[sandworm101]

>> Watch them cry and talk about how they'll be social outcasts

Until they are. Parent always think that society is the same as it was when they were kids. They think kids can socialize the same way they did in the 80s/90s. That just isn't true anymore. Kids aren't allowed to hang out at malls. Kids don't go to parties. Kids don't listen to CDs with their friends nor get together to play video games in a friend's basement. They don't have cool part time jobs at pizza joints. Kids hang out online. They listen to music online. They work/live/play online. Trying to recreate some 80s nostalgia version of teenage social circles will end in failure every time. Those that don't learn how to exist online will be the ones a step behind their peers at every turn.

[codingdave]

That may be too far the other direction. My teens do hang out at malls, just hang out with friends and listen to music. They do have parties, they have jobs. They do many of the things we did. They also do text between all those things, and coordinate which parents is driving which kids where and when in the process.

It is different, yes. But today's teens are not just sitting in their rooms to be online together. Honestly, they seem fairly similar to how we were, but they have replaced phone calls with apps.

[honkdaddy]

Teens still hang out. Every single weekend night in the summer in my hometown, a hundred plus teens flock to the “pier”, park their cars and bikes, and do what teens do best. Vape, drink, and loudly carry on. It really doesn’t seem all that different from the teen hangouts of the 80s/90s lore, except juuls have replaced cigarettes I suppose.

[mattgreenrocks]

> Those that don't learn how to exist online will be the ones a step behind their peers at every turn.

Worse, they may end up with actual personalities and interests other than scrolling their phone!

[mixmastamyk]

Great recipe to "get ahead" at being a maladjusted-borderline-suicidal-anorexic with poor social and zero survival skills. Thanks helicopter parents!