By HILARY STOUT
Children used to actually talk to their friends. Those hours spent on the family phone or hanging out with pals in the neighborhood after school vanished long ago. But now, even chatting on cellphones or via e-mail is passe. For today’s teenagers and preteens, the give and take of friendship seems to be conducted increasingly in the abbreviated snatches of cellphone texts and instant messages, or through the very public forum of Facebook walls and MySpace bulletins.
To date, much of the concern over all this use of technology has been focused on the implications for children’s intellectual development. But psychologists and other experts are starting to take a look at a profound phenomenon: whether technology may be changing the very nature of kids’ friendships.
“In general, the worries over cyberbullying and sexting have overshadowed a look into the really nuanced things about the way technology is affecting the closeness properties of friendship,” said Jeffrey G. Parker, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Alabama, who has been studying children’s friendships since the 1980s. “We’re only beginning to look at those subtle changes.”
The question on researchers’ minds is whether all that texting, instant messaging and online social networking allows children to become more connected and supportive of their friends - or whether the quality of their interactions is being diminished without the intimacy and emotional give and take of regular, extended face-to-face time.
It is far too soon to know the answer. Writing in The Future of Children, a journal produced through a collaboration between the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan research center, and the Woodrow Wilson Center at Princeton University, Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia M. Greenfield, psychologists at California State University, Los Angeles, and U.C.L.A. respectively, noted: “Initial qualitative evidence is that the ease of electronic communication may be making teens less interested in face-to-face communication with their friends. More research is needed to see how widespread this phenomenon is and what it does to the emotional quality of a relationship.”
But the question is important, people who study relationships believe, because close childhood friendships help kids build trust in people outside their families and help lay the groundwork for healthy adult relationships. “These good, close relationships - we can’t allow them to wilt away. They are essential to allowing kids to develop poise and allowing kids to play with their emotions, express emotions, all the functions of support that go with adult relationships,” Professor Parker said.
What many who work with children see are exchanges that are more superficial and more public than in the past. One of the concerns is that today’s youths may be missing out on experiences that help them develop empathy, understand emotional nuances and read social cues like facial expressions and body language. With children’s technical obsessions starting at ever-younger ages their brains may eventually be rewired and those skills will fade further, some researchers believe.
Others who study friendships argue that technology is bringing children closer than ever. Elizabeth Hartley- Brewer, author of a book published last year called “Making Friends: A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Child’s Friendships,” believes that technology allows them to be connected to their friends around the clock. “I think it’s possible to say that the electronic media is helping kids to be in touch much more and for longer.”
And some parents agree. Beth Cafferty, a high school Spanish teacher in the New York City suburb of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, estimates that her 15-year-old daughter sends hundreds of texts each day. “I actually think they’re closer because they’re more in contact with each other - anything that comes to my mind, I’m going to text you right away,” she said.
To some children, technology is merely a facilitator for an active social life. Hannah Kliot, a 15-year-old ninth grader in Manhattan, says she relies on texting to make plans and to pass along things that she thinks are funny or interesting. But she also uses it to check up on friends who may be upset about something - and in those cases she will follow up with a real conversation. “I definitely have conversations but I think the new form of actually talking to someone is video chat because you’re actually seeing them,” she said. “I’ve definitely done phone calls at one time or another but it is considered, maybe, old school.”
Experts are studying technology’s effect on the friendships of children. Andy Wilson, 11, left, and his brother Evan, 14, go on Facebook. / ERIK LESSER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
