“The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” of Teenage Friendships
And for the crowd you have to wear the right clothes; you have to have the “attitude”; you have to be willing to bully people; you have to suck up to like your friends or whatever; you have to be outgoing, daring; you have to know certain people; and sometimes you have to be mean.
The need to belong. Many teens feel that they don’t belong anywhere or with anyone, so they begin to act insensibly and thus run into trouble. Many kids will do anything so they can be “cool” and belong to a group. For example, some may try drugs so their “friends” will like them.
Parents Are Their Child’s Primary Role Models, Their Obi-Wan Kenobi
Obi-Wan Kenobi, a character in the 1977 film Star Wars, understood the importance of parenting. Research has found warm and responsive parenting to be the factor most consistently associated with children’s development of skills that enable them to form good friendships and positive social relationships and to avoid negative relationships (Ginsburg, 2011). Beginning in the home, children learn the value of relationships and friendships. From birth, and through high school and well beyond, parents influence healthy social development. As teens observe interactions among parents, family, friends, and even colleagues, they see models of the way people should treat each other. These interactions, when healthy, help teens develop social competency, commonly referred to as social skills. These skills include empathy, compassion, self-control, and resiliency. Children without these skills are more likely to have psychological, delinquency, and bullying problems (Tough, 2012).
Parental support takes more than telling your teens that they’re fabulous and deserve awards and recognition for everything they do. For supportive parenting to work, it has to involve sincere, caring, and honest discussions about the issues teens face and good modeling of friendships and other relationships. Thoughtful sharing of personal experience makes parents more believable and authentic and normalizes teen experience. Danielle, a junior in high school told us how her parents do this:
I’m close to my parents. It’s nice the way my mom shares her stories and normalizes my experiences. She and my dad validate my feelings and help me to get through the times when I am not invited to parties. I know I can get through it. They also make it all right to be upset about it. Parents can give you perspective. My dad will tell me, “Get over it; this stinks, but you will feel OK.” He reminds me that one of his college friends had a wedding in Hawaii and was left at the altar. He’ll say, “So, tell me again your problem.” It’s still OK to feel upset; I can feel it and move on.
But this isn’t easy. To parent effectively, we often must run a gauntlet of challenges imposed by the realities of teens’ emotional development. From personal experience, we all know the importance of friendships during the intense teen years. Yet when we try to guide our teens through difficulties with these relationships, we often feel confused and helpless as our teens push back when we act like their teachers. We get stymied with our teens’ half-stories, anxiety, drama, and resentments. And often, after we try to help, they move on and may forget to tell us if and when their problem with a friend has been resolved. Despite all this, we must be calmly tenacious, supportive but not controlling, open to discussion but not pedantic, and always conscious of the impact of modeling relationships. But no pressure!
Social media notwithstanding, we learned from our focus groups that the nature and dynamics of friendships haven’t changed all that much for this generation of teenagers. Today’s teens deal with the drama of teenage life: how to cope with the “cool group,” dependency on their friends, and a strong need to belong. Teens confirmed that they appreciate hearing about how their parents handled the social pressures of middle and high school. It should reassure parents to know that sharing their adolescent experiences will have more of an impact than they might think. Sharing these experiences is an effective way for parents to stay engaged and plugged into their teenagers’ lives.
In this chapter, we describe the landscape of teen friendships from middle through high school. We discuss the skills teens require to develop and maintain good friendships. While each child’s sense of self, social relationships, methods of expression, and interactions can vary, we find that teens share a common need for friendship. We have separated the discussion by gender to give insights into the similarities and differences that boys and girls experience in their quest for friends. Unlike in previous generations, one significant pattern is the importance of boy-girl friendships that are not romantic.
We also discuss cliques and bullying, the “dark side” of the teen relationships, which the use of social media is making more pervasive and complicated. Cliques and bullying are all too common in the teen landscape. In their social universe, teens struggle to hold their place, achieve self-confidence, and overcome insecurity. All teens wrestle with this struggle, regardless of how they present themselves. As part of this struggle, virtually all teens must decide whether to join cliques, exclude or include others, bully or support bullying, and/or cope with exclusion or bullying directed at them.
The Changing Landscape: Stuck in the Middle
In middle school, the wide variation in emotional and physical growth exacerbates what is already a complex process of development. This is a time of constant emotional upheaval when long-standing friendships can blow up in an instant. Middle school is also the time when kids begin making new friends based on common interests, worrying about fitting in, stressing about being teased, and feeling self-conscious about how they look. These are additional sources of change and adjustment. Jennifer described how this time affected her:
When I was in seventh grade, I looked like I was ten years old. I was straight all over and could practically fit a bracelet on my thigh! My best friend, Courtney, acted like a girl in high school and had the body of a woman. We made a funny pair. For a year or so, I stayed away from Courtney and her new friends. They were very social and went to parties that sometimes had drinking. I was too scared to go. We had few interests in common, and I felt left out of her new group. It was lonely and tough, but I wasn’t yet interested in hanging out and flirting with boys. I was barely finished watching Nickelodeon. Eventually, I, too, grew, but the friendship was different. I found other friends in the meantime, but it wasn’t easy, and I really missed Courtney.
Girls develop physically and emotionally at such different rates that, as one mother described her daughter’s friends, “One friend of Sarah’s still looks like a little girl, and another looks like she could be birthing babies.” The hormones kick in, and when they do, some girls are more socially sophisticated than others, become boy crazy sooner, and are less interested in their friends who are not primping and grooming and hanging out at the mall. Jennifer’s and Sarah’s experiences are universal because the range of development in 12- to 14-year-old girls is so diverse and so visible. These differences complicate friendships for girls because what they once shared as children no longer exists; they are literally at different life stages. For example, the mother of 13-year-old Erica, said,
Some of the girls are ready for girl-boy parties. For my daughter, she is only ready to play with flirting by instant-messaging boys. If girls aren’t ready for boy-girl parties, they usually aren’t in the popular group. Erica wasn’t being called for sleepovers anymore because she wasn’t ready for boys and her former friends “didn’t want a baby around.”
