Where the Teens Go

Newsletter 2024-09-15

I have a teenager. That isn’t shocking news to anyone but me. It’s been ten minutes since we got home from the hospital and I lugged her baby carrier up front steps. When I’m not overwhelmed by the existential horror that is the normal passage of time, I’ve found Betsy’s transition into her teenage years to be interesting. It’s a stage of my own life that I remember well. Comparing the things that she and her high school pals do in 2024 to what my friends and I did in the ancient year of 1999 has been an eye-opening experience. I feel like a Starfleet officer secretly observing a pre-warp civilization. That nerdy analogy is exactly why Betsy doesn’t want her friends to see me. That doesn’t make it any less apt. We might seem like we’re from different worlds, but underneath it all, we’re all just humans in different costumes. It’s a shame Star Trek never found any real aliens to cast.

Some of the differences between Betsy’s teenage years and my own can be explained by our respective locations. We’re in a suburb now, whereas I was in a stand-alone city growing up. Technically, it was twice the size of where we live now, but our current community is connected to a much larger metropolitan area. As a teen, I was much more isolated. The turning point was when our Target closed, which is always the first sign of the collapse of civilization. That also marked the real fall of Rome. The barbarians didn’t show up until afterward. Technically, my current suburb doesn’t have a Target within city limits, but there are five within a half hour drive. It’s a level of luxury unknown in previous centuries. Men used to go on years-long voyages with fifty-percent casualty rates just so some noble could eat dinner with a dash of pepper. Now I can buy manufactured goods from seventy-five different countries with one shopping trip on a random Sunday afternoon. Kids today don’t know how good they have it. I’m still running from those barbarians in my dreams.

Betsy has fun going to Target with her mom, but it’s not a common destination with her friends. With her fellow teens, Betsy prefers to go out for coffee. There’s a Starbucks on one end of town and a drive-thru only place on the other. Both are considered to be cool spots to swing by before school or after practice. Most of the kids, Betsy included, don’t actually drink coffee. Nobody with working tastebuds does. For adults, coffee is merely a caffeine delivery vehicle. Starbucks will go out of business when caffeine syringes become legal. For the youth, coffee shops are places to buy non-coffee dessert drinks and feel like adults. There’s nothing more grown-up than a cup of hot chocolate that’s basically a liquified birthday cake. Your sophistication and your blood sugar level are directly correlated.

Photo by Demi DeHerrera on Unsplash

When I was a teen, we didn’t have a Starbucks. Our cultural and commercial center was the mall. It was a place high schoolers could hang out without buying anything. No wonder all the stores there, including Target, eventually closed. Last Christmas, I went back to that mall for the first time in over a decade. It was seventy-percent empty. There were entire wings of the mall where no one bothered to turn on the lights. It felt like the start of a zombie apocalypse movie, which should have been a point in its favor. Some of us think it’s more exciting to shop with the ambiance of a horror movie. It was one of the only times my children have set foot in a mall. They loved it, but only because we let them buy trinkets at the cheap jewelry place once found in every mall in America. It was the store where you could get your ears pierced by a sixteen-year-old if you wanted the two holes to be uneven for the rest of your life. My generation made some wild decisions about its personal safety. It’s amazing more customers didn’t bleed out.

My suburb doesn’t have a mall, but the greater Indianapolis area has a few. They’re thriving. Betsy has never once asked to go to one. Kids of her generation know that, for actual shopping, Target conquers all. As for hanging out, she and her friends don’t feel the need to get together to wander aisles aimlessly. They hang out together from their separate homes instead. I have to watch what I say and do around the house because I never know when Betsy will be on a video call with one (or all) of her friends. They’ll sometimes livestream to each other for hours while doing their homework. It sounds like a nightmare. As an adult, I’d rather die than turn on my camera during a Zoom call. The constant threat of an unexpected broadcast means we have to live like we have guests over all the time. I need to make sure everyone gets dressed and watches what they say and do. There would be nothing more embarrassing than letting people see the real us. Things were simpler back in my day. I only had to be on my best behavior when I met up with friends in person. The rest of the time, I was free to be a gross, anti-social swamp monster. Happiness is being at your worst in the comfort of your own home.

