Question 1

Question: What are the statistics of adolescent’s classroom success for children who socialize more on the internet versus children who interact face-to-face? What types of strategies should parents implement to encourage face-to-face socialization? Should schools have to take more initiative and make after school programs?


I have always been a true believer that the old-fashioned way of communicating for children was the most productive thing for their development. At the adolescent age level there is so many more socially developed skills that need to be groomed before it is even appropriate for children to have internet friends.
There was a statistic found in which adolescent students were tested on their classroom success based on their increase of socialization through outdoor activities. 77% of all adolescents that increased their outdoor social activities increased their classroom performance (Aviles, Anderson, & Davila, 2006). Aviles et al. (2006) explained “classroom performance is taking into account grades, participation and interaction with teachers and other children” (p 36). 19% of the tested children didn’t see any change to their increase of social interaction and only a small 4% of the children actually had a negative correlation to the increase of activity (Aviles et al., 2006). Aviles et al. (2006) goes on to explain, “Children who had a declining performance in school did so because of additional activity on their already active lifestyle” (p39).
Parents can do a lot for their child to encourage face-to-face strategies. The first strategy being, limit the amount of television and computer usage in the household. Children should only be allowed to watch an hour of television a day (Greenfield, Subrahmanyam, &Tynes, 2004). Another good idea is signing up your children for sports and activities they are interested in the community leagues. A main avenue in which children obtain new and fruitful friendships is through local sports and hobby leagues (Greenfield et al., 2004). Additionally, if your children have cousins close in age in your family be sure to allow them to interact. There obviously thousands strategies can be done to encourage you children to interact with others in a face-to-face situation. As parents, I highly suggest you take upon yourself to peel the child away from the computer and television.
Local schools should play a role in facilitating safe environments for children to interact in. Although, I must stress city funds and employees only go so far. Citizens of each school need to contribute money and more importantly time to ensure after-school program success. Children who participated in after-school programs reported being more satisfied with their amount of friends then before attending activities (Greenfield et al., 2004).
Children have a lot of social development issues to acquire before it is necessary to allow them to find friends on the internet. Children should learn how to properly engage and maintain friendships in a face-to-face atmosphere before using the internet. Later on in life I think this will help them socially more than you could ever imagine.

References:

Aviles, Ann M., Anderson, Tanya R., & Davila, Erica R. “Child and Adolescent Social-
Emotional Development within the Context of School.” Child and Adolescent Mental
Health 11.1 (2006) 32-39.

Greenfield, Patricia M., Subrahmanyam, Kaveri, Tynes, Brandesha. “Constructing Sexuality and
Identity in an Online teen Chat Room”. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
25.6 (2004) 651-666.