For most teens, middle school is the period of transition between the solid friendships of elementary school and the social pandemonium of early adolescence. During this period, teenagers become aware that friendships are a fragile commodity that must be earned and nurtured. Navigating this transition is one of the greatest teen challenges for children and their parents. For this reason, many parents approach the middle-school years with trepidation. The mother of 14-year-old Katie shared this story:
For my daughter, middle school was a series of losses. She lost friends because she wasn’t as precocious as some of her elementary-school friends. They wouldn’t speak to her and actually told her she wasn’t welcome in their group any longer. Katie lost confidence in herself and spent a lot of time alone watching TV and reading. It was incredibly painful for me to watch. Although it was painful for Katie, I’m not sure she didn’t survive it better than I did. Once she got to high school, there were so many more choices of activities where she could meet new kids.
The father of 13-year-old Tim told us a boy’s version of this challenge: “My son has experienced more pressure and conflict with his peers than he did in elementary school. He just doesn’t have the social skills that would help him to get along better with his friends. Tim is also slow to mature, and he gets teased by his more developed classmates. It’s just hard.” Many boys may not enter puberty until the end of middle school, while others will have attained almost full growth by that time. This allows for a huge variation in the size and appearance among boys of the same age; some may look like older elementary-school-age children, while others will clearly appear to be nearly adult men! Nicholas, 15 years old, said:
Middle school was the worst three years, so awkward. I could have skipped it and lived my whole life without missing it! It’s weird, maturing while others don’t. Starting in the spring, lots of kids sat out on the field for lunch; all I saw were people sitting in groups, in defined pods. Everyone turned around when you walked out, and if you couldn’t see to join your friends, you would go back inside and eat alone. High school is so much better.
The Still Changing Landscape: High School
Friendships do change during the high school years. There are more options and greater opportunities for autonomy and interest-based relationships. This is true for both boys and girls. The teens in our focus groups agreed that as long as they have a stable group of friends, they are comfortable in high school. All of them seemed to agree that they are so happy to be through with middle school. Rebecca, a 14-year-old high school freshman, said, “It’s OK to be in a loser clique in high school; it’s harder in middle school because you’re more noticeable.”
In today’s culture new avenues have opened up for teens to acquire social capital and a sense of belonging. It’s no longer only designer labels, beauty, and athletic abilities. Skills, talents, and unique forms of expression open up new paths to acquire friends and social status. Teens have diverse interests, a wider variety of extracurricular activities, and the opportunity to form friendships based on these interests. Examples include the teens who create an app for fantasy football, organize other students to march for gun control, post artistic photos on Instagram, or post skateboarding videos on YouTube.
This is good news, along with the fact that groups are now more fluid, which means that some teenagers can move more freely between various groups without fear of exclusion. One mother said, “Joey would have been considered a loner in the past, and was in middle school, but now that he posts his songs on SoundCloud, he gets a lot of positive attention because other kids like his music. This attention has helped him to make new friends and come out of his shell and blossom.” Another mother said, “Carly designs fashions for teens and created a website where she posts her designs. She now has a few hundred kids who follow her posts. This positive attention has been like an inoculation against insecurity and a booster shot of self-esteem.”
Hierarchal and exclusionary behaviors are common and part of teen and adult life. Alexandra Robbins, author of The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, says it’s a natural part of cognitive development for students to cluster into groups.
They begin to form their identity based not by their family but by their friends,” she says. “Forming boundaries, judging people by external characteristics, and labeling them is all a part of students’ learning to structure the world around them” (Long, 2013).
The title of Robbins’s book does affirm that the “geeks” and others who may not fit the cool stereotype will be successful in life!
The bottom line is that it is unlikely that parents and their children, or even a group of parents, can make major changes in the social dynamics of a school. However, parents can help their teens cope with specific incidents and provide opportunities to excel at one of their passions. In high school, parents can’t butt in and do it for their teens. Getting overly involved can backfire and ostracize your teens. Parents in our focus group shared stories of other parents who, as one mother described, “support the pecking order.” The mother explained, “They are happy if their kids have many cool friends and are invited to all of the parties. It’s almost as if they [the parents] are cool if their kids are in a cool group.”
So how can we as parents guide our children through the high school social scene? There are more groups to choose from, and teens need some close friends, not a pack. Parents also must remind their children that exclusion and bullying are unacceptable, and they should talk with their children about feelings regarding rejection. Almost everyone can agree that the power of cliques should change, but without an intentional effort by parents and other adult role models, this behavior will persist.
Encourage your children to find their uniqueness. Help your teens to develop skills and follow their passions. Your children can draw tremendous strength from knowing they are competent. Sara said, “When I’m feeling really down, I go to my room and play my guitar. Many nights, I write lyrics instead of writing in a journal, and put them to music. I’m not sure how I’d cope without my music.” Dancing, playing a sport, being a member of a band or a theater group, social activism, painting, blogging, cooking—we could go on and on—are all antidotes to the inevitable social rejection teens feel at some point. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is still a good model for behavior. Being friendly and treating others with respect can provide some insurance against being excluded. It is helpful to have friends when walking down those hallowed hallways.
