Dear Your Teen:
My 15-year-old is struggling to make friends. Well, she’s not struggling. My husband and I are struggling with the fact that our teenage daughter has no friends. We don’t care that she’s not popular; we just don’t want her to be socially isolated. She says she has friends at school (to eat lunch with, walk to class with, etc.). But she rarely hangs out with friends outside of school. Thoughts?
Expert | Barb Steinberg, LMSW
It’s difficult to watch your daughter have a social life that looks different than what you want her to have. During adolescence, our children’s primary developmental task is to separate from us parents. This means that relationships with peers take on more significance. Although peer friendships can often run hot and cold, these relationships can provide your daughter with an important support system to manage all of the changes she is going through during this stage of her life.
3 Suggestions When You’re Worried Your Teenager Daughter Has No Friends:
1. Gather information.
Set the stage for your daughter coming to you for help by opening up a conversation with her about her friendships. Is your daughter really struggling with friendships? Ask her, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 meaning she has the perfect amount of friends and wouldn’t change a thing about her friendships to 1 meaning she would like to change everything about her friendships, how she would rate the current state of her friendships.
Resist the temptation to chime in with your observations that your teenager daughter has no friends. Wait for her response and validate whatever laments she may have about the difficulty of making and keeping friends. She is still learning about friendships, and what she learns is valuable information she will take with her throughout her life.
By asking the question, you’ll discover her point of view, and you’ll also give your daughter important time and space to reflect. She might not answer you right away; she may need time to think about it, which is entirely fine.
If she takes her friendship “temperature” and rates it at a 7 or higher, that is an indication that you will encounter resistance around making any changes in her social life. She does not seem to need help making friends.
If she shares a number which is 6 or lower, you might consider following up with a related series of questions:
What would you change about your friendships? Would you change the number of friends you have? Do you want to be closer to the friends you currently have? Would you like to have one best friend or a few close friends? How many times a week (or a month) would you like to hang out with friends outside of school?
All these questions help you better understand what is enough for her.
2. Separate your own emotions.
Remind yourself that how she assesses her friendships is separate from how you may feel or what you may observe. Perhaps you are an extrovert and draw energy from being around others, and she may be an introvert and not need as much social interaction as you.
We all want what is best for our daughters and want to do our part in helping them become happy and confident. Parents, however, must be careful not to assume what we want for our daughters is the same as what they want. We may also need to remind ourselves that our girls’ social status is not a reflection on ourselves or how good of a parent we are.
3. Support her in creating and maintaining the genuine friendships she wants.
While you think she has no real friends, it’s possible that your daughter is maintaining friendships from home, via her phone or electronic device. In this case, you may want to encourage a balance between her “virtual” or online friendships and the experiences she will share with friends IRL (in real life). As Catherine Steiner-Adair points out in her book, The Big Disconnect, technology has fundamentally altered the way we interact. Tech is doing more to obscure and confuse rather than contribute helpfully to the connection teens crave. So, any work you do to encourage face-to-face interactions will help your daughter feel more fulfilled in her friendships and learn valuable communication skills.
Ask your daughter to pick out someone she would like to spend more time with. Then have her decide upon a fun activity for the two of them to do together. Do what you can to support her, whether that means driving her and her friend or perhaps helping pay to make the outing happen.
Since she is still learning how to navigate friendships, you may need to coach her on how to invite someone to join her in a fun activity, how to respond if she gets turned down and how she should respond when she receives an invitation from a friend.
You may also need to address any fears she might have about initiating an invitation to hang out beyond school hours.
Talk through different strategies she could use to address whatever anxiety she might have.
If she is still having trouble making friends in high school, you might consider putting your heads together to sign up for an activity outside of school which she is passionate about. This might provide her with an opportunity to connect and engage with similar minded peers. If nothing else, you are helping encourage her in spending time doing something she loves, which will help her confidence.
If her anxiety or sadness over her friendships interfere with school or family life, there are options. You may want to consider enlisting the aid of a teen life coach, a counselor at school or a therapist. This would provide her with extra support around her friendships and improving social skills.
Teens are having a harder time than ever making friends
In May of 2023, the Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared a national loneliness epidemic. Teens are spending less time face-to-face and spending more time connected online. The result of this is fewer meaningful friendships among teens. While your daughter might not have any friends, she is not alone with that struggle. A teenage daughter not having friends can lead to potential long-term effects such as diminished self-esteem and increased susceptibility to anxiety and depression. The lack of a supportive peer network during these formative years might also impair the development of social skills and resilience, which are critical for navigating adult relationships and professional environments. That being said, parents should encourage their teenagers to be social, as there are many benefits to it.
