All the experts I spoke to agreed on this; many kids are struggling to find their footing in the land of virtual friendships. They also believe that technology itself may be at the core of the issue....This isn't in the article, but why not use the telephone? Audio only. That's what I prefer as an adult. Staring into each other's face remotely really is a strange and overly intense activity. With a plain old-fashioned phone call, you can stretch out into the audio dimension and not worry about how you look or what the other person's face means.
My kids had never tried Zoom before now and I didn’t prepare them on how to properly use it.... I have watched several calls among my 8-year-old and his friends in which he became laser-focused on trying to change his virtual background, paying no attention at all to what his friend is saying on the other end of the screen...
“It’s easy for parents to forget that kids aren’t yet experts at small talk,” said Courtney Bolton, Ph.D., a Nashville-based child & family psychologist and parenting coach...
When my kids first bonded with their friends in person, they didn’t sit and stare at each other and talk about the weather. Connection and community came from a shared interest.
It's one thing to look into a face in person. That's our natural life, and one of the very best, most rewarding parts of life. But there's something bad about doing it in video mode, and I think it may be better to have your visual space to yourself, to close your eyes and lie down if you want or to play solitaire while you listen or to pace about and straighten up the room or walk around outdoors.
It's a good thing that kids cannot suppress their dissatisfaction with sitting in front of a video screen looking at a kid. It's good that they're not responsive to the parent's prodding them to be happy about seeing their friends.
Remember when screen time was bad and parents were supposed to limit it?! Let's not lose our natural feeling for the alienness of screens. Putting an equally alienated human on the other side of your screen should not solve the problem. Our longing to get back to real life should be allowed to live, even if that longing hurts.
Don't try to change your kids! The article has tips on how to get them to tolerate and perform better in video chats. I won't quote that part. I say honor the kids' resistance, and get back in touch with yours.
There was a world that we lived in once, and we want it back. The kids want it back.
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Our school system doesn't require any use of technology, so after one or two awkward and pointless class zoom sessions, we quit them altogether -- my kids never noticed or cared that we stopped doing them. They have plenty of neighborhood kids to play with outisde, so we do academics at home (with paper and pencil, no screens) and then they go outside and play all day. We won't be embracing any tech intrusions, pandemic or no.
The huge increase in screen time caused by the shutdown is doing far more damage, to the generation who are kids now, than the coronavirus ever could.
Remember worksheets and workbooks? In their rush to figure out "e-learning", parents and teachers seem to have forgotten that these things exist.
My almost year old granddaughter loves it. It thought it might confuse her to see Grandmom and Grandpop on that flat screen. But she got right into it. Her face lights up every time she sees us.
Since the WuFlu began, I've done group Skype calls with my 3 siblings. We have an appointment for the call, which we call Happy Hour, and it involves adult beverages. It has worked well. Recently we added our parents by telephone to the group, as they are technophobes. It works, but the ones on audio-only don't get the visual cues, so there is more interrupting and cross talk now.
My point, to answer AA, is that audio only is fine one on one, but not so great for group chats. Group chats are becoming a thing.
The popularity of baseball and Softball is the early childhood playing with friends on teams and knowing and keeping the rules. So I say mandatory neighborhood ball fields is the key. It civilized the Japs and Koreans. It will work on the young Americans.
"My almost year old granddaughter loves it. It thought it might confuse her to see Grandmom and Grandpop on that flat screen. But she got right into it. Her face lights up every time she sees us."
I'm going to guess that you keep it short and that, combined with your grandparent subjectivity, makes you see it so positively.
What would you do if you were a grandparent and your grandkids didn't show happiness to see you?
I think grandparents are likely to allow the child to speak as much as possible and don't expect the child to listen to them or even to ask them about themselves and show interest. It's time for the child to chatter about anything that comes to mind and the grandparents show great delight about whatever it is.
The problems described in the article are partly about how the child completely loses interest when the other person is talking.
I agree that this is not acceptable and I won't be a part of normalizing it.
