“Dating” at age 14: Then and Now

You would think, over time, romance at age 14 would change and evolve.

It doesn’t, … or not as much as you might think.

I asked my granddaughter, who is 14, to tell me about “dating” in 2024 so I could compare it to what it was like when I was her age. With her permission, I recorded our conversation. It was an eye-opener. It was also comforting. This is how it went.

Grandmother (me):

When I was 14, we would go to house parties. Mixed parties, they were called, because boys were there. Usually it was at the home of kids whose parents were friends of my parents.

We'd be downstairs in what we called a recreation room, a rec room. And the parents would be upstairs visiting, all nicely dressed, laughing a lot, probably drinking, definitely smoking. It was the era.

Granddaughter:

What did you do in the rec room?

Grandmother:

Well, the kids were all dressed up, too, girls in pretty dresses, boys in jackets, shirts and ties; and we would have the record player going, and we would be dancing, you know, and very nervous about each other, very afraid to even talk to each other. The girls huddled with the girls and the boys huddled with the boys. But we did have fun. Once, the boldest thing we ever did was to play Spin the Bottle.

Granddaughter (with a funny “what-on-earth?” look):

Spin the Bottle?

Grandmother:

You sat on the floor, girls on one side and boys on the other. You’d spin a bottle on the floor (usually a glass milk bottle or maybe an empty glass Coca Cola bottle), and the person it ended up pointing at was the person you had to kiss. I thought I’d die of anxiety because there was a boy I had a huge crush on. I had never kissed a boy before. I didn’t get to kiss him. I kissed some boy with a sweaty face… very carefully.

Granddaughter:

Then what?

Grandmother:

A few hours later, the parents would say, okay, kids, it's time to go. And we'd go home with our mums and dads.

Granddaughter:

Didn’t you date?

Grandmother:

There was no such thing as dating when we were 14, because in those days dating meant that the boy came to pick you up in his parents'

car, so he had to be 16, and that was WAY too old for a 14-year-old girl. When the time came, dating meant he’d come and pick you up and take you somewhere and pay for everything or you’d just go to another house party together.

Granddaughter:

We start dating at 13 and 14.

Grandmother:

What does dating mean for you, in 2024, at age 14?

Granddaughter:

Well, if you're dating someone, you go to each other's houses. Not for a party or anything. You just hang out. It's different for each person. Sometimes you go out together and whoever has the most money pays. Whoever wants to be a gentleman or a gentlelady pays. Or you split it.

Grandmother:

And where do you go if you do go somewhere? 

Granddaughter:

The mall. 

Grandmother:

And how do you get there? 

Granddaughter: 

Oh, with an older sibling or a parent. They take you and you meet the person there. Or have their person who’s driving them drive you, too. 

Grandmother:

Okay, so you maybe hang out at the mall and you go and have ice cream or something like that?

Granddaughter:

Yeah, go into stores, shop a bit, basically just window shop because nobody has any money. And then, you know, hang out and then go home. 

Grandmother:

And then how do you decide that you are dating?  

Granddaughter:

Well, first there's just the Talking Stage, where you talk to them for a bit. It's kind of like

dating, but without hanging out. So you basically text them every night or call them every night. Sometimes you hang out with them at school, but not actually, like, date. And then one day one person says, want to make this official?  

Grandmother:

You actually say, would you like to make this official? 

Granddaughter:

Yeah, well, sort of. Everyone has their own way of asking it. Maybe you don’t actually ask. Maybe you say “Want to come to the mall with me?” or “Meet me at the mall?”… and that means we’re official. Then we say we’re dating.

Grandmother:

Do you get to the stage of going to a movie or something? 

Granddaughter:

Oh, yeah, I've done that. Same thing: our parents drive us to the movie, drop us off, and pick us up when the movie's done.

Grandmother:

So it's really not that different than when I was 14 and our parents drove us to house parties, except that they stayed upstairs. Your parents don’t stay at the movies with you. For some reason, I thought it would be different.  

Granddaughter:

No. Not really.

Grandmother:

That's kind of lovely.

Granddaughter:

You don’t ask what time do I have to be home. They're bringing you home, so they get to decide when you come home. Or like, if the other person's parents are driving me home, my parents aren’t strict about being home by whatever time. 

