“What Is Communication?” is the twelfth of sixteen teen articles received in spring 2024 from Piute High School students. Three of them were published in The Byway‘s most recent May paper. The rest will be featured online.
Teens are losing the ability to socialize without their phone. They are becoming more attached to their devices every day, making it harder for them to enjoy life outside of a screen. Many other important skills are being lost due to the excessive use of devices. Teens are simply addicted to technology. Their social skills are getting wiped away more and more everyday. In order to help solve this problem, teens need to be taught communication skills.
Nowadays sending a picture to someone or liking their post is considered talking to someone. That is what teens know as communicating. They cannot even go an hour without using their phones. In the article “Teenagers Are Over Face-to-Face Communication, Study Says” Katy Steinmetz says, “About one-third of respondents said that they never, or hardly ever, put their phones away when visiting family, doing homework or having a meal with someone. An even higher proportion (55%) say that their phones are almost always out when they’re spending time with friends.” When friends are hanging out, at some point they get on their phone. They each go onto a different platform to entertain themselves because they can’t even entertain each other. So “let’s hang out” actually means “let’s sit on our phones next to each other.”
At any public social event, there are many adults and teens. The adults are often talking to the people around them. The teens are often glued to their screen having no idea what is going on around them. They could easily start a conversation with the kids around them, but they do not even know there are other kids because they are too busy talking with their online friends.
A phone can be a drug. Once someone is on it for only a few minutes, they cannot get off. For many teens, it becomes a daily routine to use the screen until it takes over their life, and that is all they want to do. In the article “Technology Addiction – Teen & Young Adult” Clint Mally states, “Screens and technology are all around us in our daily lives. For young people especially, the rise of technology has changed the way we live our lives.” Technology can be addictive. Communicating with someone is one of the hardest things for teens to do. It scares them. They do not know how to interact face to face. Parents will tell their kid to go deliver a gift to the neighbor, but the kid will get nervous and complain. Why is that? This is because they do not know how to talk to someone. Even delivering a gift to someone is scary for them because of the inability to communicate.
Parents and peers need to start teaching teens how to better communicate without a screen. Parents could find communication classes or just practice having a conversation with their teen. Teachers at school could also help teach communication skills and help students recover the ability to talk face to face. With the help of relearning how to communicate, teens will be able to interact with others more proficiently without the need of a screen.
– by Hadley Morgan (10th) Circleville
Feature image courtesy of Abbie Call, The Byway.
Read more from Piute teens in Collaborating against Human Trafficking by Nash Fautin.