My/our grandkids FaceTime with my wife regularly - especially the youngest (5). He's a chatterbox. He doesn't sit still and stare into the phone - none of them do for long. He's constantly walking around jabbering. All you see is the ceiling and walls and sky - the bottom of his chin and up his nose. Sometimes he'll flip the camera so he can show you something. Sometimes, he'll set the phone down and start playing or fiddling with something while you're left staring at the ceiling or a wall.
FaceTime on a phone is far superior to zoom on a laptop.
"I have watched several calls ...."
Why not just give them some space.
In some ways, the fewer the people in the Zoom, the more uncomfortable people become looking at each other, regardless of age.
In the 1990s, my cousin landed a contract to sell AT&T "Video phones" which ran over a phone line. It was very cool at the time, but the sound and image was like you were speaking to someone on the space shuttle.
People were very uncomfortable speaking one on one while looking at each other, which is why the first time you heard about those phones was probably right now.
The problems described in the article are partly about how the child completely loses interest when the other person is talking.
I wonder if kids not interacting on Zoom is similar to blog commenters not reading the article but just commenting on the blog post about the article.
We're in CA and the grandkids moved to TX two and a half years ago. They lived very close to us in CA and my wife babysat or visited regularly, sometimes daily. I don't know what either would do without FaceTime.
When I was living with and caring for my mother the last year of her life, FaceTime kept us connected.
In my working years I spent considerable time on the phone. Consequently, I hate talking on the phone now. Much rather text.
The panic Nazi's have goals.
None of them have to do with saving lives.
Are you helping?
My kids did a lot of Zooming at the beginning and came up with a great number of games to play over video chat, but now they have mostly lost interest.
Friends and I have discussed how stressful video chatting is. Hanging out in person is relaxing and fun. Video chatting is not like that. I have also noticed that a certain weekly board meeting, that was via video call even prior to COVID-19, has mostly switched to audio only. (I was always audio only, but I used to be the only one.)
I don't even like the phone, much less video chats.
Leave the kids alone!
I enjoy a video chat with my granddaughter when it's computer to computer, but when she calls me to video chat using her mom's iPhone, she spends all of the time putting on funny faces that come with the app. She's having fun, and that's what the phone call is primarily supposed to be, but I get bored with the conversation by the time she's tried all of the faces on again for the 5th time. When it's computer to computer we have real conversations, do some of her school work together, and make plans for when we can really see each other again. I'll stay on a computer video chat with her as long as she stays engaged, but I cut off the iPhone chats after 10 minutes or so.
I think part of the problem is that when you look at people during a video call, you are not looking at the camera. No semblance of eye contact is disorienting.
My soon to be 7 year old granddaughter loves video chatting with friends, and with grandma and grandpa.
She is a pro at setting it up, too.
She gets plenty of play time outside, too. She’s got two siblings to play with and grandpa to take everybody out to play every day.
Trying to create another generation of Safe Space Cry Babies.
Keep resisting, Kids. Go see your friends. Throw the ball around. This is all Bullshit.
Voice chat for video games. Same as they do when there's not a pandemic.
It would be kind of ironic if the kids who play video games are able to maintain connections with friends better than the ones who usually do more "wholesome", in-person, parent-managed activities.
I don't understand why parents are surprised by this. Kids don't talk a lot even when they are together. They play. We've occasionally tried to FaceTime cousins out of state and making funny faces in the camera is the only thing that happens.
I would never try and arrange a zoom play date. Weird. But my 11 year old did talk with a friend over the phone a couple of weeks ago. It helped him feel better. I feel really bad for kids without siblings. We've got plenty to keep us occupied most days.
Both of my kids had their class meetings today. My 4th grader does not like to interact; my 2nd grader is so so with it. I get the point that they are trying to keep connections and the calls are about 30 minutes (give or take) and the teachers have a format to follow. So they share one high and one low of the week. They do get more screen time since my husband and I have to get work done. The level of school work is acceptable and they can get it done in roughly 2.5 to 3 hours depends on how much procrastination they practice.
