How mobile devices killed the classic hangout spot for millennials
Phone. Home. And not much else.
My teenage cousin hangs out with her friends a lot. Just not always in person.
Every day after school, she gets home, kicks off her shoes, and opens a video chat app called Oovoo on her laptop. A bunch of her friends log on and share their own video screens, too. Sometimes they talk, but mostly they just keep the webcam on while they do homework, watch TV, or lay in bed texting. They finally close the app when it’s time for bed.
Her ritual shocked me. It was like a voluntary Truman Show, where friends could peek in on you at any moment, or drop in if they got bored. Then I remembered when I was her age I did the same thing every day, only with AIM. And my older brothers and sisters spent hours tying up the phone lines.
When we weren’t at home because of a school night or curfew, you can bet we were hanging out with friends in person. And if we couldn’t make plans in advance, we knew where to cruise where friends would be. At 16, it was the cafe attached to Borders Books. At 17, it was a “cool parent’s” backyard. In the dorms, it was the second floor triple. No texts in advance required.
My cousin says she and her friends still hang out in person, but according to a recent Atlantic article titled “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, she might be the exception. Between 2000 and 2015, the number of teens who meet up with friends nearly every day has dropped by 40 percent. High-school seniors in 2015 go out less often than eighth graders in 2009. This past summer, “I’ve been on my phone more than I’ve been with actual people,” said Athena, 13. When they do hang out in person, “everyone is always on their phones,” my cousin texted me. Kids aren’t spending as much time simply “hanging out,” and when they are, can we even call it that anymore?
It’s not just the youths. In a recent Quartz article, reporter Jake Flanagin interviewed his dad about what life was like before we were constantly connected to social media. “If you couldn’t catch someone by phone, you’d just go to the regular spot and see if they’d show up,” said his father. “THAT’S INSANE,” Flanagin replied.
Indeed, how I plan time with friends — and even where I spend time with friends — is almost always determined by smartphone and social. The synchronicity of just “meeting up” or “hanging out” for no particular reason is virtually gone from my life. So, whatever happened to the physical places where, if people couldn’t reach each other, they would simply wait around until a friendly face showed up? What happened to the hangout, the haunt, the regular “spot”?
Ever since the dawn of American youth culture in the early- to mid-20th century, young people have sought out gathering spaces. Maybe it was a drive-in, a 7-Eleven parking lot, an arcade, a handball court, a campus coffee shop, or simply a front porch. Hangouts took all forms, depending on any number of factors: age, socioeconomic background, neighborhood, etc.
A number of typical hangouts became particularly popular. During the 1950s and 1960s postwar economic boom, teens and young adults clamored for the privacy and status offered by cars. They lounged at drive-ins and parking lots, or simply cruised a local drag until they found some friends. By the 1970s, discos and roller rinks offered an active, better-lit approach. The video arcades of the 1980s threatened to plunge America’s youth into darkness and violence, or such was the proclamation of concerned parents. At the same time, consumerism and a rise in leisure time produced an entirely new space that would transform the “hangout” for decades: the mall.
The mall was America’s great cultural compromise. Its diversity of shops afforded price points for a vast array of shoppers, but one of its greatest draws was a person’s ability to just…chill. In fact, many malls were designed for it, with benches, fountains, and food courts. One of the best parts was that parents could let their teens roam free in relative safety, to meet up with friends and experience a sense of independence that every adolescent craves. There wasn’t much else to do, and that was the entire point.
To a large extent, the threat of boredom was what led young people to create “regular spots” in the first place. Whether it was the mall or a convenience store parking lot, people needed a space outside their houses where they could connect — either that or go mad with cabin fever. “There’s nothing to do, really,” Todd MacNamee, 21, told The Los Angeles Times in 1987. “Just stay home and watch TV or stay out here sitting on our cars.” In 1988, The Miami Herald interviewed 16-year-old Lawrence Tolmich as he sat on a bench near the mall’s food court. He said, “I just hang out here ’cause I don’t have anything better to do. I’m here every weekend.” If they were lucky, kids would have a cool story to tell by the time Monday came around.
Meanwhile, their communities hoped teens were avoiding drugs and crime. When things got too rowdy, young folks were asked to move on and find a new hangout. “Everywhere we go, they (police) go,” Sherry Weedman, 18, told the St. Petersburg Times in 1988. She lived in Crystal Falls, Florida, a small town of nearly 4,000 people at the time. “They don’t want us to go out and party in the woods, but they also won’t let us hang out in the parking lots or at the bowling alley.” Weedman insisted she didn’t drink or take drugs. That wasn’t the point. “Everybody just stands around and talks.”
But despite the nomadic suburban existence of bored teens and young adults in the second half of the 20th century, they simply regrouped and found someplace new to just be, reliably, together.
At the time, few experts understood the value of loitering with friends in a shadowy cul de sac — that is, until they stopped. The Atlantic reports that teens are less likely to leave the house without their parents. An increased fear of crime and a rise in helicopter parenting take partial blame, but increasingly, young people are seeking out social interactions via phone that they once got in person. And while outwardly they seem OK with it, experts worry that excessive smartphone use in teens is actually an addiction — and studies show that an increase in screen time leaves young people more susceptible to depression and other mental health issues. “The roller rink, the basketball court, the town pool, the local necking spot — they’ve all been replaced by virtual spaces accessed through apps and the web,” reports Jean M. Twenge.
