If you’re a parent or someone who teaches or supports teenagers, you’ll be aware of the crazy amount of pressure on young people these days to have a boyfriend/girlfriend at an ever-younger age. The scene has changed considerably from ‘back in our day’ – the days of handwritten notes sneaked across a desk, a shy invitation to go to the cinema, maybe sitting in the hallway on the end of the phone (usually with your parents in the background lamenting loudly about the cost of the phone bill!).
Nowadays, young people ‘like’ certain social media posts before tactically ‘sliding into DMs’ (that’s Direct Messaging, for those of us less familiar with teenage vernacular), then moving seamlessly into a stage of ‘talking’, before finally getting to the stage of actually ‘going out’.
While this all seems slightly alien to those of us who grew up without a smartphone, the more difficult thing is the huge pressure young people are under to be in a relationship almost from the moment they’ve left primary school.
