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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, we'll wrap up our week-long series on teens and mental health with a question. What version of childhood offers more happiness? The one spent with perfect friends who you never see or the one spent with good enough friends who are up for whatever. According to our guest, this question represents the difference between his experience of adolescence in the late '80s and early '90s and his daughter's generation growing up today.

In his article for Slate, Good-Enough Friends, Dan Kois looks back at his relationships from his teen years and compares his general memories of happiness to the online lives of teens today who are reportedly experiencing record levels of depression and anxiety. Maybe there's something necessary about frequent in-person interaction, playing tackle football, getting donuts on Saturday mornings, lazing around in basements even if your friends aren't the best fit for you, or perhaps the kids of today are experiencing more meaningful connections online with peers who are physically far away but closer emotionally and mentally.

Let's explore this now with Dan Kois, writer at Slate and the author of several books, including the novel Vintage Contemporaries and this article Good-Enough Friends. Dan, welcome back to WNYC. Hi.

Dan Kois: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Again, the name of your piece is Good-Enough Friends. Can you explain what a good enough friend is?

Dan Kois: People my age, I'm in my late 40s, might have similar memories of high school, and I'm sure lots of young people also have some people like these in their lives. The friends that I made when I was in high school at a very small school in suburban Wisconsin where there weren't that many people who were into the same things I was into who read the stuff I read or watched the stuff I watched or cared about the things I cared about, so I just made do with the people I found, the people in my youth group, or the guy who lived down the block, or the girls I met at camp, and they made do with me.

We went out and did stuff because we just wanted to have people to do stuff with. Even though we didn't have that much in common, we found ways to accommodate one another and to grow close enough to enjoy those four years and get through them mostly happy and mostly whole.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your stories on this. I think you get the premise already from Dan Kois. How do you compare your childhood to that of your current teenagers? Do you think you were a happy high schooler than they are? Do your kids hang out with friends in person frequently? Do you have a sense of whether or not they have "good enough" friends, teenagers who aren't in school, maybe are even school avoidant like we discussed on yesterday's show?

Do you have connections with your peers in real life or maybe you have deeper relationships with peers online because as Dan is explaining, you can be more selective? Which would you prefer? Which do you think is better? Who else wants to make an intergenerational comparison? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or with a question for Dan Kois, and let me throw in my legal ID here while we're at the top of the hour.

This is WNYC FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org. In your piece, you mentioned that your daughter has found a community online with people who share her interests and experiences. Do you think there are both positives and negatives to that?

Dan Kois: Absolutely. That community has been tremendously meaningful to her, especially, but not exclusively through COVID when getting together in person wasn't even that practical. They have supported her. They have fostered those interests. They're an audience for the stuff that she draws and writes, and she's very close with them.

At the same time, it seems to me that there's something missing when she simply doesn't have the experience very frequently of just going out and hanging out, doing stuff that doesn't really matter that much, doing stuff that doesn't necessarily have to do with your most passionate interests or the things you care the most about but is instead just social practice for adulthood, a time when you can always only be with the people who care about the things you care about the most.

That was really important to me when I was in high school, and I didn't obviously have those kinds of online friends. I didn't have any connection to people who were that similar to me the way that she does. I don't know if my childhood would've been better with those people or if my childhood was better just because I got out of the house and I drove to the lake or went and did donuts in a parking lot or whatever.

Brian Lehrer: Right and those were the eight kids who happened to be around.

Dan Kois: Right.

Brian Lehrer: Do you get a sense that kids in your daughter's generation, teens today, actually want to have more friends in real life rather than mostly online even if they're not their perfect match? Are these online relationships actually preferable to your daughter or does she feel like she's pinned in by the digital realities of today plus the pandemic and isn't actually making a choice to have more of an online friendship life rather than in person?

Dan Kois: I think that really varies from kid to kid and it varies even within the kids in my family. I have one kid who sometimes says, "Oh, it would be great to be doing things with people" but would never take the steps necessary to do that, and really actually just seems more comfortable online. I have another kid who's desperate for in-person activities and has even gone so far as to call people on the phone to ask them if they want to do stuff, something that she says for people in her generation it's like as crazy as sending a letter.

