Loneliness, the ‘New’ Friendships Rules and Terms and why Gen A are More Wes Anderson than John Hughes Films!
When we look back at them, most people who lived through the 2020’s are probably not going to describe them as ‘roaring’- or certainly not the first half! Who knows, maybe we are heading towards a half-century of unity, decadence and fun, but judging from the current state of the world, this feels unlikely.
What’s sad about this is how few young people are going to describe their 2020’s as a “great” experience, with the decade in general being perceived by most people under the age of twenty-five as lonely, stressful, divisive and a “worrying snapshot of the future.”
I recently polled over 10,000 Gen A’s and Gen Z’s and 62% of them said they mostly felt “OK” most of the time, and rarely “good” or even more rarely “very good” and emotions and states of mind like “worried”, “depressed”, “anxious” and “lonely” being far more common than “happy”, “excited”, “enthused” and “popular.” With all the caveats that being a teenager is rough and far more romantic to those thinking about the experience in hindsight, the findings highlight just how much the romanticism of childhood and teen years has ceased to exist. This isn’t to say that those years are terrible necessarily for kids and teens, but the likelihood that there will be sparkly John Hughes-esque type films about the 2020-25 period seems, well, unlikely. Anxious Wes Anderson style ones focussing on debt, dropping out and division, yes, Hughes-esque ones about teens getting one over the older generation, no.
One of the factors that really distinguishes this generation of kids and teenagers from previous ones, is how much friendship has transformed over the last decade. If you ask almost any person over the age of thirty, one of the glowing aspects of their childhood/teen years was their group of friends or their “tribe.” Whether you were a raver, rocker, indie-kid, skater, normie, jungle-head, glam-girl, footie-obsessive, R’n’B-smoothie, boffin, comic-book-kid or – most coveted of all – uber-popular – you knew who you tribe were and you (mostly) fitted in with them, and when you look at those strange, grainy photographs from the past; high school parties, hang-outs or uni-digs, it gives you a gooey sense of warm nostalgia.
Older people have a talent for projection and desperately want what they really loved and remember fondly for their own kids/younger generations. One of the most misunderstood things about this generation, is for better or worse, the very nature and structure of young people’s modern friendships has completely changed, summed up nearly by Callie (15) here:
“My Dad is always asking me who my “tribe” or my “crew” are – which of itself makes me want to die for him – and also why we don’t “hang out in the shopping centre on Saturdays, anymore or go to pop concerts” – also die, die, cringe. I’ve tried to tell him SO many times, friendship just doesn’t work like that, and he just doesn’t understand. It used to be funny, but now it’s creating a lot of tension, because my Mum and Dad think I’m an anti-social weirdo who never goes out, but I have as many friends as they did, we just show it differently to the old days and do friendship differently.”
This is a sentiment repeated endlessly by Gen A’s and Gen Z’s I work with, so in the interest of harmony to millions of households and also so parents can better understand both the light and darker side of modern childhood and teenage friendship, this might be a useful guide to both modern friendship and why your kids behave so differently to how you did with your “tribes” and “crew.”
#OKisEnough.
This is a sentiment – shared by millions of teens – who rarely – maybe never – feel “brilliant” or even “very good” that “feeling OK is enough” and basically if they feel OK about their friends, school day, body, and life, that’s enough for now, to get them through. Lots of older people and parents find this desperately sad, wanting their kids to be absolutely thrilled by their childhood and teenage years, but think carefully back to when you were fifteen or sixteen, was it really that wonderful or is that really the romanticism of hindsight? If your child describes their day, friends and life in general as “OK” – don’t give them a hard time. It’s extremely challenging to be young and OK is enough. For now.
This is probably the biggest change in the last decade, basically when a person has a 'friendship' with a celebrity, team, or media figure. The downside is, this is by nature a one-sided and is NO SUBSTITUTE for a mutual, 'real' friendship (Taylor Swift probably isn't going to get a milkshake with you), but they also have the function of making lots of kids feel less lonely, isolated and best of all can lead to #communityfriendships. It also means, if a young person is having a bad time at school and is struggling to make/retain friends, these #parasocialfriendships can offer them a lot of comfort.
Harry (14) “I get bullied a lot at school and get called gay all the time. I would probably give up if it wasn’t for BTS. It’s not just them I love but all the friends I’ve made from the online stuff – BTS give me life and a reason to live.”
#CommunityFriendships
Kids who bond over an interest (eg. gaming), band, organisation, belief or person. The upside of #communityfriendships is, kids can find real, common, shared ground to form genuine friendships, and has kind of replaced the tribes of yesteryear (all the indie kids hanging out), but the downside is, if the community is built on unhealthy ideals/a toxic figure. #CommunityFriendships often replicate the language, tribalism and inverted nature of online communities – ie, they would make little sense to people on the outside looking in – and might even look quite insular in nature but can be brilliant for young people who might be shy or introverted to find common ground with friends both online and in the real world.
