Childhood In The Digital World. Episode 2. Belonging & Connection.

Childhood doesn’t only happen in playgrounds anymore. For a lot of kids, friendship, status, comfort, and belonging now live in group chats, messages, and gaming communities, and that means a child’s screen can represent something much bigger than “entertainment.”

We talk through what changes when a young person’s social world moves into spaces adults can’t easily see. Online safety matters, but we argue it’s more than filters and warnings. Kids who feel isolated can be more vulnerable to cyberbullying, exploitation, and unhealthy influence, so the real protective factor is often relationship: feeling known, supported, and connected offline.

We also unpack why “just put it down” can land as “disconnect from your people.” If a child is checking their phone repeatedly, it may be anxiety about exclusion, anticipation of connection, or a need for reassurance. That’s an attachment and adolescent mental health issue, not a trivial habit. We share simple ways to get alongside without spying: ask who they’re with, what’s happening, and what it means, while still keeping clear boundaries.

Finally, we zoom out to what gets lost when communication stays on screens: nuance, nonverbal cues, and the everyday practice of face-to-face relationship skills. We end with a challenge for parents and carers to model the rules they want to see, including phone habits at meals and how to handle transitions away from games. If this helped, subscribe, share with a parent friend, and leave a review so more families can find it.

Transcript

Welcome And The Core Question

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, this is Kim Lee, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, and this is episode two in the series Understanding Children in the Digital World. In this episode, I want to take a look at this notion of connection and belonging in the online world. What's really interesting is that there was a time when childhood happened in physical spaces. There's me being nostalgic. Over time, that has little by little changed to the extent now where really it's quite rare. It used to be, you know, playgrounds and fields and children's bedrooms with other children, and I'm not saying that doesn't happen so much, but it is something which is less and less common. So today, much of childhood unfolds somewhere we can't see, and if we don't understand that world, we risk misunderstanding the child within it. There are dark parts in that world. There are parts where children innocently venture and can find themselves coming into contact with things that really aren't good for them. Now we all know about the term online safety, but I think this is more than just parental controls, and I think it's more than just the educating of children, the telling them what the risks are. I think it's much more than that. Because I think those children who are at risk of being pulled into something unhealthy may already be feeling quite isolated. And so for that reason, they become targets for those who would wish to exploit them. And that includes things like cyberbullying. But if we think about belonging, it has actually moved. For many children, connection now lives in group chats, in gaming communities and shared digital spaces. And so friendship and screens are no longer separate necessarily. Friendship can exist through screens. So when a child is checking their phone repeatedly, it might not be distraction, it may be fear of exclusion, anticipation of connection, anxiety about belonging. And it may also be waiting for a response that confirms that something that they have done is appreciated by others. And this isn't trivial, it's attachment. A 14-year-old girl said to me recently, if if I'm not online, I don't feel like I'm connected to anything. But at the same time, it sort of said, Well, you know, it's that's that's a sign of the times. And when we when we think about that one comment, something we we can understand something is important because when a parent says, just put it down, i.e., whichever device it might be, what the child may experience is step away from your social world, disconnect. And of course, that isn't what the parent's saying, but it's about how something is experienced. This is all about context and perspective. So instead of the removal and asking the child to step away, try connecting. Ask who they're talking to, ask about what's happening, show interest without intrusion. If you remember, in the previous session, I sorry, in the previous podcast, I talked about the sense of connection and the being alongside. I think what we need to try and do is to first of all have an understanding that however the connection with others is finding expression, whether it's through games, group chats, messages, whatever it may be, it's meaningful to the individual. Now, wouldn't it be so much better if young people could do the kind of um talking face-to-face thing where social skills are required, where there was no need for emojis to express how you were feeling, because you could express that through your facial expressions or the words that you use when you're face to face with another person. When this when this started and and people were more and more, and this actually, this isn't just children and young people, but the sort of online world, when this started to really take on and take a hold, I remember