Colman Noctor: The lost art of hanging around and connecting with other teens 

For today's teenagers, where every activity is organised and structured, the loss of ‘hanging around’ for no particular reason has created a gap that no amount of texting or planning can fill

Hanging around as teenagers can create the conditions for low-pressure interactions and allow mixed-gender friendships to develop gradually, without expectation. Picture: iStock

It can be difficult to explain to young people today what my social life was like as a teenager in the 1990s. Not because it was complicated, but because it was so unstructured. There were no group chats to coordinate plans, yet somehow, we still met, probably more often than today’s teenagers do.

I would even say we didn’t really ‘meet up’; we ‘gathered’. Often with no particular purpose, which modern teenagers, such as my son, find confusing.