Grandmother:

We didn't have the ability to do this, of course, but you text your parents, right, so if you're lucky and you have that kind of relationship with your parents, as you do, you're in contact with them all the time? So they know where you are. They know you're safe. And you let them know you're safe?

Granddaughter:

Yeah. Most kids have to do that when they go out. They have their phone on them at all times. They text them when they get there. They text them when they're leaving. They just automatically know to tell their parents if the plans change. All my friends are like that.  

Grandmother:

Wow. We had one phone line in the house. There was one phone with an extension in one

or two rooms. There was a phone on the wall in the kitchen. And you would wait for a boy to call you. You would never call him. A girl would never, ever call a boy. You’d think maybe once you had been getting to know each other, you might. But even then, you just didn't.

Granddaughter (laughing):

That’s funny!

Grandmother:

So of course, when the boy would call you, it was a great big deal. And if you had siblings, especially a bunch of brothers like you have, you didn't want them listening in. 

My dad had a thing about people being on the phone for two hours, especially if he was at work and he wanted to get through to our mum. He would get so mad at me if I was on the phone for too long. 

Granddaughter:

Same thing happened with [my older brother] Seth. We had two home phones. They were the ones that you could pick up from a stand and they weren't digital. He used to take both of them to his room so we couldn't listen in when he was talking to his girlfriend and everyone got mad at him because they couldn’t use the phone. But now, of course, everybody has a phone.

Grandmother:

So how does that go? Can you be on the phone in your room for hours? 

Granddaughter:

Yeah. Your parents might yell at you to come out and socialize with the family. But some kids' parents honestly do not care. It’s shocking to me that they don't care.  

Grandmother:

What's the result of that? What happens to them?

Granddaughter:

I know a couple of girls who are younger than me. They have a record of being on the phone with each other for like three days. Three days straight, Grammie!  Without stopping,

without hanging up! They mute the phone when they're going to do something. But besides that, they're on call 24-7. 

Grandmother:

Oh, my goodness.

Granddaughter:

And they do it quite often too. It's not just like a one-time thing. Twelve hours plus on the phone. And they see each other every single day at school. 

Grandmother:

So it's like an obsession. 

Granddaughter:

Yeah, they take their phones to school with them. They're on call all the time. It's like they’re trying to create a world record or something.

Grandmother:

I wonder how that affects their brains. It'd be so hard to see beyond yourself. That's all you would see, yourself and those people you're talking to. 

Granddaughter:

Yeah. But kids a year older than me, 15, are so much different. In the grade younger than mine, Grade Eight, they’re the ones who talk for hours on the phone and they’re like “Let’s do this, Let’s do that. Let’s spend money” (that they don’t have). But kids in the next grade up from me, they're more like, let's go and party. Let's go and drink. 

Grandmother:

They’re allowed to do that?

Granddaughter:

Well, of course there’s different kinds of parenting and stuff like that.

Grandmother:

I didn't like boys in grade eight. At least I told myself that. I would get a crush on them maybe, but I was terrified of them. I think there was an innocence about that time, and maybe the innocence was because communication was so limited.

Granddaughter:

It’s really different these days.

Grandmother:

Yes. But on the other hand, you know what? Maybe it's not that different. My friend Beckie and I did nothing but write notes to each other all day long at school. I don’t remember a thing we learned in Grade 9 because we were so deep into note-writing and making sure no one saw us. When we were supposed to be doing homework, we'd write notes that we'd bring to school the next day. The notes were about boys and about how we were going to be famous writers someday. So we talked about Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald ‒ in those days all our hero authors were men ‒ but we took ourselves very seriously. I still have some of those notes somewhere. I think they’re likely very silly. I should find them for you.

Granddaughter:

So it was like texting, only with pen and paper.

Grandmother:

Exactly. And that meant we weren't paying attention to anything else. We were lost in our own world. School to me was just, you went because you were supposed to and all your friends were there. Some things were interesting, but most things were not, except for your friends. 

Granddaughter:

I guess our worlds at 14 are not that different in many ways.

Grandmother:

Not as different as I thought. Funny, huh?