Recent studies highlight our children are becoming super skilled when it comes to finding their way around a computer, but less proficient at social skills such as making new friends, knowing what to say in certain social situations, and so on.

Hardly surprising, considering that from as early as the late seventies we have all been obsessed with teaching our kids how to use their computers efficiently and how to navigate the web, so they would not be left behind in the techno race for supremacy, as it were. By the nineties we all accepted that, if our children were to make any real progress in life, they must be at ease with a computer mouse and keyboard.

To some extent, this it true. Nowadays it is unacceptable for any school leaver to be unskilled in computer technology. Some have only basic knowledge but enough to get by in a world run by computers. It does seem a pity, however, that we have neglected our children´s other social skills so woefully.

Many young adults have very little confidence in their own abilities to enter into social situations. So many spend their social time glued to a computer screen in their leisure time, they have been rendered socially inept in just about every other respect. A surprising number of teenagers are unable to comprehend a section of society that are unskilled in computer technology and would be unable to interact with such people.

It is important that responsible parents and teachers promote social skills in your people, to prepare them for adult sociability. Parents have as great a role to play as teachers. Teach your child to answer a telephone politely and correctly. Give your child some basic information to ease their journey into maturity; tell them how to address someone formally as well as informally, it cannot harm them to know these things and one day they might value their own ability to be comfortable at any social level.

By all means, encourage your child to be a whiz on a keyboard, but don´t allow them to neglect other areas of social behaviour.

Jan Gamm writes reflections on life with an emphasis on world travel. She has lived in many countries and traveled extensively in the Far East, the Middle East, America, South America and throughout the South Pacific. She writes for fun and for money whenever she can manage it.