Human beings are born to be social creatures. We persistently seek social interaction with and reciprocity from other human beings. We crave acceptance and love. We need friendships. As infants, we make sense of the world through social cues like the loving expression on our father’s face or the soothing tone of our mother’s voice. As we get older, we broaden our social sphere to include people outside of our small family circle. Thanks to our parents, we do this by attending preschool and/or joining playgroups, sports teams, and the like. By the time we reach our teen years, we have become fairly astute at friendship selection, and, in fact, given our newfound propensity for independence and autonomy, have made it priority number one. In this chapter, I attempt to shed a sliver of light on the secret society that is the teen social world. I will share with you some informative findings on peer groups and friendships, and the purpose they serve in our teens’ developmental trajectory. I will also discuss the role we, as parents,

play in our teens’ social selections; and, of course, we will dive into the world of social networking and consider what the concept of friendship even means in that strange new realm.