I think a lot about that recent New York Times survey of kids talking about how they view the online world and their online friendships and that one kid who said-- I think it was a 12-year-old who said, "I prefer being online because when I'm online I can mute myself. I can't mute myself in real life." I don't know that the ability to mute yourself to be unseen and invisible whenever you don't feel 100% comfortable is like preparation for a happy and healthy adult life.

Brian Lehrer: We've been talking this week about the teen mental health crisis all week, and as part of this, we've spent some time discussing some of the theories people have as to why kids of this era are struggling as much as apparently, they are. One of our previous guests argued that it's increased supervision and a lack of independence like going outside to play with neighborhood friends like you're talking about.

That's the major factor at play here. We also spent a segment talking about social media, of course. I'm curious what you make, if you have an opinion, about these theories to some degree competing, to some degrees overlapping, and if there are any other reasons you and parents you speak with think kids are struggling that the media generally isn't touching.

Dan Kois: It seems like there's a cavalcade of reasons behind this, everything that you mentioned. There's, America doesn't offer the kinds of "third spaces" that it used to, community centers and places where kids could just be out of the house but they're not going to be hassled by the authorities like we used to be able to just hang out in the 7-Eleven parking lot. If you do that now in most communities, especially if you're not white, the police are going to be on you in seconds.

The fact that every kid, especially upper-middle-class kid has a calendar packed with activities and sports and the kinds of scheduling that wasn't the norm when I was a kid, just the simple fact that in a lot of America's communities, you simply cannot get anywhere without a car. If you walk on the sidewalk, you're taking your life into your hands. Certainly, teenagers I think have a lot less ability to be mobile at least until they get a driver's license than we did when I was growing up.

All those things I think contribute. Parents I talk to and every parent I know bemoans this same fact. We point to all of these things. We also all, at the end of the day, then say, "Yes, also, mostly it's the phones."

Brian Lehrer: Here's a parent of an 11-year-old, she says. Deborah in Nassau County, you're on WNYC. Hi, Deborah. Thanks for calling in.

Deborah: Hey, Brian. This is my first time calling. I love your show, and I'm so excited to be on the air about something that really matters to my son and to me. It's an ongoing issue with social media. I was explaining to the listener earlier that my son is on various social media. He has a platform, Xbox or PlayStation, where he's playing with "randoms" who he becomes friendly with that I've got to monitor on an ongoing basis. He also does that with friends and the interaction is great, but if he could choose, honestly, he would be out all the time.

These guys go running around. They're coming into their own now, and he's always better off with a better head. It's less complicated at home when he is out playing. To compare it to me growing up, I'm 54, and I grew up in a time when we went out and rode our bikes and everything. There wasn't really a lot of concerns during that time.

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Deborah: Now I have to worry if he's out doing that. I'm worried if he's out riding his bike too. There's those concerns. My friendships from childhood are still valid, but I find that those people I rode the bike with or was hanging out with them, now I'm talking to them on the phone, and they're texting me, and we're catching up about really mundane stuff. I feel like I'm missing something by doing that texting. It's painful because you don't have those physical connections. People are so busy. That's how I compare what I [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you a follow-up question, Deborah. Would you say that your perception of his emotional state and his perception of his emotional state are similar?

Deborah: No, he can't really see it. He can't really see what's happening. I'm witnessing somebody who becomes surlily very moody when they sit online for long periods of time. He really enjoys talking on the phone now. It's like, I guess, the same as when I was on my princess phone talking to my girlfriends for hours back in the '80s. It just feels different when there's a lot of people on the phone for long periods of time. I don't like him on the device for that long. I try to monitor as best I can.

Brian Lehrer: Deborah, thank you for sharing your story. I'm sure a lot of parents were relating to it. What were you thinking as you listened to that, Dan?

Dan Kois: It can be a trap to over-romanticize our own childhoods. I'm sure when I remember my childhood where I wasn't riding around on a princess bike specifically but I was riding around on a-

Brian Lehrer: Princess phone.

