Also, she CAN FaceTime. I would not consider Snapchat or TikTok to be "socializing with friends" for an 8 year old.
You know how we don't really get this whole social media thing the kids are into these days? That's because we lack those social skills. Just like how your parents' generation struggles with E-mail despite it being so simple, because you grew up with that.
It might not bother you that you're bad at Telegram or whatever because none of your peers use it either. But her peers do.
My point was that saying Snapchat or social media leads to greater social skills than what previous generations had is very hard for me to believe.
You can communicate via a method your parents can't because you used it extensively in your prime while they didn't. Your grandparents probably had the same issue with fax machines and your grandchildren will probably have the same problem with neural-messaging. Every generation thinks "but this time it's different" and every generation is wrong.
Likewise, your parents certainly don't have any problem conceptually understanding keyboards, letters, or addresses - they were perfectly comfortable with typewriters, letterheads, and postal codes. Dealing with nigerian princes and chain mail might involve the use of technology, but these are very much social skills.
As someone who only uses social media platforms that are mildly reskinned versions of 80s/90s message forums, I don't really know what the "BCC vs CC" of tiktok is, nor do I care. I have an excellent understanding of how tiktok works technologically, but I lack the particular social skills tiktok requires. Since my peers do not get it either, this has never been a problem for me, but I'm sure in a few years when my kids expect me to just know how to snapple into the televoid with them that I'll look like an idiot as I search for a reply button somehwere.
To your point, if a telegraph operator handed me a message I didn't understand, I could just say, "Hey, I don't understand this message. Can you explain it to me?" because that is social skills.
That I can have someone translate to and from Urdu for me does not mean I have the social skill required to communicate via Urdu. Likewise, that your parents can ask you whether something is spam or not doesn't mean they have the social skill required to communicate via email.
Wikipedia defines social skills as:
"A social skill is any competence facilitating interaction and communication with others where social rules and relations are created, communicated, and changed in verbal and nonverbal ways."
If the ability to effectively communicate via a medium doesn't satisfy that definition, what does? You are welcome to use a different definition, but that's what I am referring to by social skills.
Whether using your definition or another, my point still stands that social media does not lead to GREATER social skills than previous generations possessed.
Not being skilled in ALL aspects of socialization isn't the same thing as lacking social skills in general.
I never claimed that social media leads to objectively greater social skills, there's no reason why being able to write a great email is inherently superior to being able to write a great telegraph message. However, one skill is undeniably more useful in this day and age. It does not matter if you call it a social skill or a technological skill, the fact remains that there are people who know how to communicate effectively via social media, and those who don't, and just because you are comfortable in the latter category does not mean your daughter will be too.
Conversely, how many people have been scammed out of their life savings by nigerian princes? How many people developed a poor work life balance as they could now do work from home any time?
I'm not going to argue that smart phones have no issues, but everything that came before had issues too, and all were abandoned when something better came along.