said, this is a matter of survival for all infants – going back to our primate roots, crying in order to make sure our mother comes to us made sure we were not left behind in the forest. Staying connected was crucial!

The mom who brought up this issue is in training to be a psychoanalyst herself. She remembered being told by her psychoanalyst-mentor, that he thought that people carried water bottles and phones everywhere these days because they were a way to gratify our early wish to stay attached to Mommy, and therefore to feel safe and secure.

But is there a cost to adults of relying so much on phones, of indulging in this regressive kind of behavior?

Is it useful to us, psychologically speaking, to be able to contact everyone all the time?

Are we meant, as adults, to remain so tethered to one another throughout our daily lives?

Prior to about 2010, parents often did not know exactly where their children were and they couldn’t necessarily get in touch with them right away. The same with partners and spouses. People had to accept this and tame whatever anxiety they might have had about their loved ones’ whereabouts and activities.​ Prior to smartphones we had to rely on our object constancy, and our internalized images of our loved one, that is, our ability to keep our loved ones in mind, in order to keep them with us (psychologically speaking) throughout the day.

Aditionally, prior to the advent of smartphones, people had more autonomy. And they had more privacy. If they so chose, they could spend time without anyone knowing where they were. They could not be tracked and they could not be called.

Now, we can text or call almost anyone at any time. And if a parent texts a child or teen, they expect to hear back within a matter of minutes. And if they don’t? There’s panic – or anger – or both. Where is he? Why isn’t he getting back to me? What’s going on?

The mother I mentioned at the beginning of this post suggested that smartphones promote anxious attachment. And I thought this was a brilliant idea. Of course, this is an extension of the original concept of anxious attachment – but I think the term can be useful, if loosely applied here. It is true that we expect to be able to contact and know the whereabouts of those we love at all times. And it is also true that we seem to be unable to trust in the ongoing being of our loved ones. Our ability to hold them in our minds with a feeling of confidence that they are alright and will return to us has been dramatically reduced. We check and we check and we check on one another all day long.

Much has been written about attachment styles, and a great deal of what has appeared in popular literature and online is inaccurate. The originator of this term and the person who did the initial research which led to the coining of the term was psychologist and researcher, Mary Main. She defined anxious attachment as an insecure attachment style that develops when a caregiver is inconsistently available, leading the child to become highly distressed when separated from the caregiver but not comforted by their return. This style is rooted in the child’s uncertainty about whether their needs will be met, causing them to be preoccupied with the relationship, constantly seeking reassurance and often showing clingy or demanding behaviors. 

But these days, it’s the parents who show an anxious attachment style. And perhaps smartphones have something to do with this. When our children are inconsistently available, it makes us distressed. We expect to hear back from our kids and our partners immediately after we text or call them. And if we don’t, we become anxious. Perhaps this is like the babies who cry or call out for their mothers and are sometimes left without a response from her. If this happens often enough and for long enough, the infant or toddler can feel that the parent is unreliable, and they can feel worried about whether their mothers will come to care for them. In fact, they can worry about their very survival; they can feel insufficiently cared for. And they can become anxiously attached.

Perhaps it is the intermittent nature of the text messages from our children and other loved ones which makes ​adults feel the same way. Anxious. Unsure. Wanting to hear back immediately. And we all know that intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful kind of reinforcement. The behavior which is intermittently reinforced increases. Hence more calling and​ more texting. 

If thwarted in their desire to contact their kids or partners, parents can become the ones demonstrating demanding behavior. They are the ones who become clingy and anxious.

We have become so used to being able to locate one another at all times that our emotional muscles have gotten flabby. We ​no longer rely on our internalized images of our loved ones, we no longer utilize our capacity for object constancy. We are no longer able to tolerate uncertainty about exactly where a child or a partner is. We have become unable to wait to hear a report about how the test went or how the day was.

Is ​it good for us as parents to be so tethered to our phones – and to our children?

And is it good for kids to be so tethered to their phones – and to us? 

And what does this do to the development of kids’ feelings of independence, autonomy and responsibility? And to adults’ feelings of trust and confidence in our kids, and in each other?

These questions may not have definitive answers, but they are worth thinking about.

And as for what you might want to do about this as a parent, how about asking your children, teens, and college-aged kids about how often they want to be in touch? How about asking if they mind that you track them? How about asking what they feel is intrusive and what they find helpful? And if they seem to be the ones texting a lot, how about talking about why this might be and if there are some worries behind this?

