“Appropriate control becomes overcontrol when the mother restrains her child ten years later, long after the child is perfectly able to cross the street alone. Children who are not encouraged to do, to try, to explore, to master, and to risk failure, often feel helpless and inadequate. Over-controlled by anxious, fearful parents, these children often become anxious and fearful themselves. This makes it difficult for them to mature. When they develop through adolescence and adulthood, many of them never outgrow the need for ongoing parental guidance and control. As a result, their parents continue to invade, manipulate, and frequently dominate their lives. The fear of not being needed motivates many controlling parents to perpetuate this sense of powerlessness in their children. These parents have an unhealthy fear of the “empty nest syndrome,” the inevitable sense of loss that all parents experience when their children finally leave home. So much of a controlling parent’s identity is tied up in the parental role that he or she feels betrayed and abandoned when the child becomes independent.” from Emotionally Toxic Parents by Susan Forward
I don’t want to speak for anyone but myself but I feel like my social anxiety definitely was the result of having nowhere near the amount of freedom that other kids my age had. Although this “social media addiction” seems like something a teenager would grow out of, it’s actually pretty difficult if they still have to deal with opposition from their parents. I find this to be more of an issue with people of color, but this can happen to anyone. On the other side of recovering from a “social media addiction” is opposition from the parents who have also adjusted themselves to never letting you outside of the house.