Dial Out Of Your Screens — And Dial In To Your Teens

Most adolescents need conversation, not medication.

When I see your face
There’s not a thing that I would change
’Cause you’re amazing
Just the way you are.

— Bruno Mars

Our teenagers have been never more “connected”. Thanks to Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok, Discord and BeReal, they’re never alone.

Yet never have they been so lonely. Never have they been so disconnected from actual friendship.

Embedded in an online milieu crowded with teens seeking “likes”, they scroll through posts displaying faces and bodies artificially brushed into perfection and presented as “reality” — a “reality” they themselves can never attain.

It’s a toxic cycle of compare and despair. They never measure up. They’re never “enough”.

It’s no wonder that so many of them are anxious, given their perpetual soaking in inferiority; it’s no wonder that rates of teen anorexia and depression and self-harm have skyrocketed.

Social media is anti-social media for a host of our teens: a digital highway to isolation, unhappiness, and debilitating anxiety.

The deep irony in all this is that by most metrics there’s never been a better time to be alive.