Yup. "Why didn't my kid get invited to that birthday? Oh, it was organized on Snapchat..."
We have a no phones in the bedroom and no phones past a certain time rule, but disconnecting entirely makes one a social pariah.
The one I heard was: "Dad, can you show me Minecraft? All my friends keep talking about Minecraft, but I don't understand it. I want to know more about Minecraft".
If you don't give the stuff to your kids, they get socially excluded.
The best we can do is to teach them how to use stuff in moderation. Show them how excessive usage can go bad: there are plenty of examples around, all the time.
<< disconnecting entirely makes one a social pariah.
Maybe, maybe not. The real question is.. do I really want my kid to associate with kids that are so heavily invested in social media. I know my personal answer to this. I even know my SO answer and the upcoming battles ahead.
It’s widespread enough your question boils down to “do I really want my kid to have friends”.
I will tell you what I told my colleague as to whether I am sad that having a big dog prevents family reunions or boyfiends coming over. Sometimes things just work out in our favor.
There's almost zero chance for that pretend scenario to happen, kid and parents intermingle all the time at drop off and other school activities, kids are pretty vocal about their birthday and who they want to be present, and their parents will find a way to get the message across, and the kid will know from school interactions anyway if they are invited, and relay the info to the parent.
Drop off in my area is a line of cars. No mingling. Activities are great if the kids share one, but plenty of friends don’t. By high school, parents tend not to be doing the organizing at all. Outside birthdays, the same thing happens with “hey wanna come over?” ad-hoc scenarios.
It isn’t a pretend scenario. We had to loosen up rules because it was happening to our kids.