I mock the current always-on culture, but I’ve also become dependent on it. Thursday, our family nearly fell apart when Betsy was out of contact for an hour. After her cross country meet, she went out to eat with her friends. They chose one of the four Mexican restaurants in town. If that doesn’t sound like enough, don’t worry: A fifth one is under construction. I checked Google Maps to confirm Betsy was at the restaurant. Lola and I texted her a few times to confirm she didn’t have homework or to check when she would be home. She abruptly stopped responding. Her location showed it had last updated thirty minutes before. We suspected her phone might be dead. That’s when we realized we had no way to reach her. Her last known location was a mile from our house. We didn’t know the phone numbers of any of her teammates or what car she was in. Finally, Betsy got home. It was 10 p.m. on a school night. She and her friends had left the Mexican restaurant at 9 p.m., but then they went across the parking lot for ice cream at a fast food place. That stretch of asphalt is the Bermuda Triangle for cell signals. After ice cream, the driver had to make four separate stops around town to drop off all her freshmen teammates. Betsy hadn’t gotten any of our worried messages. As confirmation, her phone suddenly dinged when she got home, showing half a dozen missed calls. We had to make some new rules about checking in with us and letting us know the contact info for the people she was with. It seemed like a minor crisis, but when I was Betsy’s age, my parents had no way to communicate with me when I was out and about. They assumed I would come home at some point and were always disappointed when I actually did. That’s not how it works these days. In 2024, if you’re out of communication for ten minutes, you’re missing and presumed dead.

There weren’t many places where I could stir up trouble at that age. After dark, the only businesses that were open were Walmart and Steak and Shake. Good luck causing chaos in one of those. The worst thing we ever did was bounce those giant rubber balls up and down the aisles. No wonder most Walmarts aren’t open twenty-four hours any more. If Betsy and her friends wanted to hang out at midnight, they have even fewer options. After 10 p.m., all that’s open is a gas station. No wonder they do their hanging out in the morning at coffee places. My generation ruined the night for good.

One place Betsy and her friends never go is the movie theater. That was one of my primary teenage hangouts, especially before I was old enough to drive. I shudder to think of how many times I asked my parents to drop me off there during junior high. Even worse was the number of times I called my parents to pick me up. I had to remember to bring change so I could use the payphone. If you’re under the age of thirty-five, you don’t understand a single word in that sentence. Movies, like everything else, were cheaper back then, but often we got in for free. The movie theater owner hired most of his teen workers from my Catholic high school. He should have known better than to trust us. Instead of references, he should have asked to see our grades in religion class. If someone you knew was working the ticket booth, you could get in for free. Unless it was me, in which case I might have to pay double. I collect enemies like Pokémon. I’ve finally caught ‘em all.

That movie theater is now closed. I’m sure that had nothing to do with all the free admissions my classmates gave away. The movie theater in our suburb now has also had hard times. It’s declared bankruptcy and been bought out at least once since we’ve lived here. It won’t be getting any help from the teens. Betsy and her friends all have nineteen different subscription services in their homes. When they’re not streaming themselves, they’re streaming Netflix. Sometimes, they’ll watch movies together while on video calls with each other. I have to admit that’s a lot easier than going out and then calling your parents on a payphone. The movie theater here is mainly the territory of the olds. Lola and I like to go with our board game friends. Often, we’ll be the only people at a screening. We used to hear rumors about rich people who bought out entire theaters so they could have a showing all to themselves. Now, we get that same experience for six dollars a ticket. The only kids there are the ones other parents drag along with them to see a sequel or reboot of a franchise they loved when they were young. Disney tricked me into paying money to see The Phantom Menace when they re-released it in theaters for the twenty-fifth anniversary, even though I didn’t like it when I saw it in theaters for the first time in eighth grade. They’ll get me again when the re-re-release it for the fiftieth anniversary. Only people my age are dumb enough to fall for that. Movie studios were right to give up on the young.

Businesses can’t pin down what teenagers want because teens don’t even know. Betsy and her friends seem to mostly be interested in places that aren’t targeted toward teenagers. Teens are like cats. The more you want their attention, the less they want you. If places like malls and movie theaters want that demographic back, they should deliberately ignore it. But if they ignore teenagers too hard, that will reek of effort and backfire. There’s nothing less cool than trying. That much is the same as when I was a kid.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James