Juvenile Delinquency is Lacking

In a conversation with my sister last night, where we broke down the largely unknown and underrepresented Texas slang term “tump over” from a sociolinguistic lens and examined media mergers and monopolies, we came to reminisce on our teen years and discuss what went wrong– how are we here? 2025, both adults, and lacking in strong community? We talked about the nostalgia of early-2000’s analog technology like the iPod and walkie-talkies and the rise of Netflix DVDs. We remembered watching Friends and thinking that was how our lives would end up. But here we are, evenings spent scrolling TikTok or reading the news in bed alone, occasionally meeting stratified members of loose friend groups for dinner, and retreating to each other for two-hour phone calls when we both agree we should be out doing something. I posited that this largely has to do with the fall of third spaces, as I have previously discussed on this blog, and my sister concurred. During our teen years, we both experienced a lot of hardship. Our mom was terminally ill, and that consumed so much of our day-to-day. But we found solace in church groups, camps and weekly meetings with a diverse group of teens from our hometown, and we did what we have dubbed “delinquent” things– hanging out in parking lots with a couple of skateboards, sneaking onto roofs for the hell of it, walking the vacant suburban streets, and sitting in corners at parties with a guitar. There was rarely a lack of simply going to someone’s house and hanging out for no reason at all. We didn’t spend much money, nor did we have any. Fellow delinquents offered up stick-and-poke tattoos at the beach and we sometimes went to concerts or put on concerts ourselves, my first foray into the live music industry– a community of delinquents putting on glorified house shows to raise money for a Guatemalan charity– drawing a crowd of sometimes ten, sometimes fifty locals and once, as our crowning moment, bringing in an artist from Nashville. These, my sister and I agree, were the days. It was 2014-2019, and life was simpler and more fulfilling.

We come again to this third space question. What is a third space? It is a place outside of work or home that one can go and find community, where money, or much money, does not have to be spent. As teenagers, we had no money and no prospects. Many of us didn’t know who we wanted to be when we grew up. Some of us had rough home lives. Some of us had rich families, some of us poor. Some of us were religious, and some of us were closeted gay and on the fringe. But at youth group, no matter what you believed, you were part of the cohort. We raised hell in any way we could. Trespassed, set things on fire, threw flipphones off the balcony of a hotel or into a lake at camp. These gestures signified a loveable anarchy, a camaraderie, and a collective angst. Expressions of art in the suburbs of Dallas. The big city seemed so far away to me. My future seemed so far away– a myth I barely believed. All we had was the present moment, which wasn’t much. So we gathered in the parking lots of churches and shopping centers, creating a third space. The rooftops of various buildings became parkour paradises and places to watch the sun set. Those of us who had cars lived in them. The backseat of a beat-up Honda Accord or a 2001 Chevy Suburban became third spaces on a road trip to Austin or South Padre Island National Seashore. Not all of us were the same, but we all shared this collective emptiness, and we filled it with quality time. 

These days, we still share a collective emptiness. As adults, we are all exhausted by something– politics, work, religion, or social media. But we retreat into our phones. We stay indoors– remnants of the COVID-19 epidemic which reshaped our society, I fear, irreversibly. My sister and I often avoid hanging out with our friends because it can involve a pricey dinner, a movie or concert ticket we can’t afford, or an activity that takes up too much of our brains. We have to hype ourselves up for social gatherings, to which as teenagers, we would have gone without a thought. Our social lives center more around activities than people, as we are not content just to sit and exist with one another. Just talk. Just laugh. Occupy a blanket in the park or a roadside curb. Descend upon a Whataburger late at night where some order food, others don’t. The “friend group” has broken apart as politics and religion separate otherwise compatible people. Back in the day, those things mattered little as we were all delinquents together. Some would go on to vote for Trump, others not. Some would go on to make money, others not. Some would come out as gay, others would get married and have kids way too early. But we all shared in the nothingness of being a teenager. So what about the nothingness of being in your twenties? Or thirties? Each decade shares its own struggles that transcend the things that divide us. But now, we take ourselves too seriously to occupy a seat at a dive bar in sweats and a baseball cap and put away our phone. We have to be put together for our friendship gatherings– Instagrammable. Since when do we have to justify our friendship with a post? Since when is that the metric for belonging? We are too online, and much too serious.

As this conversation continues to evolve, I don’t have answers. All I can do is try to bring back my own delinquency and continue to show up as a hot mess in the third spaces I have found for myself, and invite others along for the ride. All I can do is call attention to this new epidemic. Instead of longing for the 2010s and posting about your nostalgia on TikTok, maybe we could all get out of the house. Or plan a house party. No phones allowed. Or pick up the old skateboard and go out at night. It’s the little things that we miss, and the little things we can change. Whether you are older or younger, we could all use a little more nothing.