Comments on: teens, dating, friendship, and school dances

By: blufindr

blufindr — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 06:33:59 +0000

You know, I’m in my senior year of high school, and I don’t necessarily agree with this. You’re not a social pariah if you don’t rock up with a partner, but it is expected that you do have one. Not having one, frankly, can make you stick out like a sore thumb.

Dating is still kind of beatified. The kids that can hold a relationship for anything longer than a few months are granted near-holy status. I was with my last boyfriend for just under 18 months, and encountered surprise every time I mentioned it. That, in a way, really is depressing. Has our society sunk so low that the mere idea of being committed to one person, for any reasonable length of time, is laudable?

That being said, no-one really particularly cares for dating any more. If we do take someone to the formal, it’s done as mostly friends. You do have your mushy couples, the token ones that are all over each other, but really, a lot of them are just there to muck around. Dating is seen as a casual thing, at my school. Though, I know some people who have tried to hold together bad relationships simply so they will not be alone at school events.

::shrugs:: Our generation is very much confused.

By: Brielle

Brielle — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:55:13 +0000

My boys are in gr 8 / 10. The elder is autistic and doesn’t ‘date’, although he wants to. The younger has maintained this entire school year that he and his friends don’t date because, “Nothing is going to happen anyway, we’re too young.” He goes to the dances and is very popular. It seems to me that these kids are practical and efficacious regarding relationships, where previous (very previous) generations were more ‘programmed’ to emulate. I also agree that ‘friending’ and socializing in general on facebook has supplanted r/l bf gf experiences for adolescents. (around my son’s school anyway).

By: Max

Max — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 01:19:27 +0000

no, no, no. as a current college student, i certainly feel a part of the generation you’re describing, and i recognize what new “social habits” are adapted to deal with a date-free social organization. college students are not comfortable going out, one-on-one, unless expectations have been established while drunk and hooking up the night before. relationships are initiated by hook-ups, and it’s a fucking shame (excuse my personal editorial).
the expectations are more largely built around impressionable peers, and the rise in narcissism in recent past has meant more establishment of the expectation that casual sex is better than an emotional relationship. this is obviously a generalization, but i’ve seen this happen too many times to count. there are obvious dynamics to attraction, including unavailability and subtle generousity, but my generation is incapable when it comes to figuring out what types of stable relationships they are interested in.

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:40:52 +0000

@ Eric: Thanks for comments.
On the second one I guess I was a wee bit to absolute. I thought the author meant that less dating in the teenage years would lead to a decline of young or even teenage couples who found their match in highschool or collage already and then stayed together. As if highschool were the only platform for finding your prospective partner. That’s why I joked about a decline in weddings and new borns.

I now get what you meant. I recently read a really bad article about a related issue in a really bad German magazine (I was on a plane and that was pretty much the only magazine you could actually read besides various tabloids… .) which cited an US socialist called Michael Kimmel, doing research on American men in their 20s. I thought the subject to be very interesting. Unfortunately the article came out quite single-edged.

Have a look: http://www.focus.de/panorama/boulevard/gesellschaft-bis-anfang-30-in-den-flegeljahren_aid_334704.html

However, Kimmel said that while in the 60s 2/3 of all 30-year old men had completed an education, found a partner, married, bought a house and had kids, in 2000 only 1/3 of all 30-year olds had accomplished the same. The author of the article uses this hook to go on with ‘guyland’ … and spring-break and getting jobs through ‘connections’ rather than ‘achievement’ (as a very prominent example he names the current US president). Finally he ends up at the woman of today who – apparently – has the superpower to make even these “kind of guys” commit to something.
Ugh!

Anyhow, the final sentence of the article is nice and I wish it were true.

If you speak a little German, it’s a pretty easy read. No difficult sentences or phrasing. Pure entertainment. Good for the plane.

@danah:

“That said, the media covers only the differences to their own experiences or to the image that they presume to be normative.”

How about comparing TV-shows from the 60s / 70s / 80s / 90s. One may find “normal” and “abnormal” behavior or perception in soap-operas of a certain decade/time and relate it to the general societal perception of every day life. That’d be actually a fun topic to write about. I agree that a qualitative approach would be rather unsuitable.

(Watching a reptetion of the X-Files recently, some friends and I realized that there was hardly any show with such a complex set of conspiracy before the 1990s than you can find now with “Lost” and “24″ or “Prison Break”. I think, this tells you already a lot about politics and society today.)

