Colman Noctor: Hangout spaces for teens are vital

Colman Noctor: A space with a pool table, a dart board, a few bean bags and a stereo where they could meet might be the most worthwhile investment for young people’s mental health

Most parents have become over-involved in their children's extracurricular activities. By assuming responsibility for their sports and hobbies, their children have fewer and fewer opportunities to become autonomous decision-makers. I see this in my clinic, where many teenagers struggle with ‘indecision’. This is partly due to the tyranny of choices available, but there is also evidence that children and teenagers have not been given sufficient opportunity to develop decision-making skills because their parents make most of the decisions.

  A good set of friends is crucial to safeguard a child’s emotional life. Friends tend to become more important as children progress into their teenage years, so their ability to initiate friendships and make good choices about who they involve in their lives is vitally important. Consequently, unsavoury friendships can negatively influence a child, leading them to become involved in thinking and behaviours that can jar with parental and family values. When children have no friendships, it can be hugely detrimental to their adolescent experience.

Choosing the ‘right friends’ is not an innate skill and often involves a trial-and-error process. Sometimes, young people can be seduced by the allure of the ‘cool group’ and find themselves among peers with whom they don’t have a natural connection. This is understandable as teenagers don’t yet know who they are or who they want to be. Many need to ‘try on’ different identities of various peer groups until they find one that fits.

This process of self-discovery through friendships can be challenging for parents to observe, and they are often tempted to get involved and protect their child from adverse peer experiences. When parents actively organise playdates for their children, it can seem like a good thing, and in many ways, it is. Enabling children to play together is a critical part of their developmental journey. This is especially important now given the few unstructured social opportunities they have to simply play together. 

However, in doing so, are we removing our child’s ability to organise their social world and disadvantaging them as they get older?   If you had asked me some years ago, I would have said, ‘Yes, we are’ but the covid pandemic and lockdowns have played havoc with many children’s social worlds. Not only physically, where they were prohibited from being together but also developmentally, where they could not develop the social skills necessary to initiate and maintain friendships. 

  Many children learned to communicate exclusively via screens, headsets and text during lockdown. While this was a social lifeline at the time, I worry they continue to be overly reliant on digital communication in place of face-to-face interaction, even though it is no longer required.   

Real world friendships

 I speak about parenting on the Ray D’Arcy Show on RTÉ Radio 1 every month and most of the queries concern children spending too much time on technology and struggling with friendships. I believe both issues are interconnected. I hear my 13-year-old son laughing and joking with his peers on his headset while playing online games, yet when these same teenagers meet up before football training, they seem to struggle to exchange basic social pleasantries.

  More concerning are the emails from parents who describe how their child has no friends. They commonly describe a child who is pleasant, funny and kind but cannot seem to forge connections with anyone outside their family. They don’t get invited to events and spend their lunchtimes in school alone. The parents often say they try their best to help by inviting other children for playdates, but these are never reciprocated. The powerlessness they experience is real and can be devastating. 

Whether it is a hangover from covid lockdowns or a side effect of an increasingly technologically mediated world, social isolation and loneliness are big issues for children and teenagers.   So, as the adults in their lives, what can we do to help?   I believe we need to allow children opportunities to learn how to be together and form relationships. This is not a request for another module in the school curriculum on the topic of friendships - instead, it involves providing real-life opportunities for them to be together in an adult-free space where they can practice social relationships. 

 Many parents will say, ‘My child has lots of social outlets; they play soccer, GAA, etc.’. But these are not social outlets in the true sense of the word. Yes, other children are present at these activities, but their time is filled with drills, matches and adult-led exercises, and the space to just shoot the breeze does not exist. They need an unstructured space to be together.

Children and young teenagers do not have the skill set  to organise social events independently. Some are too young and others have missed important developmental opportunities to hone this skill. As adults, we need to step in and help. But crucially, we must step back out again and allow them to be together.   I propose that we invest in creating spaces for young people to hang out. While there might be concerns about child protection issues or the risk of anti-social behaviour, these concerns can be overcome.

When I am asked about a child or teen experiencing loneliness or exclusion, I often respond to parents with the advice to ‘help them to find their tribe’, but the ‘where’ to find this tribe is becoming increasingly difficult. The extracurricular activities children engage in are so structured that the opportunities to shoot the breeze and get to know each other are often not there.

A quick online search for young people’s clubs suggests there is support for marginalised groups but otherwise, the scouts, Foroige and No Name clubs are the main options.

But perhaps it's not just about clubs.  Australian consultant on public spaces Claire Edwards says young people need sites where they feel safe, and which can fulfil their needs for social interaction, self-expression and retreat. Edwards believes that teenagers are often demonised, which results in their mundane, everyday activities being described as anti-social behaviour.

This message concurs with American urbanist Jane Jacob, who observed that “adolescents are always criticised for this type of loitering, but they can hardly grow up without it”. She proposed that “incidental play” spaces should be convenient and accessible for young people.

A teen hang-out space

I recently attended an awards night in Galway, where GAA clubs were being recognised for the initiatives they had set up in their clubs. These included floodlit walking groups and other social activities available to adults in the community to come together and mix. We need similar community initiatives for children and teenagers. While a floodlit walking group may not be ideal, a space with a pool table, a dart board, a few bean bags and a stereo where they could meet might be the most worthwhile investment for young people’s mental health.

Perhaps the supervision issue could be overcome by asking young adults to step in. Similar to the individuals involved in the summer Cúl Camps, they could make this process safe yet more attractive than a group of parents sitting in the corner cramping their style.

We cannot make disparaging remarks about young people and their obsession with screens if we do not offer them an alternative. When we ask them to ‘come off your screens’ and they ask ‘and do what?’, we need a better offering than ‘clean your room’ or ‘watch TV with us’. Young people need our help to create opportunities to socialise in person. While many might initially scoff at the idea, they may be unaware of how much they might enjoy it and not know how much they need it.

We have to step in and provide a space for them to hang out and then step back and let them learn the most essential life skills they will need in the laboratory of life: how to be together, make friends and have fun.         

• Dr Colman Noctor is a child psychotherapist