Erin Napier Says Young People are ‘Struggling to Communicate’ Due to Social Media Use
By Movieguide® Contributor
HGTV star Erin Napier is explaining how social media and smartphones are affecting the way young people communicate.
“The handful of kids we know who are coming out of high school whose parents had the good sense to say ‘You’re not going to have a smartphone, you’re not going to have social media’ — those are the kids we snatch up as fast as we can to hire for our companies because they’re able to have conversations,” she said while appearing on the “Raising Boys and Girls” podcast.
She added, “They can use their actual voice to speak to people. And this is crazy that this is even something we’re having to really work hard to find, but young people are struggling. They are really struggling to know how to communicate, how to handle conflict, how to just talk to each other and to people, and we want to make sure our girls have self-assurance.”
That self-assurance can come from learning skills and taking part in activities that don’t involve screens.
“The greatest satisfaction you can have in your life is if you learn how to do something,” Erin explained. “If you have skills that are not connected to technology or a phone — that’s how you build confidence.”
Erin and her husband Ben have long been outspoken advocates for keeping children off of social media. The couple recently launched Osprey, a nonprofit focused on helping parents create phone-free communities for their kids.
“Forming a circle of families and friends who are in this together when your kids are little, linking arms and doing what it takes to give your kids the gift of a social media free adolescence is the only way we change the culture,” Erin wrote in an Instagram post about the organization’s launch. “For the TWENTY THOUSAND parents who’ve already joined the Osprey newsletter after my post last month, we have a vision and a plan to give our kids support that starts now and takes them through high school graduation. Let’s make old school the new way.”
She elaborated on the nonprofit’s aim while talking to TODAY.com, saying, “We want to make sure our kids don’t feel left out when we don’t let them have social media, as kids through high school. How do you do that? I think community is where you begin.”
Movieguide® previously reported:
HOME TOWN star Erin Napier recently revealed the touching reasons why she has not allowed her daughters to have phones or social media.
“I am so thankful I grew up without the crushing pressure of social media,” she continued. “As a highly sensitive artistic kid, the criticism or silence of ‘likes’ would’ve hurt me deeply. It would have shaped me into someone, something else. I read once where we should only accept the criticism of people who know us and love us well enough to deliver it gently and in a way that helps instead of hurts.”
Napier called social media “the harshest criticism of all,” as well as “a distorted and broken and misguided kind of critic who sets these young people without their fully developed emotional minds on the wrong path.”
“Is it mean to keep [my children] from communicating with smart phones? I don’t care,” Napier concluded. “I’m also keeping them from finding a distorted picture of who they think they need to be, porn, hate, the criticism of strangers. Childhood is so short. We’re gonna savor every last second of our girls’ that we can.”
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