The Good: The Strength of Teen Friendships
While sitting with focus groups of teenage girls, we were struck by the “buzz” that constantly surrounds them. They exert so much energy, sometimes like the flutter of butterflies, other times like a gaggle of geese discussing and laughing about every aspect of their experience. When watching a group of boys interact, we saw them slouching comfortably side-by-side, talking and laughing, but not with the same volume. Both boys and girls talk and maintain relationships through texting and IMing. The reliance on this new form of communication may not be the face-to-face we’re used to, but they seem to interact, nevertheless. Though experiences are expressed differently, friendship seems to offer both teen girls and boys a tremendous opportunity to experience invaluable companionship and support.
Psychologist Jennifer Watling Neal’s recent study looks at how girls’ and boys’ relationships develop over time. While girls tend to get together in more intimate groups than boys, these differences disappear by eighth grade. Neal said, “Although we tend to think that girls’ and boys’ peer groups are structured differently, these differences disappear as children get older,” according to Neal. “Younger boys and girls tend to play in same-sex peer groups, … But every parent can relate to that moment when their son or daughter suddenly takes an interest, whether social or romantic, in the opposite sex. While the size of boys’ peer groups remained relatively stable, girls’ peer groups became progressively larger in later grades” (Michigan State University, 2010).
By adolescence, the characteristics of positive friendship are what all teens have in common. A positive teen friendship incorporates loyalty, trust, and collaboration. These same characteristics of friendship sustain us as adults. Many of us can trace friendships back to elementary school. We can move cross-country and not talk to each other for months or years. But when we meet again, perhaps through Facebook, it’s as if we just saw each other.
Positive friendships offer priceless lessons in relationships. They teach boys and girls about empathy, support, nurturing, love, and loss. We saw our focus-group teens crave and experience these kinds of friendships and experiences. One group of ninth graders had been meeting together in a mother-daughter book group since they were in second grade. Another group of seniors had been playing soccer together since they were in kindergarten. Although some teens from each group now attended different high schools, their connection, respect, trust, and reliance on emotional support were strong. Michelle, 16, said,
I count on my friends for everything. I have one friend whose parents recently split up, and I was talking to her about how she felt. She said her parents wanted her to go and see a therapist, and she told them, “If I can’t say these things to my friends, then how can I say them to a therapist?” That made me think about the depth of friendships at this age.
A parent of a high school junior described her son’s group as “a very welcoming and dependable posse. Their friendships don’t conform to the nasty things we read about. I feel the boys watch each other’s backs.” One mother said,
My father died on Kristi’s sixteenth birthday, and instead of celebrating with her, I flew to Chicago to plan the funeral. It was gut-wrenching on many levels, and I worried about leaving her to deal with her shock and grief without me. But she was not alone. Her friends, both her boy- and girlfriends, surrounded her with comfort and warmth. Her friends had so much emotional wisdom, which they generously shared. It was such a relief to know she had the support of such a solid group of friends.
Fifteen-year-old Madison said, “I know there are girls who are mean to each other. They say they’re friends, and they act like they’re friends when they’re with each other, but they always talk behind each other’s backs. My friends are over that now. We support and comfort each other; we are really just there for our friends.” Madison’s mother confirms this observation: “I tell Madison how important it is to be straight with your friends, but more significantly, I try to model how to be a good friend.” Positive connections and friendships get us through life.
Jonathan, 16, said he understood friendship differently after going to Africa for a community service project:
I couldn’t bring my phone; you weren’t allowed to. I actually talked to people. Developing a relationship in person is so different. People don’t know how to do it anymore. In the hallway at school, I would pretend to be on the phone so I didn’t have to make eye contact. Now I try to put my phone away and actually talk to people. Sometimes they are shocked!
So how can parents help their children to understand and facilitate positive teen friendships? Make sure your children participate in formal and informal activities that foster positive adolescent values, strengths, social skills, and contributions to others. Parents also should model how to be a good friend, acting with empathy and compassion and valuing others. This includes knowing how to disagree and fight fairly. And last, parents must enable their children to accept that intense emotions, powerful as they are, are fleeting and impermanent. Emotions at this age are often fluid.
The critical skill in friendship is communication, and today’s teens do a lot of it—not by talking face-to-face, but by texting, posting, and sharing photos. As parents, you must teach your teens about the risks with friends and the consequences to them from careless use of social media. You can teach them that texting is never private; it is short and lacks nuance, and messages are easily misunderstood or misused. They should expect that anything they text and any photo they transmit will be distributed to everyone they know, people they don’t know, and people whom they don’t want to see what they send—for all time.
Regardless of how well we guide and teach them, our teens will make mistakes. Mistakes present opportunities to learn about the consequences of their behavior and the importance of appropriate boundaries and respect. These lessons will help them navigate the emotional turbulence of teenage life. When teens live fully in the present, such as when they send provocative photos to their most current crush, they may have difficulty accepting that the relationship may not last forever. As parents, you can present the longer view, a perspective that inherently challenges teens.
To be clear, your efforts to guide—maybe a better word is coach—your teen will fail if you present your thoughts as lectures, moral strictures, and judgments. Certainly, conversations about behavioral consequences are part of your parenting tools. However, we believe that teaching the lessons we are addressing here—self-worth, empathy, respect, integrity, and being a valued friend—are best presented by sharing stories, examples, and experiences. Even decades later, your tales will guide your teens through difficult patches.
Boys and Girls as Friends
Friendships between boys and girls provide a special opportunity for openness and a safe place for them to explore and learn about relationships. Matt, 17, said,
Girls have an easier time being friends to boys because they are satisfied with being friends without the sexual component. I think we aren’t as critical as girls, and we see things from a different point of view. My best “girl” friend, Stephanie, usually calls me to see if she is overreacting to something her boyfriend, Justin, said or did. Social stuff is not as dramatic for us, and we can be helpful by offering a different perspective.
