[user104658]

Originally Posted by Niamh.

Fair enough, that makes sense, I hate how that's how it is now because I think it's so bad for kids and how they should be learning to interact with each other. But obviously you have to choose the lesser evil in the situation your kid is put in

I think it can have positives and negatives (for teens anyway) to be fair. My daughter is quite socially outgoing but she now has a very close friend who she met at high school, sat with in a couple of classes, who was less confident by nature but basically started messaging my daughter on Snapchat to say "I really like you and you're really funny and awesome, I'm determined for us to be besties pls" (not in so many words ) and 2-3 years later they're a very close and quite large friend group that was created by their two groups of friends "merging" through them. I honestly doubt she would EVER have been able to just come out with that face-to-face and I'd be surprised if they're not going to be "life long old friends" at this point.

I try to see the positives in it really. I am generally quite nihilistic about social media/online stuff in terms of human interaction. I do think it's, overall, a disaster for social psychology... but we get the world we're given sometimes .