Kids of all ages need to feel competent, they need some independence (how much will depend on their age), and it is worth discussing how to promote and encourage this.

And parents, it may be time to reevaluate how much you text and track and check and expect from your kids and from each other. 

What Kids Say Would Get Them Off Their Phones

~ corinnemasur2331 ~ Leave a comment

Recently, The Atlantic published a fantastic article about kids and phones in which the authors uncovered what kids in our country really want to be doing with their time.

To look at this question, Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids, Zach Rausch, senior research scientist at NYU, and Jonathan Haidt, renowned social psychologist, helped to conduct a Harris Poll in which kids themselves were asked what would get them off their phones and what kinds of activities they prefer.

The results?

Kids want unstructured time to play with their friends.

And their parents aren’t allowing this.

We blame phones, we blame social media, we blame gaming for kids not playing outside and with friends more, but it seems to be time to look at ourselves.

In the poll, 500 kids between 8 and 12 were asked for their opinions. A majority reported having smartphones, and about half of the 12-year-olds said their friends are on social media.

Kids spend more time than we would like on these devices. But what light did the poll shed on this?

Most of the kids polled said they aren’t allowed out in public without an adult. Over half of the 8- and 9-year-olds said they aren’t allowed to go down a grocery aisle alone, and over a quarter are not allowed to play unsupervised with friends.

So what has childhood become, if not a time to play? Well, it seems it has become a series of curated classes and activities aimed at structured learning and eventual success. But what about what we know about experiential learning? The kind of learning that takes place when kids are hands-on, when they make judgments for themselves, when they have to solve problems on their own?

We know that experiential learning is an effective form of learning—and a necessary part of a child’s education. We know, as David Kolb, psychologist and learning theory specialist, said, that the acquisition of knowledge can best be done through direct experience, reflection, and application. Listening to someone tell you how to do something is not as good a way to learn how to do it as trying to do it for yourself. And we know that making mistakes is a better teacher than being warned not to make mistakes. Trying to jump from one rock to the next and falling teaches caution. Being told not to make that jump teaches a child not to try risky things.

Parents have always wanted their children to be careful and avoid harm. But for some reason, parenting has recently become a never-ending surveillance activity. Parents feel they have to be on hand at all times to teach, to warn, and to protect, or they need to put their children in activities where other adults serve the surveillance function.

And why are parents doing this?

Well, it is clearly because of their love for their children—and their anxiety. Parents are so anxious that their children are going to get hurt or kidnapped that they are preventing their children from having unsupervised time. And they feel this way despite the facts. Crime is down in many places, and kidnappings are extremely rare. Of course, each parent needs to assess his or her own neighborhood, but in many areas, more free outside play just cannot be considered dangerous.

And the thing is, kids who are kept inside at home are going to go onto their phones if they have them.

So what is a parent to do?

Well, first, I think parents need to look at their own anxieties to see where they come from and whether they are fact-based.

Second, parents need to think about how they were raised and what kind of play activities they liked and learned from.

Third, parents need to try to allow more unstructured time for their children to play with other kids. Parents will need to make efforts at first to quell their own anxiety about doing this, and then they will need to find opportunities for free play that they feel are reasonable for their own situations.

Fourth, parents need to look for opportunities in their own communities for children to get together and play without too much imposed structure. Is there a park or a program nearby? A community pool or a rec center? Is there a playground where kids can be left for an hour or two?

In Piedmont, California, a network of parents started dropping their kids off at the park every Friday to play unsupervised. Elsewhere, churches, libraries, and schools are creating screen-free “play clubs.” To ease the transition away from screens and supervision, the Outside Play Lab at the University of British Columbia developed a free online tool that helps parents figure out how to give their kids more outdoor time, and why they should.

As Skenazy, Haidt, and Rausch say, “Granting (kids) more freedom may feel uncomfortable at first. But if parents want their kids to put down their phones, they need to open the front door.”

Kids want to be with their friends—and if they can’t do it in person, they’re going to do it online.

References

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/kids-smartphones-play-freedom/683742/

Helping Teens With Phone Use

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Recently, I read an article in The New York Times about some teens on Long Island who started a newspaper. And what was interesting to me about this was why they did it. Several of them were quoted as saying they were bored with scrolling on their phones.

