Do teenagers still have private thoughts?
Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” or U2's “With or Without You” playing on repeat, teenaged me would lie in bed, a few candles lit, thinking to myself in the flickering darkness. Crying about an unrequited crush or mean girl antic, I would just sit with all the gory uncomfortableness of adolescence. I wrote cliched poems in my journal, making vows and pacts with myself in purple ink, in a giant messy scrawl. Or I could call a friend on our two-line phone. Though I always worried that someone would somehow guess how I felt about my hair or lack of boobs or that I was a theatre freak, I could keep it all to myself, let it digest, and then write a note to a friend and drop it in her locker if I felt like it.
I worry about my little girl and whether or not she will ever be able to experience the pleasure and pain of deep, reflective, private thoughts. As an adult, I sometimes catch myself texting without taking a moment to digest what just happened or think a few steps ahead. I can’t even imagine the fury with which kids text, uninhibited, unfiltered and unaware that there is another way. And you can’t take back a tweet or text and rip it to pieces and light it on fire.
I want my daughter to discover who she is and who she’d like to be, by allowing herself time to ponder and following her own internal compass—not based on a number of “likes” or “retweets”.
The approval of others has always been a trial of growing up, but it was never recorded minute by minute for posterity. If kids aren’t allowed time to think quietly because of always checking, checking, checking…can they ever find peace or understand themselves?
My journals are still buried at the bottom of a drawer in my childhood bedroom. If only the internet could fit in there, too.
