I work with someone who went through that. They resent their parents for it.
Wholly and completely resent their parents. Growing up in the later 00s/10s, right as stuff like SMS and especially "social group by text message" came along, it absolutely stunted their ability to make friends.
What it did was disconnect them from their distant peers and meant that making friends outside of their immediate school peers was basically impossible. It also landed them an extremely deep rut of depression, causing them to spend their free time for years sinking into alt-right stuff that actively preys on "people sheltered from social media as kids".
Everything in the under-18 space is organized in real time online behind adults backs. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Kids plot against the adults. The fact of the matter is that social media is the way we engage with so much art, culture, and society that these sorts of schools hurt kids in the long run.
I leave you with the track Turntable Winding Down [0] from the album Public Domain. The intro/outro were stripped when the band re-released the album "legit", but Archive.org has the original because, of course they do.
I know this is not possible or preferable for all, but we plan to homeschool our kids and surround ourselves with other screen-free families. It will be a subculture for sure, but one I prefer over the culture at large. Before mobile phones and texting, kids made friends just fine. I know I did. In fact, compared to todays kids that don't want to leave the house and just be on their technology all day long, I played street sports with the neighborhood kids, went over to each others houses, went on bicycle adventures and yes, we even played video games together (Atari 2600). But even with that we were more communal and real life in that we were doing it together and interacting, laughing, commiserating, celebrating in person. This is the life I want for my kids growing up.
As they grow up, we'll explain why we're doing this. We want them to grow up with the experience that you don't need social media, etc to live a fulfilling life. And we model to them that phones are a very useful communication device and some apps can be very useful like Uber, but it is not to be an entertainment device.
> social media is the way we engage with so much art, culture, and society
I plan to take my kids to museums, plays, concerts etc instead.
My kids are 6, 7 and 9. We've managed to maintain a screen free upbringing for them and they all have other activities they prefer at this stage. Their school however heavily uses screens and we were pretty shocked to find out they are using them (primarily iPads) for a good portion of their day's classes.
