Apparently, they are over protective parents who forbid their children play in the street. The researchers suggest that the only reason children spend so much time on social media websites is because their parents don’t let them out of the house. Those are terrified that their kids will be snatched by pedophiles or bullied by others.
While a lot of teenagers would love to socialize face-to-face with their friends, their parents just won’t let them. The researchers pointed out that teenagers aren’t actually addicted to social media but rather are addicted to each other. The problem is that they are forbidden to hang out in real life, so they have to do so online. In result, today’s teenagers have neither the time nor the freedom to hang out. This makes their avid migration to social media a rational response to a crazy situation.

The researchers also pointed out that lots of high school students flock to football games not because they like the game itself, but because they can meet their friends in an unstructured context. Boys spend the game chatting, ignoring the field and their phones, because they don’t need Instagram when their friends are right next to them.

The disadvantage of this situation is that children aren’t learning any valuable face-to-face skills and instead may fail to handle the real world. The researchers described the fear of kids becoming victims of pedophiles as completely irrational and that panic seems to be the best gift the US ever gave to Facebook.