Before the algorithm

There are two ways to get to Spenser Grayson's house from Amherst Regional Jr. High School. The most common is to drive down Rt 9, take a right from Echo Park townhouses, meander the long bend, pass the dump, and into the maple leafed wealthy sub-division of Amherst Woods. We took the other way.

But first, we took advantage of the hour his parents thought he was at baseball practice. We called 411 and pranked the information lady, shot pool with the Cambodian kids at the Boys and Girls Club, threw our mother’s paring knives into a tree, bought 89c liters of generic soda from Cumberland Farms and stole little plastic dinosaurs from the toy store we had only recently grown out of. Finally, when we had exhausted the options for 7th graders in our sleepy little college town, and having no money left, we started the trek down main street to the tracks.

The railways tracks went through the thick, mosquitoey pine woods. Young pine. Most of it scrubby and less than 30 years old - from the time in the 60s when the jobs moved to cities or other countries and there wasn’t any sense in being a small farmer anymore and the green menace of ivy and scrub took back its shape. We shouted and threw stones, talked about each other’s moms, recited beastie boy lyrics, and called each other words the world isn’t proud of and doesn’t say anymore. We had nothing better to do.

At some point, the track takes a hard right and comes into a big clearing with a small river. We got in position, waited for the train, and acted out the scene in Stand By Me where River Phoenix’s character dives off the bridge. But the river was really more of a stream, and the bridge was just a couple feet, and we didn’t have a change of clothes, so mostly we just landed in the dirt and collected the quarters that had been crushed by the 407 Mail.

If this sounds romantic and old-fashioned, then I’ve misrepresented myself.  We didn’t set out to create a delinquent Norman Rockwell painting; It was just the best we could do. We weren’t better than today’s kids. We’d rather have been playing Nintendo, but the TV couldn’t be monopolized that long; and we only had two controllers between the four of us. We’d rather have been watching porn, but I only had access to the 2d pencil drawings in my Mom’s “The Art of Pleasure” sex handbook and the lingerie section of the K-Mart catalog. This was the kind of shit you did when you had to make up your own fun.

And it wasn’t entirely safe. The dude who ran the Boys and Girls Club, turned out to be a pedo (no big surprise there); Kazu got caught stealing from KMart; we once burnt down a shack. I have a kidney bean sized scar on my right thumb from messing around with an electric sander. My teeth are ravaged from Newport soda. But I have stories to tell you. None of them are on Instagram, and they never will be.

Now I have a 14 year old daughter. She has never balance beamed a railway track, nor jumped off a bridge. Our driver brings her from enrichment activity to tuitions to a healthy high protein-low carb snack. Her day is scheduled from 6:30AM to 5PM most days and then she has about 2 hours of studies. After that we used to do stuff, but now, since she got Instagram a year ago, she’s mostly in her room talking to her friends.

Friends.

Friends she spends her whole evening and sometimes night chatting or calling. It’s good. It’s why I allowed her to get Instagram - so she’d have friends. Everyone else is there. But I can’t help but wonder, how long would they go looking for her if she lost the internet? Would they, in their sentimental 40s, write stories like this about the time she shared that cringe Tik-Tok dance video and they laughed and compared it to their history teacher? I don’t know. But I’m guessing not.

And she’s not as lonely as before - in fact - she’s pretty popular, much more than I was. I just had those 3 friends. But 30 years later, I’ve still got them - at least some of them - and I can’t imagine making it through the last three decades without them. Even if we don’t talk much, I know I got someone who will show up and take my kid if I kick it, someone who will go check on my parents if they are ill and I’m not around, someone I can tell without fear, “I’m depressed.”

This type of secure connection, and the growth I’ve felt as a result of it, is so fundamental to what it is to be me, it’s hard to imagine that 1 in 3 kids now say they don’t even have any close friends.

note: This piece is inspired by reading The Anxious Generation.  Part two contains some bits of data from the book on the impact of social media and phones on kids. One crazy thing: 20 years ago young people spent 2+hrs a day with friends, now it is 35min!

other note: this piece sat in my drafts for over a year. I don't know why. My kid is now 15, and has pretty good self-regulation around social media.  Mostly this is from us constantly talking about it and her rolling her eyes at me.