Hannah, a high school junior, said,
Thank God for Sam. I asked him to so many dances; he’s my default date. We’re just friends, but I count on his friendship and unconditional support. When he’s standing with a group of guys, I never have to feel uncomfortable about joining them. When I walk up to the group, Sam puts his arm around me and welcomes me with the sweetest hello. I’ve cried on his shoulder and listened to fears that he tells no one else.
Boys connect when they are comfortable and safe. But when threatened, they often use language shields or become silent, sullen, or angry. Boys are often more comfortable being friends with girls and sharing their feelings. Ben said, “You better believe when it’s late at night, if I’m texting, it’s to one of my girl friends. For some reason, I’d never text a guy late at night. But my friend Kori is so easy to talk to. We share things, and I trust her. It’s nice knowing I can reach out to her before I go to bed.”
The girls with whom we spoke also told us that boys do transcend their reluctance to talk in a personal way. The girls told us that in their one-on-one friendships with boys, they are able to communicate openly. One girl reported, “I have a really, really good guy friend. I tell him maybe more than I tell my girlfriends. And he shares everything with me, even emotions. I also find that I can do anything in front of him, and I feel comfortable around him.” Friendships between girls and boys represent important connections for getting through these years intact.
Parents can encourage these rich relationships and should not assume all boy-girl friendships have to be romantic. Let them talk (usually text) and get comfort at a time in their lives when real friendships matter. For boys, who usually aren’t taught the language of feelings, having a girl as a friend can allow them to express what they really feel and learn how to do it from those who do it often—girls. For girls, it’s a safe place where they don’t feel judged. Besides offering trust and intimacy without judgment, such relationships give boys and girls insight into how members of the opposite sex approach the world.
The Bad: Cliques
Friendships are a key to how girls and boys feel about themselves, yet they can have a dark side, called cliques, during these years. In every school or among social groups, there are people who radiate power, confidence, and influence. They can make people feel included or excluded. Peers of these young people are likely to see these cliques as cool. The cool factor perpetuates itself because other teens are drawn to them, which maintains their popularity and status.
When teens who radiate power, confidence, and influence include or exclude others, their group becomes a clique. Ask any teens, and they can describe in detail who belongs to the “in” clique, although they may not be able to verbalize precisely what makes those individuals cool. All teens go through the revolving door of social acceptance. Cliques are groups that make it clear to others just who is considered in and who is considered out. They usually focus on popularity and status, giving outsiders the impression that members of the clique think they’re better than those outside.
The difference between a clique and a group of friends is the lack of freedom and movement that clique members have outside the clique. Members feel pressure to do everything with their friends in the clique. Julia offered an inside perspective:
I was in a clique my freshman and sophomore years in high school. We sat together every day during lunch. There were times I wanted to sit with other friends from my soccer team but knew I’d be ridiculed as a traitor if I did. We walked around like we owned the school, but I felt so stuck. I worried about saying the right thing and got tired of feeling so insecure. For two years I was such a follower! It was very stressful and not at all what I had thought it would be like.
Julia’s experience is not unusual; members of a clique are well aware that other members often resort to flattery and humiliation or rumors to manipulate the others and maintain the clique’s tight hold on each other. Fourteen-year-old Rachel said, “My friends are my life.” Alexis, a high school senior, said, “Nothing is worse than a friend’s betrayal.” Another girl reported, “My worst fear is being alone.” One mother said,
Alyssa is reserved and anxious to please. She wants to be liked more than anything else. She is so self-effacing that she doesn’t take credit for what she does and is much more comfortable in the background. I know this because I watch her stepping back and waiting to hear how her friends think before she speaks. Sometimes I overhear her agreeing with her friends about something that we’ve talked about, and I know she really has a different opinion.
Even when you’re in a group, you may realize that you are considered dispensable. In general, teenage girls are continually being pulled in two directions, wanting to be different and accepted at the same time. Remember, you want teens to learn to behave in ways that are consistent with their own values, not just follow a clique. While the criteria and rules for cliques are often very specific, they differ from school to school. What is cool in downtown Denver may not be cool in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and what is cool in New York City is not the same as in Seattle. However, regardless of where you live, no one feels really secure in a clique.
Parents and teens alike often struggle to figure out why certain kids are more popular than others. Brianna said, “The worst part of cool is that I am always comparing myself to them and always find myself wanting, no matter what. Once me and my friends start comparing ourselves to the cool group, even if we don’t really like them and they usually don’t like each other, we always feel bad about ourselves.” Students who try to figure out who they are by comparing themselves with others rather than getting to know themselves are too often going to feel that they don’t measure up. One mother relayed the following conversation she had with her teenage twins:
I kept saying to Alex and Ryan, “What is it about this group that I keep hearing about? Are they smarter? Do they get better grades? Are they richer? Do they have bigger houses? What is it that identifies them?” Alex kept saying, “No, it’s not that. It’s not that.” Ryan finally said, “I think it’s just that they assume that they are popular and they’re entitled to belong to this group, and the rest of us will go our merry way and make our friends elsewhere. One of the girls in the group is very nice to me when I see her in history, but when I see her with her posse at parties, she’s absolutely obnoxious. They think they’re in this golden bubble.”
They are not easily defined, but everyone knows who “they” are, even parents and teachers. Drew, a college sophomore, says, “I was so obsessed with chasing coolness, which was such a pointless and intangible thing. It kept slipping through my fingers when I tried to catch it. I’m finally happy, but I never got a chance to actually get comfortable in high school.”
Complicated Girls
Books about mean and troubled girls have painted a dismal picture of teenage female culture. We often hear about and see images of the tall, shapely blonde at the center of the social hub who uses her good looks and popularity to attract or marginalize other, “ordinary” females. These are the cool cutthroat girls who value their social omnipotence over friendship, solidarity, and compassion. Then there are the girls who will follow any given formula to gain the good graces of the cool girls. There is still another group of girls we don’t hear much about. These are the more average-looking, studious, kind, compassionate, and free-spirited girls who feel comfortable in their own skin and don’t feel it’s necessary to put someone else down to enhance their social stature. These girls may be so busy reading or spending time with family members or with special-interest and/or faith-based groups that they don’t get caught up in the need to be (or appear to be) socially savvy.
