real Katie, as she called her, she would listen to music on Spotify, or watch reruns of The Office or Parks and Rec until she was too tired to stay awake, and the real Katie would leave her be.
I think Katie speaks for an awful lot of her peers when she describes this identity confusion, which she brilliantly labeled identity traffic. No wonder kids today feel less equipped to determine who they are and the roles they want to play in the world. With all this noise playing in their minds, all this identity traffic, it is not only difficult but, as Katie suggests, not always very desirable, to hear your own voice, your authentic self, from deep inside. For that voice may be calling you out as a fraud more than she is supportive and loving. She may be a brutal truth-teller. And hiding underneath other identities may appear more bearable.
As Katie suggested, teenagers today are therefore never truly free from anxiety. Time on your phone, and engaged in social media, is anxiety-provoking. And time away from your phone, at school, at parties, doing homework, or with your family, can all be anxiety-inducing as well. Kids today are never truly off the grid, free to hear themselves think. In their minds, they are rarely, if ever, truly free. Managing identity traffic is more than a full-time job.
So here lies another particular parenting challenge. What you think is on your child’s mind, or ought to be on her mind, is often on the back burner: the grades, the job, the ACT scores, the extracurricular activities. The prevailing fog in the forefront of her mind reverberates with the nagging question: who am I?
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