Talking To Brick Walls

In this episode we continue the conversation with expert Jay Martin on Social Media. How it affects our students, and what we as parents and/or educators can do to help.

How does social media affect our kids? What is Social Media's agenda for our kids? Listen and find out as Mike interviews expert Jay Martin on this very topic. Jay currently works for the state of Nebraska dealing with it's students and social media.

There is a vast difference between a scholastic researcher and an experienced practitioner.  Would you want to be operated on by a surgeon who has studied your condition thoroughly but never done a surgery before?  Or would you want to put your body in the hands of a skilled surgeon who has successfully done over 300 procedures like yours?  While both are extremely important -- experience trumps research every time.

You can study bananas for 50 years and know everything about their seeds, their color, their growth patterns, and their culture -- but if you have never tasted a banana, you don’t know bananas!  You simply know things about bananas.   

Mike Donahue is an experienced practitioner who has also done his research thoroughly.  With over 25 years of constant exposure to young people in school assemblies and trainings he has provided a listening ear to hundreds of thousands of students who have shared things with him that they have never shared with their closest friends or family.

With uncompromising, “no holds barred” honesty, through this podcast,  Mike addresses the issues head-on, with experienced counsel that is a game changer.  

“You have no clue what is going on with me, you just don’t understand what I’m going through” 

If you have been on the receiving end of a statement like from and emotional teenager, then you know how much raw emotion and frustration can come with those words.  That sounds like an over exaggerated statement spoken out of severe frustration, but if your adolescent child is saying that to you, it is probably one of the most truthful things that have come out of their mouth since they turned thirteen. 

Here is a common statement you may hear from the general public about teenagers; “it’s so difficult to be a teenager today.” While that is an accurate statement, most people stop there in their analysis because if we are honest, we really don’t know why it’s so hard exactly. We all agree that things are getting tougher for teens seemingly every day, but very few of us have spent enough time in that world to really unpack what makes it so tough. We tend to project our own adolescent experience on to a generation that has had to deal with a barrage of social media platforms and influences, Covid-19 shutdowns, unprecedented social change, and a world that is constantly communicating that their worth is tied to who they are socially.  

One of the most important things you must keep in mind if you are a parent of a teenager is, the social pressure that young people are facing today is 100 times harder than it was when we were growing up. Social media threw gas on an already pressure packed dynamic. In this podcast we take a look at what’s really going on in that world.  

You are a youth communicator. Whether you are a parent with an audience of one or two, or a teacher with a classroom of twenty to thirty, you do what I do—you are trying to get your teens to assimilate important information that you know will benefit them greatly in the future. Anyone can put out information; getting someone to assimilate the information takes understanding and skill. Relational connection is the first step in assimilation. Your audience must trust that you really care about them enough to understand them before they will be open to hear what you have to say. 

One of the biggest mistakes youth communicators make is answering questions that young people are not asking.

How many assembly programs did you sit through as a kid while thinking to yourself, “I really don’t care about what this person is talking about at all right now, but at least I got out of class”? We assume we know what they care about, but a lot of the time, we really don’t. These assumptions come from what we as adults think they should care about.  In my opinion, adolescents are constantly asking themselves four questions, four important questions that are running through their mind and must be answered the right way for them to feel emotionally healthy. In this podcast Mike will take you inside the head of most American teenagers so you can get a better understanding of the real questions that are dominating their minds. 

Your child knows you have an image in your head of what you want him or her to be. You probably aren’t fully aware of this, but you are constantly communicating an image of your child to your child. You want them to have good grades, work hard, be honest, be respectful, and so on. Some parents have even more specific images for their children, like what sport they will play, what college they will attend, what specific qualities of a spouse they will have, maybe a specific value system that lines up with your faith choice and worldview. When they don’t live up to this image, we can get disappointed and frustrated with them. Whether it’s subtle or not so subtle, your child has a mental image of what you would like him or her to be.

The problem with images is that they are not real. They don’t take into account real life. I’m going to unwrap this a little more in the next chapter, but if your children are not homeschooled, then they live in two completely different worlds. They live in your world, and they live in a social world that is incredibly demanding. What makes it even more complicated is that social media has made it easier for them to live in their social world while they are sitting five feet from you. 

Here is where the tension comes. They have a need to please you. You are their hero. They are not that far removed from a time when your voice was the only voice. Even if on the outside they act like you are public enemy number one right now, they don’t want you to be disappointed with them, but their world has drastically changed for them, and you really need to understand that.  They trust you, but there are louder voices that are competing hard for their hearts and minds.

The other part of the battle is that you have needs as well. You need them to be okay, to be physically and emotionally safe. You also want them to be successful, because success means safety. If they are doing what they are told and keeping up with their grades and responsibilities, then they won’t be engaged in risky behavior.  They know you have this need, so they become actors. They become managers of the image that you have for them, as well as the image that their social world is demanding from them.  Your children’s need to please you and your need to know they are okay can be the perfect storm for deception.