26: Friendships: How to support your ‘generation isolation’ teens to build their social skills.

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Our teens have been dubbed Generation Isolation by the UK charity OnSide. It follows a poll which showed that 77% of young people spend most of their free time at home and 73%  spend most of their free time on screens.

The charity says that while online communication is important and has some benefits, its dominance means young people are missing out on the face-to-face interactions that build social skills, confidence, self-esteem, resilience and empathy.   

Whilst it's normal for teens to spend a lot of time alone in their rooms there seems to have been a general change in the amount of physical time that teens are spending socialising. We'll talk another time about parties, and managing them, but this time we discuss those all-important social skills and what we, as parents, can do to hep our teens develop them.

RESOURCES:

• https://parents.au.reachout.com/skills-to-build/wellbeing/things-to-try-friendships
• https://news.virginia.edu/content/peers-or-parents-study-shows-strong-friendships-set-teens-success-later-life

BOOKS:

• How to Win Friends and Influence People for Girls, by Donna Dale Carnegie.
• How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age, Dale Carnegie Training.
• The Social Survival Guide for Teens on the Autism Spectrum: How to Make Friends and Navigate Your Emotions by Lindsey Sterling

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