Sophie, 15: I really struggled to make friends in Year 7 and 8 and kind of tried to be a ‘girly-girl’ which didn’t work for me at all. My real social life happened on Twitch, where I was a big gamer and had loads of friends from around the world. One day, in Year 7, I discovered by accident, two girls in my class were into Fortnite as much as I was, and we became best friends. We do talk about gaming mostly and game together, but we also hang out occasionally too!
#UnlikelyFriendships
Loosely connected to #CommunityFriendships- you're seeing a lot of friendships rise up from kids who on the surface have little in common but a shared love of Manga, Andrew Tate or the Barbie Film, for example. As the world becomes more polarised – unsurprisingly – so are schools and kids, and you are seeing lots of friendships withering on the vine when young people’s values and ideologies diverge, and equally lots of unlikely friendships form when it emerges, they have shared values and ideas (See also: #TeamSportsThinking)
Michael (16): Our school is getting more and more woke and we are all being pushed into believing certain ‘acceptable’ things. There are lots of us who reject feminism, pronouns, the myth of the paygap and all kinds of general wokery and yes, we like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson – and there are a couple of girls who agree with us too. Lat year, we would never have been friends. I’m kind of quiet and want to go to Cambridge. But this year, I’ve discovered, I share a lot in common with the much louder, more traditionally ‘popular’ lads and we’ve become good friends.
Like team sports in common, kids increasingly hang out IRL with kids who not only share their interests but their views (See also: #UnlikelyFriendships). We live in a world where people are increasingly pushed to view people who vote, love, dress and think differently to them, are their enemy and unsurprisingly, this suspicion and intolerance is metastasizing from the online world to the real world.
Ginny (15) over in the USA, says her school is now completely divided by ideological lines.
“I won’t be friends with anyone who is remotely pro-Trump, supportive of #MAGA or would even think of voting Republican and ‘they’ think exactly the same us. Twenty years ago, friendship was divided on popular/non-popular lines, probably. Now it’s totally about what you believe.”
The scourge of every teacher and parent for the last decade, the cry of “Bantz” remains one of Year 9’s favourite get-out clauses for saying something really mean and expecting to get away with it, because it’s just “bantz.” One of the biggest misconceptions I hear about young people – Gen A and Gen Z – is they are a super kind and tolerant generation who are all ferociously anti any kind of prejudiced speech or thought. Today’s young people are just as capable as taunts, unkindness and prejudice as any of the previous generations, and actually the cruelty of the online world often hops over to the IRL-world beginning about Year 7 (when most kids start to get mobile phones.)
Danny (12): My mum is always telling me to just go up to the other kids and be friendly or say “do you want to be my friend?” and when I’ve tried that, I get called “autistic” or even “spaz.” This is definitely something that happens online and people are way meaner than in primary.
#OldHierarchiesAreDead
Traditional markers of popularity are being replaced fast and what is cool is transforming - for example, more boys look up to Elon Musk than Tom Brady now (for better or worse) and what used to be dead certs to make you popular – good looks, athleticism, conformity, nice clothes – don’t carry quite the cache they used to. And this is (mostly) no bad thing.
Zed, 15: I’m non-binary and pansexual and my Dad freaks out this is going to get me beaten up or bullied. Are you kidding me? All the unusual kids – the queer kids, the arty kids, the ones with big followings – are the popular ones now. There are kids we call the ‘golden boys’ who are, like, classically good-looking and good at sports, but no one finds them very interesting.
#24HourBullying
Kids are in a 24-hour a day cycle of connection today. If they are getting bullied it doesn't get left at the school gates and can be catastrophic.
Raina (14): I got quite a big following on TikTok and it was great online but everybody hated me at school. The girls said I was a bitch and a sket and that I’d only got a following because I dressed sluttily, so I had to stop because everything I posted just attracted so much hate and people are hate texting me at 4am. I’m scared and I don’t know how to stop it.
#KindnessMostlyWins
Despite the challenging nature of all of the above, kids and young people really do still like and seek out kind kids and teens. In the particularly challenging years (Year 8-Year 10 typically), sometimes kids lose a bit of sight of kindness, but it generally wins in the end.
Sara (15): In the drama of Year 9, some of the really popular girls and boys were the meanest with the big followings, who loved the bantz and bodying, but now we’re in Year 10, thank god, we’ve realised that kind of drama is just a massive hassle and everyone just wants to be nice – we’re knackered by all the online and offline dramas!