I also do school work in the morning, kick them outside to play and get some work done. They usually get fun screen team for a bit just before dinner.
I don't like video chats either. I've passed on them throughout the crisis. I am okay with facetime phone calls to specific people, like my parents and close friends. Group chats, I avoid like it is Covid-19.
8 year olds don't socialize by "chatting", they socialize by kicking a ball, climbing a tree in the backyard, building "camps" in a closet, exploring the "woods" (or at least exploring the shrubs in the sterile landscapes neighborhood development park), working on crafts together. I'm glad I don't have grandkids yet - this generation will be scarred by irrational fears for the rest of their lives.
"allergic"
My daughter doesn't do much video or audio chatting. She and her friends text each other on WhatsApp all day. They also make and share large numbers of TickTock videos.
I have two nieces in Colorado, and they FaceTime me about once per week. It's excruciating. They're perfectly lovely girls, but there are only so many rambling, boring stories with no point that I can listen to. It's so much easier to feign interest on audio calls.
Teleconferencing offers the benefits of working from home but with the dress code and hygiene standards of the office. From the waist up anyway.
My wife and I are retired, with one 34 y.o. son and not likely to have grandkids.
Others here are like me--I don't even like long phone calls. Various friends have suggested we try Zoom as substitute gatherings, which we would normally have at our house twice or thrice a year.
Besides being suspicious of Zoom (and every other piece of the tricknology on the Intertubes) I don't want to spend my time talking to screens.
My ideal is right here, though I wish moderation wasn't necessary. Check in a few times a day, skip most threads, learn what I can, comment a bit, and push back--from the computer.
FWIW and since I'm here, if Prof moves to a pay-to-say arrangement I'll probably be history.
Narr
C'est la vie
With a plain old telephone, you can be naked and no one on the other end will ever know.
"Connection and community came from a shared interest."
More precisely, for boys and most men, it comes from shared activity.
"The kids want it back."
They have been cruelly deprived by the alarmists and their panic. The cruelty benefitted no one: not a single sick senior was saved by shutting down K-12. Some kid ought to bring a lawsuit against some gov.
You can do morse code face-to-face, if you're doing it with a friend in study hall.
A pencil or pen rocked over a finger is the usual implement. You need both a make and break click to decipher code.
"No semblance of eye contact is disorienting."
Now you understand why women keep telling you, "My eyes are up here!"
Or they could just turn off the camera and use audio over the computer. One problem with video chats is that the lighting is usually awful and the screen is not at the proper height. Its also very difficult to look into the camera, instead of down at the screen. This leads to people who are literally looking down at you while not looking you in the eye at all. I'm in the tech field and initial interviews using software like Zoom or Skype is pretty common so I got a lot of advice on how to present myself on a video chat to my best advantage from the job transition coaching firm my 2nd to last company paid for.
Remember worksheets and workbooks? In their rush to figure out "e-learning", parents and teachers seem to have forgotten that these things exist.
Before the lock down I saw plenty of those in Costco, at least for K-8. I haven't really looked since then, I wonder if they all got bought out.
Kids, being kids, prefer playing with each other to chatting.
That said, my kids, ranging from five to twelve, love video chatting with their cousins and a couple of their friends. They also enjoy doing their piano lessons through video chat, probably as a welcome relief from their parents.
As a family we spend lots of time every day having "adult" conversations, mainly around the dinner table. So maybe they're better at conversing than some other kids might be. With the exception of my wife, we're all pretty bad at small talk, though. We talk about stuff.
I have a diagnosed autism disorder. I get panic attacks when I have to call someone on the phone. Always have. Telephones terrify me. I like video much better. It's rather strange, because I'm not able to make eye contact -- it wigs my brain out -- and I don't depend on body language and facial expression like other people do. But the telephone makes me feel like I'm floating in a black void alone with a disembodied voice that doesn't exist while it's not speaking. Video adds physical constancy. It's hard to describe. But I like it, even though I'm not necessarily looking right at the person at the other end. And it helps people talk to me, too, because I often fall silent while I'm slowly processing something that's been said, and on video it's easier for the other person to see that I'm thinking and not disengaged.