By following a self-designed path on the outskirts of the group, these girls develop insight and maturity beyond that typically found among their more group-dependent peers. Their experience with groups is more fluid; they have the ability to move in and out of groups at their own initiative. Unlike the popular girls, who seem to have the greatest pressure to grow up quickly, these girls often have the self-confidence and self-respect that allows them to escape the peer group pressure to experiment with drugs and early sexual activity.
Some girls choose not to get caught up in what can be a vicious cycle of instant inclusion and exclusion. These girls may share three or four best friends and treat everyone else, as one girl described, as “an associate.” Not depending on a particular social group allows girls to explore interests, develop skills, and avoid being boxed in by a particular set of norms and standards. The mother of 16-year-old Jasmine described her daughter this way:
Jasmine keeps it simple. She doesn’t aspire to be in any group, but you can always find her with one of her four best friends. I have taught her that only she is important to her development and state of mind. I want her to be who she is, not what others want her to be. Other than me, Jasmine knows that nobody can take better care of her than she can. She has to learn to take care of herself, not at the expense of others, but to learn to trust herself.
Girls who are always trying to be popular often do not get the opportunity to think independently. Even for those girls who always “dress the right way,” the challenge to maintain this status can be limiting. Parents who have chosen not to push or fixate on their children’s popularity can take comfort in knowing that there are benefits to not belonging to the cool group.
For all the power residing with those in the cool clique, the social terrain of middle and high school can be rough for even the most popular girl. Understanding the landscape and how it works is paramount for effective parenting. Backstabbing, gossiping, bullying, nitpicking, and ostracism have long been elements of teen girl culture. With the advent of the Internet and smartphones, these elements are now a 24/7 nightmare. Adolescent girls live in a world where best friends can become enemies overnight, where one look from another girl can mean the difference between isolation and belonging. It’s a world where no one tells you why you can no longer sit at the lunch table with your friends, where secrets are traded like currency and gossip is devoured like candy. Rejection and isolation are common, public, and difficult to defend against. Parents must try to prepare their daughters and support them in managing the culture of teenage girl life.
Earlier in this chapter, we discussed coaching teens to enhance their self-awareness, values, and social skills to build and maintain positive friendships. All of those lessons apply equally when learning to cope with a “mean girl.” But the terrain is a bit different, and application of these lessons more specialized. We have observed that girls experience social exclusion as devastating because they define themselves in relation to their peer group. The mother of 13-year-old Heather told the following story:
My daughter was invited to a sleepover. She had swim practice the next day, and I didn’t want her to be tired. She is usually OK about coming home at a reasonable time on Friday evenings, but this time she went ballistic on me. At first, I couldn’t get her to tell me why it was so important to sleep at Julia’s house. But Heather’s reaction didn’t match the content, so I knew something else was going on. Finally, she told me that a group of friends were spending the night, and if she wasn’t there, she could be their next victim. Heather actually said, “Mom, they’ll kill me off if I’m not there to protect myself.”
I really didn’t know what to do. I knew that if she spent the night, Heather might as well forget about swim team practice, but she seemed so vulnerable that I didn’t want to put her “in harm’s way.” I let Heather make the choice. She decided to spend the night but wanted to be picked up early enough to go to swim practice. I agreed to take her. Heather was so appreciative of my not forcing her to go to practice and letting her make the decision. This incident gave us a good opportunity to talk about the meaning of friendship while at the same time learning how to watch your back. All I know is, I wouldn’t want to be 13 again!
In one of our focus groups, another mother said, “The horrible treatment some girls inflict on others creates scars that can’t be seen.”
The pressure to fit in, to achieve in school, to be nonthreatening to boys and other girls can chip away at a girl’s self-image. Consumed with being liked by others, they don’t get around to liking themselves. Often there is a “mean girl” or a clique of “mean girls,” who add to this diminished self-image. Even a couple of decades later, mothers can recall the girls who had social power when they were in school and how those girls made them feel. The mother of 15-year-old Laura said, “When my daughter is sad, it is so painful to watch. I know I bring my own baggage to the situation. No one that I know would ever want to go back to being a 14- or 15-year-old girl.” Unfortunately, a lot of this exclusionary and hurtful behavior stays under the radar of many teachers and parents. For several mothers, the memory of the powerful, mean girls who decided who would go to which parties and who would be allowed to sit with them during lunch still stings. Olivia, 16 years old, said,
On Monday, I had five girlfriends who ate lunch with me every day at the same table in the cafeteria. On Tuesday, I felt an icy chill when I put my tray of food down at the table. Natalie looked up from her sandwich and snarled, “Olivia, there’s really no room here for you!” I was totally clueless about what was going on, and I practically had to get on my knees to find out why Natalie was mad. I apologized for something I don’t even think I did, but it was the easiest way to avoid her anger. I was scared that she’d get my other friends to treat me like a leper. What really gets me is that I never call her on how petty she is. I’m too chicken to shake the boat, so I suck it up and hold it in.
In this instance, Olivia, like so many other girls, chose to be silent and hide her real opinions to avoid conflict. She learned that hiding part of herself is a way to maintain her place in the groups.