Dan Kois: -I think a mongoose. I'm over-romanticizing that and I'm surely not remembering the many afternoons, they must have been, where I just sat at home with nothing to do because none of those good enough friends were good enough for me to reach out to when I was really in a time of need. I also think it's worth reminding ourselves that we can't always understand how our kids feel about things. I totally believe this mom when she says she sees her son becoming surlier and meaner and just more generally unpleasant after he spends long times online.

Nevertheless, I think we can't always understand what value those kinds of connections or relationships have to our kids because they're so alien to us. That doesn't even process for me what those friendships might mean. Nevertheless, what I want for my kids is a whole life, a life that includes the things that they love now and understand now, but also includes social interactions that I know from my experience end up benefiting you in the long run and creating a lot of fun and joy in the moment.

Brian Lehrer: Melanie in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Melanie.

Melanie: Hi. Brian, I love you so much. You're the best.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Melanie: I've called in before. I've been listening to this whole series. I'm a millennial, I don't have kids, but I'm just listening to this whole thing and I'm like, "Wow, this new generation coming up is just so babied and coddled a little bit." I'm a millennial. I was definitely school-avoidant. I definitely had depression, but I had to go to school or else there was big consequences. There wasn't really this mental health coaching or anything happening at that point.

I just find it to be really interesting, even just like a slight generational change how this generation is being coddled and whatever. I don't know if it's a bad thing or a good thing, but I just think it's interesting. In regards to hanging out, again, I can't imagine not having formative experiences like hanging out in a Wendy's parking lot with my friends growing up. I just can't imagine having these-- I get as a millennial AIM was a thing, of course, having those online relationships, but I think in person was just the most important.

Brian Lehrer: Melanie, thank you. Thank you for chiming in. Let's sneak one more in here. Maddie in Jersey City, you're on WNYC. Hi, Maddie.

Maddie: Hi, I just wanted to contrast the prior caller's experience as somebody who grew up in Manhattan. When you're a kid growing up in Manhattan, you can be on the subway at age 11 or 12, you can be on the bus, you can walk to your friends' houses. There's a lot more freedom. This is really a manufactured problem by people who have chosen to live in the city, in the suburbs and raise their kids.

I have my kid now, and I'm never going to leave the city because it's just much safer to be in the city. Only in 2022 were gun deaths, unfortunately, outpacing car deaths for children. Cars are by far super dangerous, and hanging out in a parking lot, maybe it's good if you're in the suburbs, but Central Park, Lincoln Center, these places are much better for children [crosstalk]-

Brian Lehrer: [unintelligible 00:16:03] Okay, now we've got a city-suburb smackdown.

Maddie: -and the museum.

Brian Lehrer: City-suburb smackdown in the museum.

Maddie: Yes. You're going to come, right? [laughs]

Dan Kois: Yes, you're absolutely not wrong, for sure.

Brian Lehrer: Wait, I have you as in Jersey City. Is that where you consider raising your kids in the city?

Maddie: Yes, so unfortunately, we got priced out of Manhattan. My parents are still there, my husband's parents are still there, but we moved to Brooklyn 15 years ago and just got priced out and just moved to Jersey City, which is also great. I'm raising my three-year-old here, and we can't go any more suburban than this. I'll never live in a house. I'll never own a car.

Brian Lehrer: [chuckles] And you're just Holland Tunnel or a path train away. Maddie, thank you very much. Dan, what do you think, and then we're out of time.

Dan Kois: I think it would have been great if I hadn't also been priced out in New York City when my kid was four.

Brian Lehrer: There's a future segment, raising teens in this era of mental health when you can't afford to live in New York City. My guest has been Dan Kois, writer at Slate, author of books, including the novel Vintage Contemporaries and his article that we've been talking about in Slate called Good-Enough Friends. That concludes our week-long series on teens and mental health. Callers, you've been amazing. Obviously, this is an ongoing huge issue in our society and we're going to keep talking about it in a myriad of different ways. Dan, thank you for joining us today, important voice in this series.

Dan Kois: Thanks so much.

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