A childcare worker said early exposure to social media and a lack of parenting are creating behavioral issues in school-aged children, like bullying, over-sexualization and aggression.
“I’ve dealt with these parents, and it is like they have them and then they shove them off to everybody else,” Hannah Siegel, who has worked in children’s education for over seven years, told Fox News. “They let their teachers raise them, let their after-school programs raise them. When they’re sitting at the dinner table after not seeing them all day, they put a tablet in front of their face. They don’t have conversations.”
“Then the kids, in turn, don’t respect their parents because there’s no relationship,” she added. “You can’t have respect without relationship.”
“If a device is put in front of a child the minute they start to fret or find things difficult, then that’s the only way they learn to cope with difficult feelings,” Ryan Lowe, a child psychotherapist and spokesperson for the Association of Child Psychotherapists, told Vice. “Their behavior and their capacity to learn in classrooms will be significantly affected.”
If things don’t change, the future could be “very scary” when these kids grow into adults, Siegel said. She added that a growing number of kids don’t want to work, are only focused on becoming social media stars and lack any respect for authority.
“They have no emotional regulation, no social skills,” Siegel told Fox News. “They don’t know how to carry a conversation because when they’re at home, they don’t have to, they have a screen in front of their face.”
Teny Sahakian is an Associate Producer/Writer for Fox News. Follow Teny on Twitter at @tenysahakian.
