For any adult today doomscrolling through an entire news cycle, peppered with opinion pieces on the detrimental impact of social media, this isn’t new information. But what if it’s only part of a bigger picture? Buzzwords typically associated with Gen Z include empathy, emotional intelligence and community. In one study, 85 per cent of college students said they had become more aware of the experiences of others as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Is it then possible that we are just focusing on what we see as the negative side of smart tech, the one that supports our view?

“Compared to previous generations, the way Gen Z communicates, understands and empathises with others has been scaled beyond local, geographical and cultural boundaries to a far more intrinsic nature brought to life by technology,” says Ms Mimi Nicklin, author of Softening The Edge and an advocate for empathy being an important skill for the leaders of tomorrow. The same kids Twenge reported on are also, according to Nicklin, “combining an unprecedented empathy and care of society with a media and technology savviness that is second nature to them. The interconnectedness they were born into has shaped and developed their understanding of how human beings are also interdependent as social groups and wider communities that demand pro-social behaviour and focus.”

In both cases, technology is a gateway, but to what?

“Often, our anxiety about children’s use is just an outlet for our own concerns about how much it pervades our own lives,” says Professor Andrew Manches, director of Children and Technology at the University of Edinburgh. “We often think and talk about technology like a pill. ‘What effect does it have?’ But technology is one resource in a complex mesh of children’s lives. They don’t see the distinction as clearly as those who did not grow up with technology.”

The term “digital native” has had currency since at least the turn of the 21st century, but even at the moment of Twenge’s shift, it was still under question. Professors Lydia Plowman and Joanna McPake noted in 2013 that many young children felt “overwhelmed” by technology and that was especially true of those using technology that was designed for adults. And the role of parents went deeper. “When we asked how their children learnt to do things with technology, parents replied that they just ‘picked it up’, unaware that children learn by watching and copying others,” they wrote.

A decade on, technology has become more intuitive and its intrusion into family life more complete. A 2019 survey in the US suggested that only two per cent of Gen Alpha – the demographic born after 2013, set to succeed Gen Z and known on TikTok as “iPad kids” – were not actively using some form of technology. And, for 44 per cent of them, a mobile device was listed as their favourite “toy”.

The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health is reluctant to put a figure on a recommended amount of device use for children, stating that this is something to weigh up against the child’s needs. However, it notes that “children with higher screen time tend to have a less healthy diet, a higher energy intake and more pronounced indicators of obesity” and that they also “tend to have more depressive symptoms, although it has been found by some studies that some screen time is better for mental health than none at all”.

“The thing is that, in the modern world, screen time is increasingly just... time,” says Ms Keza MacDonald, video games editor at The Guardian (and a parent). “If you’re producing your own song in GarageBand, is that screen time? What about if you’re drawing with an Apple Pencil rather than pen and paper?”

The key, she says, is that not all uses are equal (and YouTube is banned in her house). “For me, the metric is the quality of what they’re engaging with, rather than the overall time – 300 calories’ worth of doughnut is less nutritious than 300 calories’ worth of fruit and yoghurt.”

“Would you set a limit on how much reading of a book?” Manches asks. He agrees that “quality is important” when it comes to tablet use, but perhaps YouTube isn’t the end of the world. “Maybe we ask too much of our children,” he says. “To be consistently doing something educational or creative.” Rather than too many restrictions, he suggests letting them “control some of their lives and learn about being bored”.

As a parent, seeing your child glued to their device or coming home from school to talk about the demonic characters in the video game Poppy Playtime (or the thought of exposure to the likes of Mr Andrew Tate later down the line), it can be tempting to keep them away from this technology. But rather than restrict it, perhaps we should learn to understand it better.

“My advice is to be involved, while helping children make good choices as to what they do on devices,” Manches says. “Use the device to help children learn about the outside world – the need to evaluate news sources, to encourage new ways of being creative.”

“It is important that we try to understand why our kids are drawn to whatever they’re engaging with,” says MacDonald. “Do they play so much Fortnite because it’s a fun way to hang out with their friends or because real life is hard for them right now?”

For MacDonald, social media is “the only technological thing I would rather my kids didn’t engage with at all. I do not trust the companies that run any of the major social media networks to have young people’s interests and wellbeing in mind. They design these products for maximum engagement and ad revenue, not to improve our lives. Even as an adult, I find it hard to resist the pull of Instagram and Twitter, and I sometimes spend time on social media even when it doesn’t make me feel good. What chance does a 12-year-old have of moderating their own usage?”

“Social media encourages us to communicate emotions, but this is often in an unnuanced, polarised, dramatised way,” says Manches. “I have more faith in children understanding how social media works – manipulating information, encouraging you to present yourself, fear of missing out, taking your data, ways to keep your attention – than I have faith that social media will change. It goes against their business model.”

However, perhaps we are already seeing Gen Z reshape social media around themselves. “Social media is a platform to them. It is not ‘social media’, it is simply ‘life’,” says Nicklin. “They were born into a landscape in which devices are intelligent, everything is connected, and physical and digital environments merge into one. This generation will value freedom of identity and choices and will resonate with authenticity above all else. TikTok’s value is in real-time reflections of life. For Gen Alpha, there is no other way and far more platforms will emerge to enable the same.”

Writing this, I chanced on a tweet by the cartoonist Mr Stephen Collins, composed, he admits, in “a bored moment, with a slightly too haughty tone”. It read: “Don’t let your kids learn to draw on a tablet! All drawing and creativity is good yes yes. But tablets are an objectively bad way to learn to draw.”

“I draw on iPad almost exclusively now, and I’m annoyed with myself for that,” Collins says. “Certainly, I have no objective research to back up my claim that digital drawing is bad for development, but it still seems intuitively true that digital drawing is not just another tool. Apps such as Procreate and Fresco are explicitly trying to be all the tools – and the ultimate aim of all technology is to keep your attention focused on it as long as possible.”

If there is a takeaway here, it is that, in order to succeed, our children need to be fully equipped. And so do we. If we have the analogue knowledge and skills to share, perhaps they can bring us with them into the next digital phase. They can certainly teach us a thing or two.