Technologies like mobile phones and the internet are meant to bring people together across great distances, and they do, but they can also drive a wedge between us. Kids spend a lot of time in front of screens, historically including time that would have been spent hanging out with friends.
By 2015, more than half of all teens had made friends online, on social media sites, or in the lobbies of online multiplayer video games. Many teens interact with friends virtually every single day, while they might only hang out in person once a week or less outside of school. For many, making friends online has become just as common as forming connections in the classroom or neighborhood.
Teens certainly connect with friends and peers online, and those relationships can be incredibly valuable. However, many of the relationships developed online are one-sided and parasocial, leading to feelings of loneliness and isolation. You can’t entirely separate your teen from the grip of technology, and you don’t have to. Instead, help them lean toward real connections in the real world whenever possible and use technology to facilitate lived experiences. This approach allows teens to benefit from the advantages of making friends online while also developing stronger offline bonds.
Making Friends Offline
Navigating adolescent social structures has never been easy, but the widespread access to the internet has complicated growing up. Kids feel pressured to keep their fingers on the cultural pulse, to know all the latest slang, the freshest memes, and the hottest trends. This is just one of many ways teens and technology intersect in their daily lives.
Meanwhile, teens compare their everyday lives with the cultivated highlight reels their peers share online. It’s a recipe for poor self-esteem, leaving many teens feeling like they don’t measure up to their friends. The effects of having no friends as a teenager can be profound, leading to social anxiety, low self-worth, and even depression. Online friendships have value, particularly for teens who might be otherwise socially isolated. At the same time, for most people, there’s no replacement for spending time with friends and loved ones IRL.
Building Meaningful Friendships
You can’t choose your teen’s friends, but you can teach them how to recognize and cultivate healthy, positive relationships. In a good friendship, both parties care about one another, respect one another, hold one another accountable, work together to solve problems, communicate openly and honestly, and have shared goals or values. By contrast, a negative friendship involves manipulation, jealousy, dishonesty, and other negative attitudes. Here’s how you can initiate positive relationships.
Be approachable and friendly: If your teen wants to make friends, they should be the sort of person someone else might want to be friends with. That doesn’t mean changing who you are, but it does mean being warm and inviting, welcoming potential friends into your space, and keeping open to opportunities for connection. This is a key skill for teens learning how to make friends online or offline.
Be authentic: Teens may be tempted to change to make or keep friends, which can result in saying or doing things that don’t align with their values. Instead, being your authentic self allows opportunities for genuine connection and trust.
Be empathetic: We’re all the main character of our lives, but we’re not the main character of the whole world. It’s essential to listen and consider a diversity of perspectives. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes and putting others before yourself when appropriate is key to good friendships and being a member of a community.
Find shared interests: Long-lasting friendships are built around shared interests, activities, and goals. Those shared interests provide context for building a relationship and an opportunity for bonding. Lifelong friends connect over things they love, not things (or people) they dislike. Whether you’re looking to meet people online teens relate to or connect with classmates, common interests are a great starting point.
Celebrate together: A good friend can be a shoulder to cry on, but friends don’t just endure struggles together; they also celebrate successes! When something good happens, people want to share it with the people they care about. Being a good friend means being happy for your friends and celebrating with them when things go well.
Quality over quantity: In the age of social media, many teens are concerned about how many friends they have rather than how satisfying those friendships are. Many people wish they were more popular, but having more friends isn’t necessarily an improvement. Instead, focus on cultivating robust and deep friendships, even if your friends are few. If your teen is wondering where to make friends as a teenager outside of school, encourage community clubs, sports, volunteering, or hobby-based meetups to develop meaningful in-person bonds.
Cultivating Healthy Friendships
When we think about education, we often think of learning science, history, and math, but social learning is just as important. Making friends is how kids learn to create meaningful and healthy relationships throughout their lives.
- Model healthy friendships: Kids and teens learn a lot from watching their parents and caregivers. With that in mind, you must model healthy friendships. Say and do nice things for your friends and loved ones. Treat them with respect and show up for them when they need help. At the same time, set boundaries and enforce them so your child can learn how to do that for themselves. Let your child see what a good friendship looks like.
- Discuss different types of friendships: Teach your child that not all relationships need to be the same. Some friends are lifelong adventure buddies, while others come into our lives for a few months or years. Meanwhile, you can have some long-term friends you talk to daily and others you catch up with every few months. Each relationship nourishes us in its own way, even when they don’t all look the same.
- Discuss values: Talk with your teen about what’s important to them. What makes them uncomfortable or upset, and what lights a fire in their heart? Help them understand the importance of friends who share their values, support them, and will help them become the best version of themselves. This kind of conversation also prepares them to recognize when technology is beneficial for teens — especially when it’s used to connect with like-minded peers in meaningful ways.
- Practice conflict resolution: Things are bound to go wrong eventually, even within the strongest friendships. Teach your teen to recognize and share their feelings, to take accountability for their errors, and to make genuine apologies. Teach them how to communicate their needs clearly and calmly. They should also be aware that context and tone are so often lost over text, so it’s important to be intentional about how they communicate when they’re not in person. Talk with them about how can you help your offline friendships stay strong — by resolving issues face-to-face when possible and avoiding misunderstandings through thoughtful, clear communication.
- Create shared experiences: Encourage your teen to spend quality time with friends in the real world without the distraction of devices. Have them invite friends over, break out a board game, do silly dances together, or throw the football in the backyard. Have a snack or a meal, shoot hoops outside, or walk around the mall.
- Hang out in the real world: Rather than focusing on creating a compelling online persona, focus on creating an interesting life. Doing things in the real world will give your teen the experiences needed to craft a full and rich personality. Learning new hobbies and cultivating new experiences will make your teen the sort of person people want to be friends with and give them the skills to know when a friendship is right for them.