Girls’ friendships in adolescence are filled with pitfalls because their social life involves negotiating cliques, gossip, and power plays. Gossip is the background noise that girls accept within their peer groups and that allows them to express unsafe feelings, such as anger and aggression. Texting and social media have made this a minefield. We can remind our daughters that girls often behave this way because they are also afraid of being left out, so they go along. In one of our focus groups, Kelly told us she had left the cool group for another group of friends because she was tired of mean girl behavior. Trying to keep up is challenging for even the meanest of girls. It’s exhausting! Finding another group of friends, where the pressure is less and acceptance is more the norm, is the best antidote to this ordeal.
Complicated Boys
Boys’ friendships with one another don’t seem to have the complexities that girls’ friendships do. One boy said, “You hang out with boys you are comfortable with based upon sports, video games, music, and other common interests. You don’t question why or whether or not you are good enough to be someone’s friend. It just happens or it doesn’t.” The main criterion for boys is comfort; there isn’t any subplot. They don’t judge each other to the same degree as girls do about physical appearance or what kind of clothes they wear. If they do, it may be a minute or two of sarcasm or teasing, and then they’re done. They are less concerned about whom you were texting last night. There is less pressure to fit in, because there are fewer criteria. There is no spoken analysis. They don’t easily feel rejected, and they have a strong sense of loyalty. John said, “We don’t say whether or not Jim is good enough to hang out with. You just do or you don’t.”
They do get comfort in just being together. In middle school, boys play video games on various platforms and sports. It’s not that they don’t worry about their hair, acne, or other aspects of their appearance. They see it, deal with it as best they can, and don’t dwell on it. They do share more with each other as younger adolescents, but as they grow older, they become much more cautious about sharing feelings. Boys want to avoid being labeled soft, weak, or gay. Discussion, if any, usually takes the form of a smart-ass comment and grunts. It isn’t that they don’t have or need emotional connection; it’s just that they do it with less drama and far fewer words.
Does that sound simple and appealing? It’s not quite. The consequence of “boys will be boys” is that teenage boys are continually trying to prove their manhood. Boys are not necessarily antigay as much as they buy into the importance of guys “acting like guys” (Way et al., 2013). Niobe Way, author of Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, draws some conclusions from her research with boys over the past two decades:
The popular stereotype is that boys are emotionally illiterate and shallow, they don’t want intimate relationships or close friendships. I have discovered that not only are these stereotypes false, they are actively hurting boys and leading them to engage in self-destructive behaviors. The African American, Latino, Asian American and white teenage boys in my studies indicate that what they want and need most are close relationships—friendships, in particular—in which they can share their “deep secrets.” These friendships, they tell us, are critical for their mental health. But, according to the boys, they live in a culture that considers such intimacy “girly” and thus they are discouraged from having the very relationships that are critical for their wellbeing. (Way, 2013)
A narrow definition of masculinity forces boys to carry a shield of armor that limits their emotional and relational development. Such behaviors have a profound effect on how boys form friendships. It’s not surprising that, in high schools across the country, athletes who play major sports attain the highest status. In healthy psychological development, a teen would typically acquire new skills and qualities in a progressive fashion; as each one is acquired, the teen makes it a part of his or her maturing self. In contrast, traditional male socialization, as described by psychotherapist Terrance Real, reflects a process of disconnection marked by successive “disavowing” and loss of qualities for themselves and in relationships with others, all essential to boys’ emotional and psychological well-being (1997). Some of these qualities include sadness, vulnerability, pain, and empathy. This lack of emotional connection is often combined with a sense of privilege, power, and entitlement that also stems from traditional masculine ideals. It isn’t surprising that these factors influence boys to behave in disrespectful and antisocial ways toward their parents, teachers, and peers.
The protective shield of boys leads them to be careful about not only whom they talk to, but also how and what they say in specific groups. When we asked boys to talk about themselves in our focus groups, they frequently did two things. First, they defined themselves by stating not what they were, but rather how they were different from others (usually girls) in the group. For example, they would make statements beginning “Boys aren’t” rather than “Boys are.” Second, boys often referred to themselves in either the second person (“you”) or the first person plural (“we”). Rarely did boys use the first person singular (“I”). These patterns of speech may suggest reluctance on their part to talk in a personal, intimate way.
Even though boys may find occasional safe outlets for their emotions and behaviors, their shield is the primary image they show to the outside world. This manufactured self-confidence and bravado may be masking a more damaging self-concept.
The Ugly: Bullying
Bullying involves aggression and a systematic use of power. The problem may begin at home with family interactions and as early as elementary school. It includes physical aggression, such as hitting, and verbal aggression, such as name-calling, making threats, or spreading rumors. Jaden told the following story:
My friend Vanessa was in geometry class. She sat in the first row, and I sat behind her. Whenever the boys would call her names, I would tell them, “Mind your own business.” She was in tears after they called her “horse face” and told her, “You put the u in ugly.” I said to Vanessa, “Let’s go to the cafeteria and have lunch; no one will bother you.”
But today because of social media, there is really no safe space. (Olweus, 2005)
According to a recent report by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), “Bullying presents one of the greatest health risks to children, youth and young adults in U.S. society. … Its effects on victims, perpetrators, and even bystanders are both immediate and long term and can affect the development and functioning of individuals across generations” (2013). The following list of statistics may seem overwhelming, but we provide it so you will understand how pervasive bullying is and that in a given year every teen is vulnerable to bullying:
One of every four students is bullied.
One of five students admits to having bullied others.
Every day, 160,000 students miss school to avoid being bullied.
Each year, 100,000 students carry a gun to school to protect themselves from bullies (Sheridan, 2010).
Forty-two percent of kids have been cyberbullied.
Nine of 10 teens have had their feelings hurt online.
All of these statistics are from Nobullying.com (2014), except where another source is cited.
