Coming of Age Online: Challenges of Treating the Internet Generation

摘要

Ten years ago, it was not uncommon for me to spend an entire day seeing adolescent patients without interacting with a single computer. Meetings with patients and their families took place without seeing a single screen or hearing single "beep." These days, computers are everywhere. My child and adolescent patients are typically unable to sit through our hour-long evaluation without pleading to play video games on their mobile device or their parents' phones, and their parents' can't make it through the meeting before sheepishly acquiescing. Teenaged patients are frequently distracted during our meetings by receiving and responding to numerous text messages on their phones, and often seem genuinely surprised when confronted about the disruption this behavior causes. I too have occasionally failed to resist the urge to check an incoming text when my own phone chirps during such meetings.