Do kids still like to hang out or is that a thing of the past?
I walked into the living room last Saturday with a tray of pizza rolls and found my son Leo and his friend Marcus sitting at opposite ends of the couch. Both were on their phones. Neither was talking. For a solid minute, I just stood there holding the tray, wondering if I was interrupting something. Then Marcus looked up and said, “Oh sick, pizza rolls,” and swiped his phone at Leo’s chest so Leo could see something. Leo laughed, set his phone on his knee, and grabbed a handful. They went back to their screens.
I sat down and watched them for a bit. There was no anger, no awkwardness. They were comfortable. Every once in a while, one of them would say “look at this” and hold their screen out. The other would glance, nod, and keep scrolling. This went on for almost an hour. Then Leo stood up, said “my turn on the TV,” and they clicked on some YouTube channel where a guy tries discontinued snacks. They absolutely ripped through those pizza rolls and did not stop talking about whether the “hot ones” flavor was actually hot.
I had been worried about nothing. Or maybe I hadn’t been worried about nothing. It just depends on how you look at hanging out.
I’m 41, so my frame of reference is the nineties. Hanging out meant going to somebody’s basement. It meant sitting on a beanbag chair and listening to an entire CD with no pauses. It meant riding bikes to the gas station for penny candy even though we’d done it a thousand times. There was no activity, no parent involvement, no plan. That was the whole point. The plan was being bored together.
When I see Leo and his friends together now, it can look like they’re not hanging out at all. They’re just sitting there, glowing. But if I actually pay attention, I notice they’re exchanging things. A video. A meme. A link to a song. And they’re doing this at a pace that feels frantic to me but organized to them. They aren’t ignoring each other. They’re showing each other their inner worlds, one screen at a time.
A few months ago, I brought this up at dinner with a teacher friend of mine, Dana, who teaches eighth grade. She said her classroom has become a strange mix of hyper-connectivity and total disconnection. Kids know more about what’s happening in a streamer’s life than in the life of the kid sitting next to them. But she also told me about a moment that changed her mind. Her students had a free period, and a kid named Tyler started playing a bass riff on his phone’s keyboard app. Within thirty seconds, three other kids had pulled up their own keyboards and were trying to match it. They spent the entire period building a horrible, beautiful little song together, all on their phones. “They were collaborating more than any group project I’ve ever assigned,” she said.
That’s when I realized something. Kids do still like to hang out. They just do it in a language that looks foreign to us. The problem is that we keep expecting them to hang out our way, and then we conclude they don’t want to hang out at all.
But here’s what I’ve learned through trial and error: the kids who thrive are the ones whose parents and teachers create low-pressure places for actual hanging out to happen. Not forced family game night. Not “let’s all share what we’re grateful for.” Just places and situations where hanging out can occur without anyone requiring a particular kind of participation.
The pizza rolls thing wasn’t a fluke. I made a clear decision last winter that our house would be the hangout house. Not because I’m a naturally social person—I’m really not. But because I noticed Leo was spending more and more time alone in his room, and I could see the pattern forming. He wasn’t antisocial. He was just safe in his room. Screens don’t reject you. They don’t accidentally say something weird. They don’t make you feel like you might say the wrong thing.
Here’s what actually works.
First, I stopped making it a big deal. When Leo asked if Marcus could come over, I said yes, gave them a snack, and left the room. I didn’t hover. I didn’t ask them what they were going to do. I know that hovering kills the whole vibe. If a kid feels like an adult is watching and evaluating their social interaction, they’ll just retreat to their phones and actually disengage. The pizza rolls weren’t a clever parenting strategy, by the way. They were just food. But food is a classic social lubricant. You eat. You share. You feel like someone is taking care of you. It’s hard to ignore another person when you’re handing them a slice.
Second, I stocked the house with things that are fun to do with hands, not just eyes. I bought a set of cheap wooden blocks from a garage sale. I bought a fidget board someone made at a crafts fair. I found a retro handheld game system that hooks up to the TV. None of these things are cool. Nobody is excited about them. But when kids are sitting on the couch, half watching a screen, half trying to balance a wooden block on another wooden block, conversation happens. It creeps in sideways. They start talking while their hands are busy. Hands busy + faces relaxed = talk. That’s a formula that works far better than “Let’s all sit down and talk.”
Third, I gave up on the idea that a hangout has to last for hours. When I was a kid, a sleepover was a whole saga. Now, a successful hangout can be forty-five minutes. Leo and his friends will text, meet up at a coffee shop, sit together for an hour, and then all go home. To me, that used to seem pointless. Now I see it as a skill. They’re practicing being with people without pressure. They’re learning that seeing a friend doesn’t require committing your entire evening. That’s actually a maturing social skill. Lots of adults would do well to learn it.
The thing I’m still figuring out is the online aspect. Leo has friends he’s never met in person, kids from a forum for some video game I don’t understand. They play together every single night. They talk about their days. They complain about school. They tease each other. Is that hanging out? I used to think no, but I’ve changed my mind. It’s a kind of hanging out. It’s low-risk social practice. It’s not the same as sitting in a living room together. But it’s not nothing either.
What I’ve noticed with his in-person friends is that they’ve gotten better at shifting between modes. They’ll sit with their phones for a while, then someone will say “let’s go outside” and they’ll kick a soccer ball around. Then someone’s hands get cold and they come back in and watch videos. The hangout now is a hybrid. It’s not that screens replaced hanging out. It’s that hanging out now includes screens, like the way my parents’ hangouts included the TV or the stereo.
I worry a little bit about the kids who stay home entirely. They exist. Some are fine and genuinely prefer solitude. Others are lonely but don’t know how to reach out, or their past attempts have gone wrong. For those kids, I’ve learned that a smaller stage helps. Don’t invite four kids. Invite one. Don’t do a party. Do a ride to get ice cream. Don’t ask about their weekend. Ask if they want to help you unload groceries—this sounds ridiculous, but I’ve had my best conversations with Leo’s quiet friend Noah while he carried bags and I thanked him and neither of us had to look at each other.
We don’t need to turn every hangout into a lesson. We don’t need to “fix” kids who like being online. We just need to make sure there are doors open for them—literal doors, in our houses, and social doors, in our expectations.
Last night, I heard Leo talking to someone on his headset at 10 p.m. He was laughing. I heard him say, “Bro, I can’t believe you said that to her.” It was the kind of conversational intimacy that I used to have lying on my best friend’s floor in a sleeping bag. He had his headphones on. He was staring at a green glow. But he was hanging out. And I’m starting to think that’s just what it looks like now. He’ll figure out the rest as he goes. So will I.
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