This is part 2 of my interview with Lisa A Phillips, author of the new book First Love: Guiding Teens through Relationships and Heartbreak. You can go to this blog post to see more of our conversation.

Talk about what you learned in your research for this book. We know that with younger generations that social media impacts teens. How does it impact the reluctance they may have around expressing emotional vulnerability in new relationships?

When I was a teen, my crush did not come home with me. He was in math class and I didn’t see him until the next math class. Now, kids have the crush in their pocket all the time to look, gaze upon in pictures, see what he’s doing, and who he’s dating. How do these kids do it? I always teach about Helen Fisher’s research on heartbreak. She conducted brain scans on people who just broke up, but were still in love with the person who rejected them. When Fisher flashed pictures of the ex, people would cry and scream and weep. They were thrust right back into the vividness of this breakup through images. Now, this is the daily reality after a breakup. On social media, you see image after image of your ex living their best life, which is exactly what thrust those people in the brain study into their feelings of distress. The “social media breakup” is an act of self saving, but young people feel like they’re not tough enough. The biggest piece of breakup advice? Unplug from this person as much as humanly possible.

The research shows that Gen Z and Alpha hold off on having sex during high school compared to the Boomer generation. In 1991 54% of high schoolers had stated that they had had sex, whereas by 2021 it had gone down to 30%. You’ve offered some theories about why you think younger people are more tentative towards emotional intimacy. Can we talk about why young people at times are avoiding “catching feelings”?

I think this trend is really fascinating and disturbing. Sure, we don’t have to worry as much about pregnancy, STIs, or dating abuse. However, there’s a lot of dangers around the things that we do to become adults: having sex, driving cars, trying alcohol, being in the workforce. All of these things make you less safe than when you’re at home alone in your room. Young people are entering their adult lives expecting this control, choosing exactly what to interact with. That leads to less openness toward our fellow human beings and deeper, more satisfying relationships. 

Additionally, the relationships that are happening are less defined than they were and when you and I were teens. There’s this whole spectrum of relationship experiences, from talking, to hooking up, to there’s something but we haven’t defined it yet. There’s an ethos of ambivalence that goes along with that. This can be positive; you don’t always have to go right into a relationship. But at the same time, situationships can be really tormenting for young people. They are worried about asking, “What are we?”, which can create a lot of “I’ll take what I can get” situations. 

What I preach in my book is: Choose what kind of relationship you want, but don’t tell yourself that it is not a relationship. Any human connection is a relationship. Being carefree about it is very different from being careless. Ambiguously defined relationships should not be an excuse to disrespect people. Walk through the world as a caring and ethical human being, especially with your sexual and romantic self. 

Today, there is a lot of important conversation around consent. How do you educate young people to discern the difference between flirting versus coercion?

Young people often talk about repeated pressure for someone’s attention as a very negative thing. I don’t know if I can give an easy answer to the line between persuasion and pressure, between erotic tension and manipulative seduction. When flirting is done well, it is very attuned. It’s about what you try and what the other person responds to. We forget that there’s another person on the side. Sometimes you need to not connect with them and you’ve made it very clear. That’s ok! But we also want to allow for a space of discovery and journey, of the fact that sometimes in sexuality and desire, yes and no are not clear. Creating spaces to find clarity and to figure out how to pursue is a very different thing than pressuring and ignoring the agency of the person on the other side. 

We are in a phase of correction, which is so important. By talking about consent, we are raising our young people to be really in touch with their desires and needs. But then we should also work on getting back some mystery in a way that is not violating, but enlivening.

You talk in the book about issues with mental health, which so many young people are going through and are more aware of. How are mental health and relationships tied together?

Every relationship story seems to entail one partner or both having some kind of breakdown or dealing with depression or being in crisis. At first, I started looking for stories that didn’t involve these things, but I realized that every teen love story is also a mental health story. This generation is distinctly troubled. The rates of depression and anxiety are not good, but their mental health literacy is also very high. When you feel someone in your life is not as loving to you as you are to them, you’re going to get the feels. You’re going to feel sad, unwell, and in pain. It is all part of human design. It does not mean you are broken; it often means you are whole.

First Love: Guiding Teens through Relationships and Heartbreak, is available to the public on February 4th, just in time for Valentine’s Day!