Is Your Teen Too Social?

Today’s teens have jam-packed social lives so filled to the brim with parties, texting and IMing, and activities that parents sometimes feel as though they’ve got to schedule an appointment to spend time with their adolescents weeks in advance.

While all parents want their kids to have friends, can teens be too social?

"While you want your teen to have a healthy social life to build friendships, interpersonal skills, and self-confidence, you don't want him/her to be so social that that sleep, school work, and other productivity suffer,” said Dr. Signe Dayhoff, a nationally recognized social psychologist, coach, and consultant. “When teens want to go out nearly every night and come back late, they may put themselves as risk for poor decision making in what they do. They need to have a balance in their lives of fun, work, family, and community activities.”

Signe said parents need to be aware if their teen’s need to be popular seems over the top. “What may be seen as a compulsion to be social may be the teen's hoped-for guarantee of popularity so as to quell any anxiety they may have about being negatively evaluated, found inadequate, and rejected."

Therapist Roberta Temes Ph.D. agrees that if school work suffers or family responsibilities or sleep are neglected, a teen is too social. “Otherwise, enjoy the fact that your child knows how to make and keep friends. That’s a good thing.”

Family therapist Carleton Kendrick concurs. ““They are just doing their jobs as adolescents,” he said. “I am much more worried when teenagers have had a healthy robust social life and then, that social life becomes either severely diminished, compromised, or nonexistent.”

Kendrick said social teens are establishing necessary identities apart from their parents and forming a new identity that has more to do with being defined by their peers – and themselves. Parents who may fear their influence is being lessened should take heart, he said. “If you have laid the foundations for a responsible, self-reliant, ethically and morally responsible human being, then you really should be comforted by the fact that even though some of those lessons and values might appear to be on vacation on occasion, the search for one’s adult identity has begun in earnest. And that if those lessons were internalized as most are, even though parents fear that they’re not, they do tend to come back with even more demonstrable proof that they exist once kids have moved through this search for an early adult identity.”

The only time parents should be concerned, he said, is when a teen’s social life is compromising his or her health; if they are withdrawing from extracurricular activities; and if they are totally cut off from a family they were previously happy to be involved with. “It’s the level of disconnectedness you should be aware of,” said Kendrick.

Experts agree parents should set limits but also realize a thriving social life is another milestone on the teen’s role to adulthood and should be embraced.

For more information, visit Dr. Dayhoff’s website at Http://www.Effectiveness-Plus.com or go to Http://www.carletonkendrick.com.