thinking, well, that's all very well, and yes, it's convenient, and yes, it's it's quick and it's largely instant. What about all the other things? What about the interpersonal skills? What about the learning about nuance? What about nonverbal reading that is so important in relationships? Because the cost of the online world is that those things are not visible. They're not apparent. And that isn't to do with something that I would regard as fundamentally wrong and dangerous and cur concerning, but it's more like actually what we're doing is we are limiting natural processes and progressions. And saying things like, well, times change, well, maybe they do, but there are certain things where human behavior is concerned. There are certain things that that really don't need to change. And one of those is about the gratification of needs in relationship. So I I'm concerned to see that children, once inside this kind of vortex, really uh l lose and let go of that that we used to consider normal. What do we do? We we get alongside. But I think the other thing we need to do is we need to model how we manage relationships. I was in a coffee shop a couple of years back, and I know I'm not the only one, I'm sure you've heard this before. But I was standing in a queue and I just glanced over to a table, and there was a family of four, I'm assuming they were a family, parents and two children, and every one of them was on a phone. And I was thinking, this is madness. You're you're facing each other. I mean, I just wondered, part of me thought, I wonder if they're communicating with each other by text. Just a bit frivolous. But my point is the adults were demonstrating this is what we do. Now, why? Because you're all together. Why do you need to do this? But the behavior had become normalized and the adults were part of it. Sometimes I will have uh parents coming to sessions, parental guidance sessions, and they will have their phones with them. And I can remember a couple in particular whose phones were particularly active and they were receiving messages, and they were reading as their phone pinged, they would read said message and then say, Oh, I'm I'm I'm sorry about that, I've got a message. I was thinking, you're gonna get another one in a minute. And so ultimately I said, Look, we can't we can't have two conversations. Could you put it on sign up, please? And I think they felt offended because here was I saying, in this room, the consulting room, we do this thing. It's called talking. And we don't talk to people who are not in the room. I didn't use these words, but that was the implicit message. And I'm in a I mean, I sometimes I get I get phone calls when I'm in sessions, but I don't answer them. It's usually they go through to my practice manager. And I will get the phone may make a noise because I've forgotten to switch it off, but I just put it on silent. It is nothing so dramatic you can't wait. But again, what we're talking about is different types of normalization. My my my normalizing behavior is I don't engage with my phone when I'm with another person. And and unless it's an urgent call, but generally speaking, that's quite rare. But I think were I to be in the consulting room with children and answering the phone or looking at the phone or responding to text messages, what would I be saying? So I think, in a sense, I mean parents need to know that part of the being alongside means that you are then in a position to model how we do things. So for example, when we have a situation in which, and I hear this quite a lot, parents calling their children for dinner, and the child is is up in their rooms, locked into some kind of some kind of game or something else, and they they become understandably, the parent becomes very understandably frustrated when the child doesn't appear or appears uh later on. I'm not surprised the child is doing that because they're locked into something and they cannot leave it because they are at a certain point they're locked on. Now I'm inclined to think if we are alongside the child, then it becomes possible to say, look, we can let let's let's do this together, show me what you're doing, and so on. Then it becomes we've only got listen, we've only got X amount of time because dinner's going to be ready soon. So I'll give you an extra 10 minutes or something, then I'll come and remind you because we must, you know, we must all eat together. Now, I I know some parents will be saying, Well, you try, particularly single parents, and quite understandably, but I think that's a snippet. I'm thinking more about the broader principle. And I also think it's okay to have rules, and the the rules are no, we don't do that. But we have to model the rules, and we have to say that these are rules, not punishments. It's like, well, sorry, but that's that's that's how we do things. And this starts very early on, needs to start very early on, not when the child is two years old. I think I've made my views on that very clear. But I think the important thing here is about how we how how we do healthy normal. And part of that does include the fact that the that the young person is part of something that has to do with belonging, that they have a sense of connection. That's okay, but connection with people who are actually there is the thing that matters. And I think what we have to try and do is make that possible. Thank you for listening. I will be back with.