Bullying is endemic to school culture, and as adults, we know it is endemic to life, at home and in the workplace. It is practiced across every gender, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. However, students who do not conform to traditional gender norms are more likely than their peers to report being bullied at school (56 percent versus 33 percent; Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network [GLSEN] & Harris Interactive, 2012). In 2012, approximately 30 percent of U.S. teens and preteens aged 12–18 reported being involved in bullying as victims, perpetrators, or both (Robers et al., 2012). Another high percentage of teens report being bystanders, making it likely that most students are affected by bullying during a typical school year (Wang et al., 2009).
The consequences to teens who are bullied by either cyberbullying or in-your-face bullying are substantial and long lasting. They include higher rates of anxiety, depression, problems with physical health and social adjustment, and poor academic performance (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 2014a). In addition, students who bully are at a higher risk of delinquency, criminal behavior, and social maladjustment in adulthood (Bender & Lösel, 2011; Farrington et al., 2011). The bottom line is that bullying is pervasive, has many causes, takes multiple forms, and has severe consequences. As parents, we have to take bullying seriously. It isn’t just “kids will be kids.”
Bullying plays out differently for boys and girls. While boys tend to get physical, girls more often bully other girls with verbal assaults that result in excluding another girl or spreading false rumors and gossip about her. Females are victims of electronic bullying (for example, social networking sites, instant messaging, text messaging) twice as often as males (Sheridan, 2010). Same-sex bullying is far too common and includes accusing others of being fags, gays, or lesbians. In fact, a large percentage of bullying among students involves homophobic teasing and slurs (HHS, 2014b; Poteat et al., 2012; Robinson & Espelage, 2011). Some LGBTQ teens report greater depression, anxiety, suicidal behaviors, and truancy than do their heterosexual peers (Kosciw et al., 2012). A middle-school counselor told us,
The thing that is most offensive about homophobia in pro sports is the type of behavioral conduct that’s not even questioned as tolerable among teammates. Rape, vehicular homicide, spousal abuse, vicious assault—a guy can be accused of or have actually committed one of those crimes (and those are off the top of my head), and not one story will be written about how his teammates will accept him. It is more socially acceptable for men to tolerate and condone those types of criminal acts than it is for them to be understanding of or tolerant toward male homosexuals. Gay men are judged more harshly than violent criminals in America. This is what the Michael Sam story in which this gay football player publicly acknowledged his sexual orientation should lead us into talking about.
Bullying can have a profound impact on how teens feel at school. After repeated gossip about her sexuality appeared on the bathroom walls of her school, one high school girl told us, “The experience was awful. I didn’t want to go to school. I felt rattled all the time, I felt insecure and vulnerable. School was no longer a safe place for me.”
Students with disabilities also are often targets (HHS, 2014c). A parent recalled, “I knew a boy who was visually impaired who was punched mercilessly. A group of boys would come up to him from behind and punch him between his shoulder blades. Life is hard enough for kids who look different without these attacks.” The sense of isolation and difference that some kids demonstrate and feel at school increases their vulnerability to being bullied by their more powerful peers.
The teachers with whom we spoke expressed the belief that those who bully are responding to the power differences they see in society, in the media, or at home. They may be also compensating for inadequacies, real or imagined. The teachers see these students copying these behaviors at school, where they use their power to intimidate others. One middle-school English teacher said, “When students do not have something in their lives that makes them feel good, they turn to negative behaviors. If they can’t get positive attention, they will turn to negative attention rather than feeling powerless and invisible.” As an antidote to this behavior, teachers suggested that schools foster a sense of community where the school encourages a sense of caring for one another, and for this strategy to work, teachers have to model this behavior. Research supports this strategy for collaborations that may allow bullies and victims to see themselves and their peers in a new way (National School Climate Council, 2010).
Alexis, 15 years old, recalled an example in which she asked for and received support at school:
When I walked into French class, I saw a paper on my desk, and on it was written in bold letters, “DYKE.” I quickly turned the paper over, slid into my chair, and unsuccessfully tried to hold back my tears. The truth is, I don’t know if I’m gay, so I immediately felt exposed, humiliated, and frightened. After school, I told my parents about it, and they suggested that I ignore it. Ignoring it didn’t make it stop.
So I confided in my French teacher after class, and she suggested that I go to the counselor. I resisted at first, because it just seemed like an invitation for more abuse if anyone else found out about it. The teacher assured me that I could trust the counselor, and she took my situation seriously. She told me that the school had an antibullying policy, and there was a procedure for complaints. She was right. After talking to the counselor, I felt less ashamed.
If you want to help your teens, tell them they haven’t done anything wrong, seek help when needed, and support them as they question issues of sexuality.
Boys report increases in how frequently they are called gay epithets as they progress through high school (Poteat et al., 2012). Logan shared the following story: “I was bullied from middle school through high school. I was ostracized and restricted to only certain bathroom stalls to avoid ‘contaminating’ the others, slurred and degraded in hallway graffiti, and pushed or shoved on my way to school because I was gay.” Logan said the bullying was constant and unrelenting. He thought about killing himself and about how to harm his tormentors. Logan tried to talk to school officials but was afraid that if he made a big deal about it, his situation would get worse and not better. When he was a junior in high school, Logan finally found other students, and they started an antibullying campaign with the help of the student advocates. Logan said, “I began to stand up for myself and for other students, and I gained more confidence in myself, and it was only then that the bullying stopped. I couldn’t have gotten through this without my new group of friends and my parents.”
Because males’ identity is so wrapped up in their physicality, boys who are slow to move through puberty or who might be on the smaller size of the height spectrum are also vulnerable to bullying. Said one mother, “My son, Eric, was five feet tall at fifteen. He learned never to stand in front of an open locker door because boys would shove him inside, calling him Fairy Mary. He would be banging from the inside, and the custodian would come to break it open.”
