Family time is important for teens | Victor Lu – Grade 11

Mar 25, 2021 | 0 comments

Teens are busy in their lives, but many of them tend to forget one precious activity: time with their families. Although sometimes teens gather with their families, some still stick with their phones and play on their social media accounts instead of talking to their parents and relatives. Many teens do not pay enough attention to time with their families, but they should realize that family time plays a vital role in their lives.

Lacking time with family

One factor for reduced family time is that teenagers spend most of their time on their schoolwork. For example, from 2014 to 2019, 1,493,156 Taiwanese junior high school students took the high school entrance exam and 832,708 Taiwanese high school students took the GSAT. Both exams require dedication with almost no rest. Therefore, most teens spend most of their time reviewing for their exams in cram schools or studying by themselves, so they barely have time to visit their relatives during holidays.

Even though these teens go back home every day, most of them hardly have time to have conversations with their parents and siblings either because it is already late at night when they arrive home due to studying at their cram schools or they need to continue studying at night. Putting effort into studying is conducive for improving grades, but an overloaded amount of schoolwork may overwhelm teenagers and therefore depress them.

Another possible reason why teens do not have enough time to spend with their families is because some of them are addicted to social media. The increased use of social media among teenagers results in loneliness because teens who spend too much time swiping on social media often become lonely and depressed because they have replaced real human interactions with staring at a screen hoping for “likes”. According to a study by the New York Center for Living, 4.1 percent of boys and 3.6 percent of girls are intense social media users, and those who are addicted to social media are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.

Moreover, spending too much time on friendships also weakens the relationship between teens and their family members. For instance, some of my classmates like to fill their weekends hanging out with friends. Indeed, sometimes they hang out with each other almost every weekend and when they finish school they chat over social media and video games even though they have already spent many hours together at school. As a result, they have less family time, which causes them to become aloof.

Strengthening family relationships

Some teens may say that they are unwilling to speak with their relatives because they do not see them often. However, for this reason, teens should talk more with their relatives during occasional large family gatherings.

Reducing the amount of time on social media can also foster better family relationships. Therefore, teens who are addicted to social media should limit their use of it because interacting with others in person increases more happiness than talking online. So, teens should turn off their phones and talk with their family members during family gatherings.

Also, teens should embrace the idea that friends come and go, but family is always there. Every individual meets many friends in his life, but many of them stay with him only within a time period. To illustrate, an individual may have some friends in his college years, and he may have new friends in his career years. However, when he enters the workforce, he might stop contacting his friends he met in college because they have parted ways.

On the other hand, family members always keep company with an individual’s life, and family members are the people who show care, attention, and support to each other. Thus it is important for teens to maintain a healthy and permanent relationship with their families.