The ever-changing ebb and flow of social dynamics for teens is brutal, especially for girls.
How does anyone know where they stand when the sands of high school shift on a daily basis?
Instability. Uncertainty. These are the pillars that fuel anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, and withdrawal.
And it’s been this way since the beginning of time, this knife-edge walk every teenager takes, barely tenable until the wider world opens up. Survivable - just.
But now, add into the mix even more uncertainty. Not just in the hallways of school, but in the multitudinous universe we now live in.
Uncertainty doesn’t stop at the school gates. It seeps into the sanctity of home, the in-between places, the car ride, the walk, dinner out, a concert. The atmosphere of judgment and scrutiny, the teen environment of brutality, it exists everywhere now.
And here’s the thing: it lacks any kind of moral or ethical code.
Historically, codes came from our town, our street, our local community. Sure, not all of them were good, but they were at least understood. Smile at a neighbour. Be kind to the elderly. Go to church (even if no one really cared). Be a courteous citizen. Small-town life could be petty, dogmatic, even suffocating at times, but it also provided a framework, a moral backbone.
Today, codes and ethics aren’t rooted in physical communities but in online ones. And the results are murky, if not downright destructive. Want to scroll TikTok to see what people find funny, or to get advice? The humour is often cruel, simplistic. The advice? Imagine asking billions of strangers across the globe how to act, what to do. The answers are scattershot—designed to capture attention, not to be good, kind, or decent.
Teens are searchers, lurkers, appropriators. They don’t yet have a solid identity, they’re trying on guises. When I was a kid in New York on the Upper East Side, we did the same. We appropriated, we experimented, we lurked. But we did so within the confines of a community. Even there, within privilege, there was a framework of values. Cruelty and bad behaviour were called out. They didn’t find companionship with a million strangers applauding from across the world.
The loss of shared community values and moral codes is a tear in the coming-of-age of so many young people. A small, understood game, play by the rules, or at least know the rules to break them.
I have a big family, five kids between us, and I think of it as a micro-community, and I’m grateful for that. I’m constantly considering our own tribal values and customs, creating strong ones so they can embed and backbone the fabric of our lives.
