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Hi lunchtime email.
There’s a viral debate over sleepovers. I just heard on the news that there are over 17 million views for the hashtag “no sleepovers” on TikTok, and that parents are cancelling the childhood right of passage due to safety concerns. I don’t really think this is a TikTok thing as much as it is an internet thing. When I was in middle school and high school, my friends and I were Googling weird stuff and Facebook messaging people from our computers. Before that, people would do prank phone calls. I think this is is a silly behavior to try to contain with cutting off sleepovers which are arguably some of the most formative moments of being a young woman for me. Sleepovers are when my friends and I would discover new music, and braid each other’s hair, and talk about everything that made life difficult or beautiful without the filter of parents close by. Sure, we got into trouble, but the intimacy of them created deep friendships that I still have today. A few weeks ago, The Atlantic made a case for sleepovers: “Sleepovers provide an experience, like trick-or-treating, when the power balance between grown-ups and children can shift in the latter’s favor for the simple reason that parents don’t have the stamina to keep up with (or even stay awake for) kids’ antics. Feeling powerful can be energizing and, well, empowering. But an even more potent benefit is the chance to learn deeply from other families. I found it incredibly exciting to be a voyeur in another family’s home. Some families ran a tight ship; others had dishes piled high in the sink. Some parents were fun to talk with; others scared me witless. Some families seemed to be thriving; others were just hanging on. Seeing these differences helped me reflect on my own place in the world.”