Some unfortunate - albeit, unsurprising - news from our friends across the pond:
A new report released by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) paints an inauspicious picture for young people in England.
Commenting on the report for The Guardian, Denis Campbell writes:
The number of young people with no close friends has risen fivefold since 2014 as a result of growing up in a “bleak world” dominated by austerity, the pandemic and social media.
Not only do Gen-Z and Gen-Alpha have fewer friends than in years prior, they're also increasingly discontent with their preexisting friendships:
From the article:
Young people’s relationships also appeared less strong than before. The proportion of 14- and 15-year-olds who were completely or very happy with their friendships fell from 86% to 76% between the periods 2012-14 and 2023-25.
To say these are troubling findings would be a grave understatement.
The loneliness epidemic - in England, the US, and elsewhere - ought to be seen, not as a mere inconvenience or troubling development - but as a national public health emergency.
Invariably, a widespread decline in friendship connotes a weakening of a country's social capital and thus an atrophying of the all-important social muscle that enables us to work together, network, and better our communities and, by extension, nations.
How times have changed.
When I was a teenager in the 2010s, the UK-based show Skins was all the rage.
The show depicted a rather libertine picture of British youth.
Just about every episode involved sex, recreational drug use, out-of-control parties, and general mischief.
While one might come away from the show thinking that English youth are recalcitrant, uninhibited, and impish, they certainly wouldn't think that they were bereft of close friends.
If anything, the characters in Skins were surrounded by an unusual number of friends, albeit not always of the best moral standing.
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| Skins UK cast |
Less is not always more.
We've all heard that Americans are drinking and smoking less.
What's more, the teenage birth rate in the US continues to fall.
To be sure, these are all positive developments.
In some ways, though, the decline in drinking, smoking, and teen pregnancies indicates a different problem: timidity, trepidation, and a dearth in IRL socialization.
Today, young people spend more time inside, looking at screens. Forget about the prospect of approaching a woman at a bar; that potentially awkward social interaction has been remedied by dating apps!
And, while we likely don't have data on this, I'm sure young people are staying out past their curfews less.
We've taken a generation of mischievous youngsters and have made them into house cats.
What we lost.
In 2018, author of Free-Range Kids Lenore Skenazy came to speak at my college.
Skenazy, for those who don't know, wrote a very provocative article called "Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone," which is, you guessed it, about the time she let her 9-year-old son take the subway unsupervised and without a cell phone. All he had was $20 and a subway map.
When Skenazy came to speak to my class at St. Francis College, I thought she was crazy.
I still think she is, but now I see the merit in her argument.
Safetyism, of the sort that Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff write about in The Coddling of the American Mind, has created a culture wherein comfort is the ultimate virtue and discomfort is the thing to be avoided at all costs.
Thus, we have inadvertently created a generation of puritans who don't drink, smoke, have sex, approach women, or have fun at all.
What's needed is not a resurgence of libertinism, but of fun, play, and adventure.
Friends will be made along the way.