For the record, I've put in hundreds of hours on Zoom now, with students, colleagues, job applicants, and community organization members. My students hate it but it works. And for everything else it's been great.
I never did video calls. I thought they were invented for grandkids and grandparents to connect. So I thought kids would be used to them. I do enjoy group zoom calls. But only with folks I know well enough not to care what they think of my appearance or background. Business conference calls are strictly telephonic still.
“I think grandparents are likely to allow the child to speak as much as possible and don't expect the child to listen to them or even to ask them about themselves and show interest. It's time for the child to chatter about anything that comes to mind and the grandparents show great delight about whatever it is.”
True, exactly what happens when FaceTiming with my two youngest grandsons. I do know that my two little grandsons get restless with online interaction with school mates and the online learning. It will be good to have them resume school and in person play and interaction. I am keeping hope alive that when children do go back to school that all goes well and Covid continues to be mild in children.
“They have been cruelly deprived by the alarmists and their panic. The cruelty benefitted no one: not a single sick senior was saved by shutting down K-12 Some kid ought to bring a lawsuit against some gov.”
This comment sounds like wishful thinking and over reaction. You don’t know anything of the sort. Parents didn’t want to send their children to school when Covid first started, they didn’t know how it would affect children anymore then you did.
Highs and lows, peaks and valleys, roses and thorns. Someone mentioned that above. Kids love that shit, even on zoom.
We used to do it in the car. Now they do it with their teachers on zoom.
"why not use the telephone? Audio only." And no one has to know that you originated (or took) the call while sitting on the pooper. So long as you mute before flushing, of course.
And no one will see that sometimes you walk around and do small, undemanding tasks while your caller's voice yaps away out of the speakerphone. Perhaps that's rude, but (like that tree in the forest) if no one knows you're doing it then where's the problem?
An audio-only call is as different from video call as radio is from TV; what works in one media often fails badly in the other. Radio works in its own way; had it been just TV with the cameras turned off it would have died decades ago.
I suspect the real problem is that so many people no longer know how to do voice-only calls; after all, there used to be a whole etiquette structure around phone calls, but few bother learning such things anymore.
Then again, perhaps many also don't know how to do video calls. Although it seems an irony that the restricted bandwidth of the audio-only call in many ways makes the experience far less restrictive.
The people talking about not sending kids back to school this fall are FUCKING NUTS. It's amazing that even as coastal Dem governors like Murphy are opening beaches for Memorial Day and phasing into more reopening people are talking about not sending kids to school in September. Nobody will stand for that. I see some summer camps are already announcing that they will close, day camps and sleep away camps. Sleepaway camps are basically quarantine, if you tweak the rules for staff. The insanity sounds like it will cost kids out here their summer camps, from the day camps to the sleepaways, earthier to fancier. That's idiotic, but die is cast. Anybody entertaining the notion that we're not sending kinds to school in the fall is delusional.
"I see some summer camps are already announcing that they will close, day camps and sleep away camps."
Every sleep away camp I know of has already cancelled.
Re: Mary Beth:
Yes, the action of the video game is the shared interest that facilitates the conversations. It's like playing together with toys or playing a sport, I suppose.
Every sleep away camp I know of has already cancelled
For families/camps I know it's about half surrender. I'm very proud that the camp we send our kids to has not yet given up the ghost. They may yet have no choice as onerous and utterly ridiculous rules about keeping kids distanced AT CAMP appear to be coming out. Also a lot of camps use internationals on staff, and that's not going to happen. But this shit from Georgia about camps requiring fewer kids in the bunks and space in the dining hall is totally crazy. And since they're first, I imagine the camps that haven't yet canceled will feel compelled to try to do something similar as there's (legal) safety in numbers at this point. Besides not closing, I'm proud of the folks running my kids' camp for keeping their mouths shut about what wonderfully safe things they're going to do this summer. The longer you shut up, the better your odds of not sounding liking an idiot.
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