They wanted something else to do – something to get them out of their bedrooms, interacting with each other and using their minds.

Even teens are getting bored with scrolling.

We all assume that teens love both their phones and the social media they can access on them. But, as it turns out, there are other feelings involved.

Delany Ruston, MD, founder of Screenagers, says she sees a lot of teens in her medical practice who wish they didn’t spend so much time on social media but who find cutting back really hard.

And, in fact, she has put together a program, Boostingbravery.com, to help teenagers support each other in making healthier screen choices.

In her recent post, Dr. Ruston talks about an interesting phenomenon amongst screen users, including teens: people who scroll out of boredom often feel even more bored after scrolling.

But, she says, it’s not just how much teens and others use screens, it’s also how they use their screens.  She quotes Katie Davis of University of Washington’s Digital Youth Lab, who has done research in this area. Davis has found that while scrolling can lead to boredom, active use of screens to create something, message someone, post something meaningful or search for specific content can lead to more positive feelings. 

Evidently, using a screen actively promotes very different feelings than being the passive recipient of news, videos and everyone else’s posts.

How about helping your teen (and possibly yourself…) to learn more about the feelings evoked by these various types of screen use – and to exercise some new choices?

Try some of these suggestions:

1. Take a hint from the Long Island teens who started a newspaper and support your teen if they want to start a project with friends, go somewhere (safe) outside of the house or engage in projects at home. Do all you can to keep these activities going.

2. Tell them about what you’ve learned here. Make sure they know that active use of their screens to create something new can lead to more positive feelings than just passive scrolling.

3. Plan activities outside of the house at least once a day on weekend and vacation days. Make sure you get buy-in from your teen. And try to make at least some of these activities ones that require your teen’s full attention so that you don’t have to forbid phones – but the phones have to be put down as part of the activity. It’s almost summer: try canoeing, kayaking, learning to row, hiking, a picnic, swimming, snorkeling, visiting a local garden, museum or art gallery, planting and taking care of some herbs and vegetables, going to minor or major league games, walking around a nearby city, taking a train somewhere new.

You get the idea.

4. Start the conversation. Talk about scrolling and boredom. Tell your teen if you have felt bored while scrolling or after doing so – and ask them if they have.

5. Ask your teen what new things or new projects they would like to start. If they have no idea, don’t start making a million suggestions – just tell them to think about it and get back to you.

All of these ideas are good – but don’t get discouraged if your teen stares you down and goes back to their phone when you suggest them. Just bring up the issues I’ve mentioned here now and then, and hope for some discussion.

References

https://www.screenagersmovie.com/blog/help-your-teen-cut-back-on-social-media?utm_source=TTT+and+Movie&utm_campaign=9693445686-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_TTT505&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-e0518a1e9b-160707841&mc_cid=9693445686&mc_eid=38d3a9d11c

Have You Watched “Adolescence”?

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It takes a certain amount of bravery to get through the Netflix mini-series Adolescence. It is compelling but also harrowing, showing a family’s intense pain when their thirteen-year-old is accused of committing a terrible crime.

This show is being thought about, discussed, and written about all over the media. 

But what is the show about? Is it about what the internet has done to childhood? Or is it about mental illness? Or perhaps the intersection of the two?

Spoiler alert: if you haven’t seen the show and you don’t want to know what happens, stop reading here.

In Adolescence, a thirteen-year-old is accused of killing a classmate. And for the first two episodes, it is just impossible to believe that he has actually done this. Sweet-faced and smart, this boy looks to have barely reached puberty and his obvious love and respect for his father make you want to believe that he is a good kid who has been falsely accused.

But as the show moves on, as inconceivable as it seems, the viewer is led to believe that he is, indeed, the murderer.

But, as the viewer you want to know: why did he do it? And how could he have? 

And this is where the impact of social media and the boy’s difficulties with his mental health intersect.

It becomes clear that the victim made fun of the boy. And she did it, as is so often the case now, on social media. And how she did it was subtle, speaking in the secret and nuanced language of adolescence: emojis. Tiny, seemingly harmless symbols – which turn out to convey enormous, humiliating insults. Through these emogis the girl lets it be known that the boy she is targeting is unwanted, unappealing, ugly…  and perhaps even an incel, one of those angry men who can’t get a woman to go out with them and who are resultingly furious with all women as a result. Or, as one boy in the show puts it, a virgin for life.

