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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think there are a lot of things going on.  I was seeing crazy high rates on anxiety and OCD and depression in these kids before the pandemic.  Then the pandemic didn’t help.  I also wonder whether the push to have kids so scheduled is also, in its way, isolating.  It seems like a lot of kids “socialize” through activities—clubs or sports.  They are very busy with those.  But are they developing real friendships?  The kind where they can just hang out and be themselves and talk about their hopes, dreams, worries?  My teen has sports practice most nights and is very ride of die with her sports team.  But would any of those kids be friends if the team disbanded?  I guess being busy with activities is better than just flipping through tiktok but it still doesn’t seem to me the same as the sort of friendships we had.  I hear all the time that the kids just sit on their phones or chromebooks at lunch — no one talks.  I drive carpool and the kids are mostly quiet on their phones unless I spark conversation by asking questions, which can sometimes get them talking amongst themselves. [/quote]

Yep, I picked up my 6th grader and a friend from an activity last night and the friend just watched videos on his phone the whole way home. (My kid doesn’t have a phone yet.) I’ve seen this play out a million times. The kids are hooked and it’s so much easier to get lost in your phone than to work on genuine human connections.

As for the sports, I think more activity/movement of any kind would be so helpful, but if a kid doesn’t have the skills by middle school, a lot of them just don’t have many options to be part of a team. Rec sports are harder and harder to find the older they get. There’s so much pressure to specialize at young ages that so few of them seem to play anything for fun by the teen years.[/quote]

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