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Real Relationships: How to build back the skills technology took from us
Explore how technology is changing the development of essential social and relational skills with Jake Ernst, MSW, RSW. Learn how to use co-regulation to help children and adolescents navigate challenges, strengthen connections and build greater independence.
How technology is reshaping social and relational development
Today’s kids and teenagers are growing up in a social world unlike any generation before them. Smartphones, social media, gaming, algorithms, and now AI are changing not only how young people connect, but how they learn to manage discomfort, navigate conflict, tolerate uncertainty, ask for help, read social cues, solve interpersonal problems, and build relationships.
This workshop focuses on social health, our capacity to form, maintain, and repair meaningful relationships and what happens when technology begins to replace the everyday experiences through which these skills are developed. Rather than focusing simply on screen time or digital safety, we’ll examine a more important developmental question: What are young people no longer getting enough practice doing?
At the centre of the workshop is co-regulation: the relational process through which children and teenagers learn to manage emotions, tolerate frustration, take healthy risks, recover from setbacks, and eventually develop greater capacity on their own. Participants will learn how relationships can become a powerful counterbalance to technologies designed to soothe, stimulate, distract, answer, recommend, and increasingly act on our behalf.
Together, we’ll explore how helping professionals can build back the “social muscles” young people need to thrive—not by rejecting technology, but by deliberately creating more opportunities for friction, connection, agency, reciprocity, repair, and real-world practice.
In an age of increasingly intelligent technology, the workshop makes the case that one of the most important technologies we have is still the relationship between us.
Build stronger connections through co-regulation
Bring a deeper understanding of social health and co-regulation into your work with young people. Explore approaches for creating more opportunities to practise the relational skills that support connection, independence and meaningful relationships.
Learning objectives
Through this training, you will explore practical approaches to supporting children and adolescents as they develop essential social and relational skills. You will learn to:
- Assess social health and identify the core relational capacities children and adolescents need to form, maintain, and repair meaningful relationships.
- Identify how contemporary technologies including smartphones, social media, gaming, algorithms, and AI—can reduce opportunities to practice key developmental and interpersonal skills.
- Apply principles of co-regulation to help children and adolescents tolerate discomfort, navigate uncertainty, manage emotions, and build greater independence and capability.
- Develop practical strategies for rebuilding “social muscles” by creating opportunities for real-world connection, agency, reciprocity, conflict resolution, repair, and problem-solving.
Put these insights into practice and explore how co-regulation can help young people develop the relational skills they need to navigate challenges and build meaningful connections. Register for the March 8 live webinar →
Celebrate the release of Jake Ernst’s new book!
To celebrate the release of his new book, Connection Crash: How Co-Regulation Rebuilds the Relationship Skills Technology Took from Us (and Our Kids), we’re excited to offer one lucky participant a complimentary copy, generously provided by Jake Ernst!
Register for the March 8, 2027, live webinar, Real Relationships, for your chance to win! One eligible registrant will be randomly selected, and the winner will be announced during the March 8 training.
