«Help, our daughter only lives in the virtual world!»

You, we parents of teenagers, are probably all old-fashioned, having grown up in an analogue world. Nevertheless, remember how often you were on the phone back then! How often your parents had to ban you from using the phone. Every era has its forms of communication; WhatsApp groups are part of adolescence today. But if mobile phone use gets out of hand, you should set limits and confiscate the device by the hour or day.

The strict separation you have made between «real life» and the virtual world is perhaps old-fashioned. For young people, the transitions are fluid: they talk to each other, everyone gets on their bus and the conversation continues in the chat. Nevertheless, your daughter shouldn't spend all day playing games and watching YouTube videos. Continue to encourage her to invite friends over and pursue her offline hobbies, and have the courage to make yourself unpopular sometimes: you can demand mobile phone-free times, preferably for the whole family.

You are subject to a confusion between «real» and «genuine» (be comforted: widespread). The haptic abilities of one-year-olds are certainly better suited to building blocks, but animated figures on a tablet are no less real. They just obey different laws. Are pen pals «real»? Hanni and Nanni, Five Friends or The Three Question Marks? Chatting, phoning, writing or talking to each other face to face may not be fundamentally the same (your daughter knows this too), but they are equally forms of real and genuine symbolic communication.

