Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety. John Duffy
to attain this. More on this as we move forward.
For now, please keep this parental mandate, this mandate free of disdain, fear, judgment, and ego, in mind as we begin to tackle the individual issues you will be facing as parents one by one.
I was talking with a brilliant fifteen-year-old girl, Katie, the other day about the changing nature of identity in her generation. She laughed when I asked her how she felt she and her peers defined “identity,” because it suggests we have only one.
“You must mean identities, Dr. Duffy!”
Katie used herself as an example in explaining what she meant. There was the identity she presented to friends. This comprised thoughtfulness, being fun and funny, and availability to help with any of their problems, among other things. She then talked about the identity she presented to her parents and family, one in which she was obedient and studious and upbeat and more interested in school than in social media and boys. She followed that up with her identity on social media, the über-popular, cute, clever, effortlessly awesome party girl with thousands of likes, literally.
Katie mentioned other identities she feels she needs to maintain as well. She has a different identity with boys than with girls. She feels she needs to act differently when in the company of different cliques, whether she feels she is a part of these groups or not. She needs to be pert and perfect with the popular kids, dark and pensive with her emo friends, and driven and strong on her soccer team. She carries different identities and presentations for teachers, coaches, and her boss.
Finally, Katie talked about who she really felt she was, deep down inside. She suggested this identity scared her the most, because it was real and not constructed. She had no control over the “real” Katie. She was dark and moody sometimes, and hated herself at times as well. She saw through her “bullshit” to the true and empty essence of all these phony, plastic identities she presented to the world.
To avoid the real Katie, as she called her, she would listen to music on Spotify, or watch reruns of The Office or Parks and Rec until she was too tired to stay awake, and the real Katie would leave her be.
I think Katie speaks for an awful lot of her peers when she describes this identity confusion, which she brilliantly labeled identity traffic. No wonder kids today feel less equipped to determine who they are and the roles they want to play in the world. With all this noise playing in their minds, all this identity traffic, it is not only difficult but, as Katie suggests, not always very desirable, to hear your own voice, your authentic self, from deep inside. For that voice may be calling you out as a fraud more than she is supportive and loving. She may be a brutal truth-teller. And hiding underneath other identities may appear more bearable.
As Katie suggested, teenagers today are therefore never truly free from anxiety. Time on your phone, and engaged in social media, is anxiety-provoking. And time away from your phone, at school, at parties, doing homework, or with your family, can all be anxiety-inducing as well. Kids today are never truly off the grid, free to hear themselves think. In their minds, they are rarely, if ever, truly free. Managing identity traffic is more than a full-time job.
So here lies another particular parenting challenge. What you think is on your child’s mind, or ought to be on her mind, is often on the back burner: the grades, the job, the ACT scores, the extracurricular activities. The prevailing fog in the forefront of her mind reverberates with the nagging question: who am I?
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