Why Are More Teens Dateless at the School Dance (and What Does it Mean)?

A recent Chicago Tribune article brings our attention to the increasing number of teens who are opting to attend their school dances in groups or ‘stag’ – a reflection, the Tribune suggests, of the changing way teens view personal relationships and romance in the age of social networking sites, SMS and instant messaging.  Social media expert Danah Boyd offers a compelling argument that challenges the article’s technology-as-culprit POV, pointing out that larger cultural shifts and the evolution of mating behavior are dictating changes in teen relations – not the internet. Boyd contests:

This shift has nothing to do with “the way young people view personal relationships in the age of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter” (and not just because teens don’t use Twitter in significant numbers yet). And this is certainly not because teens are being “shaped” by these technologies such that they “consider friendship the highest form of compliment, making dating, and sometimes even high school love, irrelevant.”…

School dances have traditionally been structured around mating rituals, dating back to a point in time when parents encouraged teens to go on such structured dates in order to find the ideal partner. This is no longer the era in which we live. Parents are no longer encouraging serious relationships in high school; quite the opposite. Even teens are no longer treating high school as the place to find their future husband/wife. Decades ago, teen dating turned into a different kind of ritual, one driven by status and validation and decoupled from pair bonding. While not having a date had long been stigmatized, the cost became purely social rather than marriage.

…What’s happening is not a radical shift in teen friendship practices. It’s about the collapse of an outmoded, outdated mating ritual. It has nothing to do with technology. It has everything to do with social norms relieving unnecessary pressures that no one liked anyhow. Teens aren’t going date-less because friendship is suddenly more important. Teens are going date-less because it’s socially acceptable and teens haven’t wanted the pressure to have a date for decades.

Apophenia: Teens, Dating, Friendship and School Dances