Jason was tall and skinny, Mark shorter and muscular. Jason played the cello; Mark played volleyball. Somehow, my sophomore year of high school, I fell in with Jason and Mark—and Jen and Erin and Jason B. and Jon and Candi, the cohort of juniors and seniors who dominated the youth group at our Methodist church. I was welcomed into their gang, even though I couldn’t drive yet. They picked me up on snowy evenings to do doughnuts in the mall parking lot. They picked me up after work to go to the movies. They picked me up on Saturday mornings to play tackle football on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan, a thing I still can’t believe I did. That no one broke a leg astonishes me.
I thought of Jason and Mark this past weekend, after my wife and I spent another half-hour encouraging our teenagers to Make some plans! Get out of the house! As is often the case, little came of it. Halfhearted texts receive halfhearted responses. School friends have crew practice or something else going on. No one wants to go out into the cold. Maybe they can just talk on the phone while playing video games?
I am torn, in the debate about teenage isolation and smartphone use, between my dislike for seeming a fuddy-duddy and my real concern about how friendship works among teenagers in 2023. Yes, there are still some teens who go out with friends, hang out in basements, throw the occasional kegger. But I see many, including my older daughter, spending most of their time at home rather than out with their peers. Even my younger kid, who’s much more willing to try to make plans, ends up by herself much more often than I ever did at that age.
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