We must allow boys to be boys in the most human sense of the word, nurture their natural emotional and social capacities, and encourage their close friendships. We need to make relationship and emotional literacy an inherent part of being human, rather than only a “girl thing” or a “gay thing.” What makes us human is our ability to connect deeply with each other. We must figure out how to help boys and young men strengthen rather than lose these critical life skills. Only then we will be able to address the psychological and sociological roots of this crisis of connection and the negative consequences associated with it.
If you find that your child is the bully, you should be truly concerned. You should explain the seriousness of treating people disrespectfully and have swift consequences for continuing the behavior. You should also support the school’s actions against the bullying behavior. Excusing or ignoring the behavior encourages it to continue. Bullies often don’t really understand how their behavior affects others, because their feelings of empathy may be limited.
Teens who are targets tend to be more anxious and insecure and will continue to be bullied if they don’t know how to stand up for themselves. They may not have the social skills to be able to defend themselves, however. With the indirect way that many girls bully other girls, it happens so fast and insidiously that it’s often difficult to track the behavior quickly enough to make it stop. With boys, we need to help them handle their anger in a way that doesn’t turn to physical aggression. If you learn of any incidents, the best way to stop the viciousness is to teach your teens how to defend themselves and what to say to the bullies. Please consider the age of your child when teaching them the following tips:
Don’t get angry; get funny. Respond with a joke.
Ignore the bullying, which sends a message that you’re not afraid.
Tell the bullies that you don’t like what they’re doing; sometimes they may be unaware of their behavior.
Tell them to stop and leave you alone. Ask your friends to go with you if you don’t want to talk to the bully alone.
Tell an adult what’s happening. It is the adult’s responsibility to help stop the bullying.
Avoid being alone with the bully.
Antibullying and antiharassment regulations exist to provide for student safety. Review your school’s code of conduct and instructions on how to file a grievance (ask to see the Title IX policy at your school or school district office).
Schools can assist by having clear rules and consequences, rather than turning away from bullying incidents and treating the behavior as normal adolescent angst. Parents should demand that schools protect students from a hostile environment. Students should see schools as welcoming and safe. Schools that condone bullying, teasing, and cliques leave some students out in the cold. Teasing, name-calling, and bullying have been synonymous with adolescence, but a schoolwide culture of casual cruelty can leave many students feeling angry, afraid, and isolated. Students must be taught the difference between friendly teasing and bullying, between flirting and harassment. We must work with our schools to create a positive school environment where students feel welcomed and not alienated, where they are learning to behave appropriately and to decrease the rage they may be experiencing. Making our schools safe places where all students feel valued and have the opportunity to achieve is the primary antidote to incidents of bullying, harassment, and violence.
Nothing can protect our children from rejection, exclusion, or worry about fitting in. Being left out—or worse, bullied—can affect a teen’s sense of self-worth and academic achievement. You can help your children by making sure they understand how being targeted by a bully feels, how bystanders can make the big difference, and by praising them for more appropriate behavior.
Friendships: The Hearts of Teenagers
Making friends and keeping them is a primary activity among school-age children. For both boys and girls, these early friendships help define who they are and who they become. But while friendships between girls are often extremely fluid, those between boys generally endure. For example, Ethan said this about his friend Luke: “I want to invite Luke to my birthday party every year for as long as I know him.” This loyalty makes young boys’ friendships especially influential—and paying attention to them so very critical for parents.
What’s tricky, of course, is that as our teens begin school, we no longer have as much control over the friends to whom they are exposed. How you talk to your teens at home, and how you choose to support their friendships, will help them make smart decisions when it comes to forming friendships when they aren’t under your direct watch. Friendships enrich the quality of our lives, but enduring and authentic friendships take work. From the friendships that are worth the investment (not all of them are), teens can learn the value of staying in a good relationship. Many of the teens we spoke with said it was important to have a best friend, one who stood out from the rest. “In reality, you are truly blessed to have one true friend to the backbone,” Travis, 14, said. “All the others are basically your acquaintances.” That’s what Rich, 17, meant when he described a person’s friends as being “like a pyramid” with one at the peak and others in supporting roles.
Remember that quality is better than quantity. It’s easy for parents to worry if it seems that their teens aren’t making “enough” friends. Most teens average five close friends, but it’s important to remember that there’s a wide range of normal. Some teens prefer one-on-one interactions, others, a small circle of friends. Still others may call their entire class their “best friend.” What’s key is to ask your teens whether their friendships keep them interested and safe and make them feel happy.
We want our teens to become authentic adults; this process begins when they are children. Authentic friends give you permission to be yourself. They allow for disagreements and differences and avoid feelings of shame when a person has complicated and confusing thoughts. To protect themselves, teens must be self-confident enough to step back from the drama and create, maintain, and communicate their personal boundaries. By sharing their own experiences, parents can help teens see that moments of drama will pass and that the teens are and will be OK.
When teens know who they are and accept themselves, they can avoid making risky decisions because of social pressure. They can also make and keep friends who will stay connected to them even in the face of disagreements and disappointments. Parents can model for their teens how to build and sustain positive friendships. As a parent, having your childhood friends still present in your life is part of that modeling.
Show your kids that friendship requires a give-and-take and is defined by loyalty, dedication, and above all, respect. In the end, it’s up to you to show them that one of the most important choices they can make is the company they keep. One of the best strategies for parents of teenagers is to become friends with the parents of your children’s friends. This tells your children that you care about what they do and are interested in who their friends are. Parents should also support friendships between boys and girls and not assume there is a sexual component. Parents can validate for their teens the qualities that bring out the best and create friendships. Helping your teens to develop a strong sense of self is crucial for them to have positive teenage friendships. When they have confidence in themselves, can take personal responsibility for their own behavior, and can empathize with others, they have the characteristics necessary to be a good friend and to be protected from people who might harm them.