But while we can pinpoint the steepest drop in in-person interaction after the iPhone came out, the concern about technology usurping our social skills started much earlier. We’re all familiar with the age-old saying that too much television rots your brain, but a 1983 Washington Post headline suggested Pac-Man thumb might be “the anti-social disease of the ‘80s:”
“You say that ever since your little Suzy started racking up three hours a day on Moon Patrol, she’s quit dating that nice Benson boy and her eyes look like they’ve been boiled in shellac? And your husband has locked himself in the basement with Star Raiders and didn’t even come out for the Super Bowl? And you haven’t had a good chin-wag with your sister-in-law since she got the joystick for her Apple?”
The article followed with the surgeon general’s warning that video games could cause “tensions, sleeplessness in kids, and dreams that have to do with the things they do all day.”
And it didn’t end there. In 1998, Carnegie Mellon published a study warning that the internet had the potential to isolate people. Researchers recorded that after they starting going online, people saw their families less and grew more depressed.
Though already prevalent in countries like Japan, texting saw a huge spike among Americans in the early 2000s, not only changing the way we communicate but majorly influencing smartphone design and mobile social platforms. Kobe University business professor Jeffrey L. Funk predicted the birth of the “thumb generation” in 2002. He said it would be made up of the same kids who hung out at malls. That same year, the Sydney Morning Herald published an SMS cheatsheet. Topping the list was shorthand “:)(:” for “Let’s meet up.”
In these early years, people began texting to make concrete plans. College students texted each other throughout the day to see where friends were on campus. Young professionals might send messages to book appointments or invite a friend to a concert. The technology was hailed as productive and time-saving, a merry way of using new tools to maximize one’s in-person social life. But “to deeply engage with someone you need to see them face to face, see their body language. Text is very one-dimensional. If it was replacing face-to-face communication, that would be a problem,” said Anne Hollonds, chief executive of Relationships Australia NSW, in 2003.
By 2005, people were sending 2.9 billion text messages worldwide each day, according to the Pew Institute and American Life Project. One-third of teens had sent a text. By 2015, 88 percent of American teens had or had access to a cell phone; of those, 90 percent sent text messages.
It may have started with the youngs, but it didn’t remain with them. In 2015, reporter Lauren Smiley penned an exposé on “the shut-in economy,” a Silicon Valley breed of hermetic professional who relies on service-based apps (food delivery, house-cleaning, etc.) to maximize productivity. They could choose whether or not to interact with the people these apps sent to serve them. Many didn’t.
“There’s no argument to the fact that people are spending more time in their own bubble even when they are in public,” Smiley tells Timeline. She recalls a rash of thefts on San Francisco buses. There weren’t any witnesses because everyone was on his or her phone. “I worry about people losing social skills, like truly not recognizing faces,” she adds.
In truth, there are so many benefits to technology. Being tethered to our phones allows us to cancel or modify plans at the last minute, drop a pin at a specific place, and research the hell out of the hippest new boba joint. Such information begs us to diversify our experiences — and document the variety on Instagram. In fact, today’s restaurants are designing for the best Instagram shot. Some report the average customer spends 10 minutes photographing before ordering food and drink. All of this satisfies the latest status symbol: The busier a person looks, the more important he must be. It used to be the opposite.
But our reliance on technology and the pressure to be productive has tainted what it means to spend time in public. Whereas boredom before was begrudgingly accepted, now it’s taboo. Forget about people-watching as you wait for a friend to show; it seems creepy to look at other humans now. And with the average American attention span at eight seconds, down from 12 in the year 2000, even reading a book at a cafe is difficult. Scenes in shows like Insecure and Master of None betray the way phones permeate our every waking moment. Now, being alone in public is downright difficult, if not political.
So, if hanging out has changed, it would follow that the spaces where we used to spend time have, too. In Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of the American Community (2001), author Robert Putnam sounded the death knell for civic engagement outside of the home. While he primarily focused on more structured community activities such as volunteering and neighborhood associations, he theorized that leisure activities were driving people to spend more time at home. Sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “third space” to describe informal gathering places that are outside home (the first space) and work (the second space). Think Central Perk and Cheers. “What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably — a ‘place on the corner,’ real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile,” he wrote in The Great Good Place (1989). Among the eight characteristics of a third place, it should have “regulars” and conversation must be the main activity. Not only will these spaces create more engaged, empathetic communities, it’s here where participants relieve stress and feel a sense of unobligated belonging.
Now, in an age where people attend church via laptop, it’s harder to forge these connections. “By far my most unhappy moments in life were spending time in front of a computer, scrolling through social media feeds,” says Smiley, who admits she’s a skeptical technology writer.
Others insist we’re panicking over nothing, especially when it comes to young people. In 2014, social media researcher Danah Boyd argued that smartphones are just another tool teens are using to find connection, and that actually, if given the choice, they would always prefer to hang out in person. Often, we’re just keeping them too busy or sheltered to do so.
When I ask my cousin whether she hangs out, she says yes, quite a bit. Most of her friends do. They meet downtown at Starbucks or get ice cream. And while checking their phones is part of the deal, they usually just sit and talk. Or wander.
Sometimes I wonder: If I couldn’t reach for my phone when I was bored or lonely, where would I go, and who would I see?