This is a deeply cutting insult for a boy, of course, but is it enough to lead him to murder? 

After all, teasing between adolescent boys and girls has gone on since time immemorial.

Certainly we can look to the internet for introducing kids to the overstimulation of porn and to concepts such as the incel. We can blame social media for widening the scope of teasing to include everyone in a given school, and beyond, in the larger internet community. And this obviously amplifies the impact of teasing to ever more humiliating heights – but again, is this enough to drive a thirteen-year-old to murder?

We know that this sort of teasing has driven some kids to suicidal actions – and to completed suicides.

But again, in these cases, too, is it just the teasing? And the social media advertisement of the teasing?

I think not.

In the final episodes of Adolescence, we find out some interesting things. We find that the boy in question has a problem with his anger. He can escalate to violence and when he does he can be cruel, impulsive, destructive. We find out that despite his sweet face and his obviously good intellect, once angry, he cannot calm himself down without firm limits from outside of himself. And we find out that his parents did nothing about this.

This was a boy who was allowed to sit alone in his room with the door shut to look at whatever he wanted on his computer, including, evidently, humiliating posts and reactions to his posts by the kids in his class. And this was also a boy whose obvious anger was not seen as anything more than an echo of his father’s anger, who was not helped to understand this anger and who was never provided with any help to learn how to bring himself back from it.

This was a boy like so many children, who was left largely on his own not only to deal with social media but to deal with the darkness contained in social media and with his own darkness, his own rage and his own difficulty containing it. Yes, he was egged on by social media. He was insulted by his peers publicly and he was rejected by a girl he wanted – but he was also neglected by an educational system that was obviously immune to the real needs of children and by a loving set of parents who just did not seem to know whether or how to help him.

The portrayal of this boy, as I imagine the creators of the show intended, is similar to the description of so many of our school shooters. It is the profile of so many adolescents, often boys, who go unnoticed and unhelped by ever more overburdened, underfunded and undercaring educational and mental health systems.

This is the boy who needs us. This is the boy who needs to be seen, and heard, and supported at school and through early intervention. His are the parents who also need support and guidance. And he is the boy and they are the parents we are failing.

What’s Up With Hook-ups?

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Hook-up culture has been around for a while. Often fueled by alcohol, these encounters avoid all the the preliminaries – the flirting, the talking, the “dates”.

Kids in their teens as well as young adults are getting drunk and having sex of one sort or another… and then ghosting each other.

But why?

And what can they possibly be getting out of this?

Delaney Ruston of “Screenagers” recently released a podcast and a blog post on this subject and she interviewed Dr. Lisa Wade, author of American Hook-up: The New Culture of Sex on Campus.

According to Wade, kids in high school and college often feel that “everyone is doing it”, referring to hooking up.

So perhaps one motivation for hook-ups is to be doing what “everybody” else is doing.

But there must be more.

Having an intimate encounter with someone can involve allowing oneself to be vulnerable. And allowing vulnerability, often leads to feelings of closeness and connection – which is something most teens want.

But teens who opt for hook-ups are getting the vulnerability and the physical closeness with none of the emotional connection.

Why opt for this?

I wonder if some teens – whether in high school or college – are avoiding something by engaging in hook-ups. I wonder if they are avoiding the anxiety of acknowledging that they like someone, taking the risk of contacting that person and actually talking with them face to face. I wonder if the anxiety and the potential for an awkward encounter – or even worse, for disappointment – is keeping some kids from trying.

But why is this more true now than ever before? Why is there even a hook-up “culture” at this point in history?

Could the isolation of COVID, combined with the usual awkwardness of adolescence and the prevalence of social media have made it harder for many adolescents to socialize face to face?

Of course, it is true that casual dating decreased during COVID. It was harder to meet people and it was harder to get together without the risk of exposure to illness. (2)

But the desire for a relationship did not decrease. This put teens in a difficult position. The longer kids were in isolation, the more many kids looked forward to the rewards of getting back to socializing and potentially finding a romantic relationship. (1)

However, hook-up culture existed pre-COVID and still exists post-COVID. So the appeal of the hook-up must transcend the loss of opportunities and the lack of social skills kids experienced as a result of COVID.

