With the holidays approaching, TikTok has been serving me an endless stream of toy ads, but one made me stop scrolling. It was an ad for video walkie-talkies, basically FaceTime screens. My first thought was “Oh, my children would love this.” But as my finger hovered over the shopping cart, I found myself wondering whether my children have been missing out on a key developmental skill.
My children are 10, 9, 7 and 6, and I can probably count on two hands how many times they’ve had a phone call with someone. They FaceTime their grandparents every week and use talk-to-text without thinking twice. But can they hold a real-time conversation without relying on facial expressions and body language? On the phone, a layer of interaction exists underneath the words themselves. You hear someone breathe. You notice a pause and try to figure out what that silence means. You pick up on hesitations or warmth or tension or humor or uncertainty.
With a traditional walkie-talkie, children have to follow a system. They press the button to talk and release it to listen. They learn to listen closely, be patient and use a shared language like “copy” or “over” as part of the back-and-forth. It may sound simple, but there are real skills hiding in that exchange. If they are looking at each other on a screen, none of those skills ever come into play.
I am a millennial, so I grew up talking for hours on the phone. With anxiety rising in younger generations, I cannot help but think these conversations mattered more than we understood.
Real Life of an MSW 