Our Kids Need Relationships

It was way back in 2011 that MIT Professor Sherry Turkle released her ground-breaking book, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other. Turkle was writing about the growing epidemic of loneliness, precipitated in many ways by our increased screen time, which can leave us in physical proximity with others, but emotionally detached. Today’s teenagers, all part of what’s known as Gen Z, are feeling especially lonely. Some reports show that almost three-fourths of Gen Z’ers feel lonely sometimes or always. For example, the percentage of lonely high school seniors jumped from twenty-six percent in 2012 to thirty-nine percent in 2017. God has made us for relationships. This includes first and foremost our relationship with him, and then our relationships with others. With out those relationships, we suffer. Parents, one step you can take is to carve out times for everyone to shut down their devices, and then to just be together.