So this leaves me to speculate: I think there was always a certain amount of hooking-up. I think that kids have been having substance-fueled sex for a long, long time. But perhaps the prevalence of hook-ups now points to something more malignant.

At this point, many teens and young adults seem ill at ease with one-on-one interactions. And this is true even when it comes to the phone. Recently I read that one teen likened hearing his phone ring to being stabbed in the chest. People in this age group do not like to talk on the phone. They seem to lack confidence in their ability to hold down a one-on-one conversation. Even worse, for some, is getting together. Many kids prefer to stay on their beds. Many don’t have “friends” anymore – if they have anything, they have remote friends they talk to on social media or with whom they play video games. At best, they have “friend groups”. While sometimes they may get together one-on-one, more often the group does things together.

Something has happened to teens and young adults in regard to their ability to tolerate contact and intimacy.

And it is not just a few teens and young adults, it is many.

I suspect the advent of contact through screens has something to do with this – but perhaps not all of it. With the use of video gaming and social media, kids no longer have to leave the house to get stimulation. Now it can be had from the comfort of bed or basement. Social skills are no longer needed. And there are not nearly as many opportunities to practice what social skills a teen may have, or to make mistakes and recover, or to experiment.

I also think that one one-on-one conversations and interpersonal interactions are not demanded of teens and young adults often enough. Parents AND children spend hours each day on their phones. Even when they are together, parents are not talking to kids as much and kids are not talking to their parents as much as in previous generations.

And at school, as I wrote about in my last post, kids are on their phones at least some of the day, rather than interacting with each other. And at some schools and in some classrooms, kids use their computers rather than engaging in classroom discussion and debate.

The malignant thing I referred to earlier is not just the proliferation of screens, it is not just the aftermath of the isolation of COVID, it is our teenagers’ loss of faith in themselves as social beings.

And it is contributed to by our allowing teens to hide behind screens, stay on their beds, and avoid interpersonal interaction.

I think hook-ups, in many cases, are the workarounds that many kids have found to get to have sex and contact without having to utilize much in the way of social skills.

But hook-ups are a desperate workaround, a decidedly second-rate, often risky, and more often hurtful and disappointing way to try to get something rather than to risk what kids fear: getting nothing in the way of romance or sex.

One male student said:

“Most of the time, it’s not a fun experience. Sometimes it’s great, but more often than not, people are kind of left feeling maybe a little bit regretful, kind of embarrassed, awkward. There’s pressure to hook up, but if you don’t, you feel like you’re missing out.” He added, “If you hook up with someone and they don’t text you after, that can be pretty hurtful.” 1

This is only one student, but I suspect he speaks for many others. Hook-ups meet a basic desire for sex, but they don’t meet any of the other needs that teens have for interpersonal relatedness and connection, for affection, support, and validation.

References

1 Ruston, Delany. 2025. Is Hookup Culture Really the Norm? Feb. 18.


 Kuperberg, Arielle (2022). Dating during COVID-19: A sociologist’s perspective.


2 Breaux R, Cash AR, Lewis J, Garcia KM, Dvorsky MR, Becker SP. Impacts of COVID-19 quarantine and isolation on adolescent social functioning. Curr Opin Psychol. 2023 Aug;52:101613. Epub 2023 Jun 1. PMID: 37364468; PMCID: PMC10232930.Ki

How Much Time Do Teenagers Actually Spend on Their Phones at School?

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Screen use amongst children and teens in the US and elsewhere is an enormous concern – with adolescents aged 13 – 18 spending an average of 8.5 hours daily on screen-based media. This is at least one-half of all their waking hours – and it is time that could be spent in so many other ways.

And some of these 8.5 hours of phone use take place in school.

Yes, kids are on their phones at school.

The issue of whether kids should even have their smartphones with them during the school day is one that comes up again and again – including in this blog. Some parents feel it is a safety precaution in case their children need to get in touch with them. Others feel that phones are a distraction from learning and are better left in lockers or in a central location at school.

But there has been very little good data concerning how much time kids actually spend on their phones at school to date.

Finally, however, there is a study which looks at this. Just published in the Journal of The American Medical Association Pediatrics, this study begins to help us understand kids’ phone use at school.

The researchers not only answered the question of how much time kids spend on their phones but they also looked at what kids are doing on their phones during school hours.

