Brent Staples Analysis

Brent Staples article “What Adolescents Miss When We Let Them Grow Up in Cyberspace” published in the New York Times, highlights how technology plays a heavy role in adolescent social development. For example, children growing up in the 21st century are bombarded with vast technological media outlets. Also, Staples supports with factual research indicating communicating through technology hinders children social skills. Staples explains how social media and networking has become a virtual reality, encouraging children not to value real-world experiences. Staples argues that adolescents cannot transition into the harsh realities of adulthood because they prefer socializing through virtual realities. Although there are parents who monitor adolescents’

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Staple’s study indicates that adolescents are in isolation when socializing via internet. Socializing through social media comes with a cost, such as lack of physical interactions with friends and loved ones. The author finds communicating with technology can effect a family and other relationships. The lack of adolescent’s social skills starts with the inability to experience person-to-person conversations. Person-to-person conversations give children the ability to hear, and see, contrasting socializing via internet.

In addition, there is a difference between interacting with others over text or social media rather than in person. According to the article “Interpersonal Guidelines for Texting,” Suler (2010) explains the ‘Online Distribution Effect’ which relates to adolescent’s tendency to communicate through text:

People in general tend to be disinhibited in text communication because they cannot see each other, they can send a message then ‘run away,’ and they might start to experience the message as an extension of their own intra-psychic space, where they feel free to think anything…. (p.

Evidence by Subrahmanyam, Kraut, Greenfield, and Gross (2000) states “In this study, those who were lonely or depressed were not more drawn to the Internet. Rather, the HomeNet results suggest that using the Internet in itself caused the declines in social well-being” (p. 135). The conclusion of the studies provides supporting evidence that the internet will cause depression and loneliness, since depressed individuals were not already drawn to the internet. The isolation that comes with internet usage can too add to the less likelihood of face-to-face interaction. The more one is isolated the less contact of friends and family. Adolescents have to be mindful of their usage of the internet and the effects. Social face-to-face interaction skills are a key skill to have in the ‘real-world’ versus a fix virtual