Parents, put down your phone or risk raising the mute generation

PARENTS must teach kids how to put down their phones and instead use facial muscles and brains to communicate, writes Louise Roberts.

MAKE it a priority to ­expose your child to the uncomfortable side of life.

Not through cruelty or depriving them of food and water but those human interactions punctuated by awkwardness where the only thing that will save you is practise.

And by this I mean practise, in front of your kids, at being a charming human who can navigate the slings and arrows and faux pas while everyone else falls overboard the good ship Manners.

This is your duty as a parent because, if a recent study into mobile phone use is any guide, we have a young generation mute on our hands.

Now, teens’ vice-like grip on smartphones is no secret.

But what’s interesting is that phones aren’t used primarily by young people to make phone calls anymore. How would I have survived my teens without hours holed up in my bedroom, the curly cord of the wall-mounted phone in the kitchen stretched to breaking point while I yakked on about nothing, everything and who was the most annoying person on the planet?

But the art of conversation now is frankly less important in 2017 than the efficient getting of information.

And that’s before we get to the issue of society’s PC paralysis, where it is nigh on impossible to air an opinion that hasn’t already been signed off by the Thought Police.

There’s nothing smart about phones that cheat young people of the opportunity to learn to converse. (Pic: iStock)

This week a survey from the British communications regulator revealed that 15 per cent of 16-24-year-olds don’t want to use their phone to speak to people. The attitude is: tell me what you want via a text and, if it is important, I will get back to you.

Ofcom found teenagers would even message people sitting in the same room, within arm’s reach.

“Respondents (admitted) to instant messaging, texting or emailing others even when they are in the same room as them. Just over a quarter (26 per cent) of adults said they communicated with another person while in the same room as them at home, rising to 49 per cent of teens,” the survey said.

This conversation choke is a serious problem in Australia too, clawing at the seams of society and threatening to unravel how we function ­together. Rather than be themselves and all the awkward lessons that brings, young people want to curate their responses with an instantaneous but precise control over what and when they say it.

Never has it been more important for kids to be heard rather than seen, in contrast to the old line about being seen and not heard. And that’s because talking is not just words.

We have to encourage the next generation to operate ­unplugged and unedited while they exercise the muscles in their face and brain and read social cues in ­expressions and body language.

This will also help them to understand how to appropriately manage conflict and face-to-face confrontation. With texting they lose the whys, the colours and the emotion.

All of a sudden conversation ­becomes a black and white exchange of words to convey information, stripped of learning how to read other people’s emotions and respond empathically.

As each generation slips further into the online world, will we evolve to the point where we rarely speak?

I have a colleague who says he ­absorbed invaluable tips on how to deal with a variety of people just by casually listening to his eloquent ­father on the telephone.

As a child, I never knew what the other person said when my mum rang to offer her condolences to an acquaintance or family member. I just watched transfixed at mum’s shapeshifting voice and body language. You can’t download an app for that.

If we are to engage our children, we need to show them we can do it too. Otherwise imagination and ­initiative are the victims and we know these skills are crucial for sustainability in adult life.

Being able to tolerate the discomfort is not something kids will survive unless we as their parents make it a priority.

In the normal course of adolescent development, they would be able to practise asserting themselves and forming independent opinions. ­Mobile phones have changed all that.

As adults now we at least have ­experience talking to strangers when forced to. But how do you develop those skills if you’ve had a phone to stare at every time you didn’t want to make eye contact?

Children learn from facial expressions and social cues when people interact. Blank faces staring at phones don’t offer much in the way of this. (Pic: iStock)

If you can’t just force the issue, take baby steps. Instead of dragging them kicking and screaming to the dinner table, go out for a meal and leave all devices locked away in the glove box, or better still at home.

Have your children’s friends over for dinner and model good behaviour. When was the last time you had a face-to-face conversation with your bestie or are you guilty of taking your phone to the table (assuming you eat as a family at a table every other night) just in case you get “that ­important message”?

Have we taken the road of “Well, if I can’t beat them, I might as well do it myself”?

When I moved to London as a young reporter, I learned the hard way not to strike up conversation on the Underground.

Alighting at Piccadilly Circus, I made eye contact with one or two Brits in daft hope of asking directions only to be mowed down by phalanx of oblivious commuters.

They crushed me against a wall, sent my handbag flying onto the tracks and moved on none the wiser.

I was shell-shocked but had to deal with that non-curated response and the brutal impersonal nature of major city life.

It was a lesson to smile and carry on regardless.

You don’t get that from a screen.

@whatlouthinks

Originally published as Parents, put down your phone or risk raising the mute generation