As it turns out, kids spend an average of an hour and a half on their smart phones over the course of a six-and-a-half-hour school day. But a quarter of kids spend more than two hours on their phones while at school. And the most looked at apps or categories of phone use are messages, Instagram, video streaming, audio and email.

These are very revealing findings. They are not surprising….but they are shocking. The researchers who performed this study said, “Parents and adolescents may derive benefit from access to phones for communication and learning purposes during school. However, application usage data from this study suggest that most school-day smartphone use appears incongruous with that purpose. The analyses show high levels of social media use during school.”1

In other words, kids are not just using their phones to communicate with their parents during the school day. They are using their phones for the same purposes they use them out of school: scrolling social media, watching YouTube, etc.

It is time for us as a society, and for parents as individuals to think about whether this is the best use of kids’ time – both in school and out.

This is the third in a series on phone use in school.

Footnotes/References

1 Christakis DA, Mathew GM, Reichenberger DA, Rodriguez IR, Ren B, Hale L. Adolescent Smartphone Use During School Hours. JAMA Pediatr. Published online February 03, 2025. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.66

Does Your Teen Hate Social Media?

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I know, I know. Most teens love it and are on their phones 24/7. But do you have one of those rare teens who is just … over it? Who sees through all the curated images of life? Who is actually tired of sitting on their bed all day and watching life go by through a screen?

Because, if you do, they are not alone.

A New York Times reporter, Alex Vadukul, has written two stories on a group of teens in Brooklyn who started something they call “The Luddite Club”.

Biruk Watling, was one of the founders. Now a student at Temple University in Philadelphia, she says that she and some friends from high school started the club in 2022. They gathered in Prospect Park on the weekends sketching, painting, reading … and most radical of all, talking together. 

They named their club after the bands of English workers who destroyed new machinery in cotton and woolen mills from 1811 to 1816, because they believed the machinery was threatening their jobs. These days, we use the name Luddite to describe people who oppose new technology.

Logan Lane, one of the members of the club in Brooklyn,  said, “Like other iPad kids, I found myself from the age of 10 longing to be famous on apps like Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok. My phone kept the curated lives of my friends with me wherever I went, following me to the dinner table, to the bus stop, and finally to my bed where I fell asleep groggy and irritable, often at late hours in the night, clutching my device.” Then at 14, she had a revelation while sitting by the Gowanus Canal. She said, “I felt the sudden urge to throw my iPhone in the water. I saw no difference between the garbage on my phone and the garbage surfacing on the polluted canal”. A few months later she signed off on social media and put her smartphone in a drawer. 

The Luddite Club members all got flip phones so they could call people and used their computers for homework – but otherwise, they tried to stay away from electronic media.

Now Biruk is recruiting members for a new Luddite Club at college. But just because she and her friends have tried to embrace this lifestyle does not mean they find it easy.

 Sometimes they feel left out. Odile Dexter, another founding member of the club says that she has resisted using technology since high school but she is sad that everyone at college uses dating apps and she cannot. Another member said she tried to adhere to the lifestyle but ended up getting a smartphone because she needed to order an Uber now and then. Many of the club members agreed that it is harder to live without using a smartphone these days.

It’s just not easy giving up technology. It’s omnipresent – but that hasn’t stopped more clubs from forming. There is one at Brooklyn Tech, one at Telluride High School in Colorado, one at Oberlin College and one each at high schools and colleges in Seattle, West Palm Beach, Florida, Richmond, Va., South Bend, Indiana, and Washington, DC.

If you have a teen who’s had it with social media, tell them about these clubs and maybe your teen will want to start one, too.

And if your kids are still loving their phones, try these ideas, as suggested by Andrew McPeak, who wrote an article on the subject:

1. Expose your kids to shows and articles about children and teens who are making different choices about their use of social media.

2. Bring up the question of how your kids’ media choices are affecting them and encourage your school to do the same.

3. Plan device-free activities, times, days and vacations for your family – and this means you too!!!

For more info on Luddite Clubs:

https://www.theludditeclub.org

References

Vaduku, Alex. Still averting social media’s grip. The New York Times, February 2, 2025.

McPeak, Andrew. A new wave of teens are pulling away from social media. Growing Leaders. https://growingleaders.com/a-new-wave-of-teens-are-breaking-away-from-social-media/