Michael told me the other night of a news story he’d read indicating that the more plugged in a young person is, the more anxious and depressed they are. Now, there could be an inverse relationship as well – that the more depressed a kid is, the more they plug in. But as we were talking about it, we decided that the reason might be this – because of computers, text-messaging, cel-phones and God knows what else, young people are never, ever disconnected from their peers. Peers are the center of most kids’ lives – they give them the most joy and fitting into that group is the cause of the most anxiety.

Before the day of constant communication, there was space to be free of that. Oh, it might still be in your head as you worried about it, but you couldn’t constantly be IM’ing or texting about who went where with who and who wasn’t included, or worrying about the image that you’re presenting.

For a lot of young people, that space – the space to really be free and consider yourself apart from anyone else’s eyes or ears – has disappeared.

No wonder they’re tense.