By: Eric Dewhirst

Eric Dewhirst — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:18:12 +0000

@ Anna – very good point – that was what she was talking about. Also I never thought of it from a European perspective – and it makes a lot of sense. I guess lessons are learned in other ways, I had my North American blinders on, sorry about that.

As for the “Bros before Hos” reference – I don’t understand what you mean by “a significant prospective decline in engagements, marriages, babyshowers or other traditional-offspring-raising practices in the next decades.”. My main point was any guy I know who has had that attitude also is not nice to his wife or girlfriend – I think that is more where I was going with my comments.

Good luck with the – Asian lady bugs!

@ Britta
I think you are right on the money with your comments.

Cheers – Eric

By: Britta Bohlinger

Britta Bohlinger — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:21:59 +0000

Even though I agree with the basic line and the call to get more real on the underlying issue I wonder how realistic that call itself may be? How many generations before ‘us’ called the previous one outmoded and out of touch with things as they were? Each generation seems to have – and sticks slavishly to – their share of moral panics and to some extent this is exactly what allows teenagers to grow up: to re-define themselves, partly in sharp contrast to all what their parents defined as marking their identity and finally to move on into adulthood just to discover one day that they are the ones who are morally panicky.
http://britbohlinger.blogspot.com

By: zephoria

zephoria — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:00:15 +0000

Autumn – I think that there’s huge variability and has been for a long time. You may have been more like your parents’ generation but I was definitely more like this generation (although knew folks who weren’t). I think with each generation, there are folks who are similar and different to the previous generations. That said, the media covers only the differences to their own experiences or to the image that they presume to be normative. It’s really hard to track these trends in a meaningful way. The overt measures – like teen pregnancy – suggest that teens are more responsible now than when we were teens. But getting at hookups and perception of dating is really hard to do with quantitative measures.

By: autumn

autumn — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 05:11:09 +0000

Point well taken, but what prompted this shift in attitude? This is reflecting how teens date overall now — they’re much more frank about “hooking up” rather than dating than I was in 1994. What’s allowing them to be more realistic and honest about the actual practices than our generation? I applaud it, but I don’t quite understand what made the shift happen in the first place. I’m 32 and was much closer to my parents’ generation of pin-the-corsage-on-the-future-wife than I was to the more loosely organized dating schemes of teenagers today.

By: Frances

Frances — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:09:49 +0000

I’m with Karine on this. Been a teen in Belgium in the nineties, and we don’t date. Going out means going to a dance with your friends, where you meet other friends, not dating. You might meet a significant other at a dance, where there’s much opportunity for drunken debauchery (dances were never school dances and drinking is allowed from 16), but it’s also very well possible you meet someone in school, at your sports club or where-ever. Most of these relationships weren’t of the serious kind — but are still percieved as very serious business by the people involved. Even though it might have felt like it, you were never considered a social pariah because you couldn’t get a boyfriend/girlfriend.

By: Anna

Anna — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 06:43:03 +0000

@ Eric:

I think what she meant is that school dances lost merely their function of a platform for the openly (in the sense of justification) fulfilment of a certain ‘social duty’, and thus that it is rather an adjustment in the teens’ perception of ‘oneself + relationship’ or ‘oneself + friendship’ and no (as the article claims) dramatic societal change caused by the use of new communication devices.

I can see that.

We don’t have proms or school dances or whatever you call it in Germany. I guess regular highschool graduate ceremonies are not the same, are they? (Because you have parents and family attending them and I haven’t seen that in US Highschool movies … so I figure it must be something different.)

However, it doesn’t mean that these lessons “on learning early on what it takes to commit to someone” are missed out. No, I think, they are still played in the same theater, just on another stage. And I agree with you, that it is absolutely crucial to make these experiences at an early age but I doubt that a.) school dances were always the ne plus ultra conditions to learn this lessons and b.) that everybody was already at the point to agree with the experience. For some people it just takes a long way round to get to the point where others were 5 years ago / or will be in 5 years … and that’s o.K.

As far as the whole “bros before hos” thing goes: If you thought the articles’ argumentation through, then there would be a significant prospective decline in engagements, marriages, babyshowers or other traditional-offspring-raising practices in the next decades. Well, I doubt it.

Gotta go, we’re just having an invasion of Asian lady bugs outside … exciting!