Do you think it's weird and/or predatory for a 13 year-old and a 30 year-old to be best friends if they're not family members or related by blood? Assuming everything is innocent and platonic. Nothing romantic or sexual.
Yes, it's weird and predatory
It's weird. But not predatory
It's predatory. But not weird
No, it's not weird or predatory
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unpopular opinion but I don't think there's anything weird or predatory about an innocent friendship
The question is why the fuck is a thirty year old hanging out with a 13 year old if not in their family?? The only other relation that could have them interact is through teacher/student and bring friends like that would be weird as fuck
found family? the kid not feeling safe in their house? the adult wanting to help? family / teacher / school isn't always a guaranteed safe place. should the kid and adult each have friends that are their own age too? sure. but if their friendship is genuinely innocent then I think the problem isn't them but people who project their weird and predatory thoughts onto them
Don't forget shared hobbies?
A 13 year old and a 30 year old could reasonably meet at a tabletop gaming store, a fiber arts group, a book club....
They could literally just be neighbors. This whole isolationist thing of never even talking to the people you live closest to is new and weird.
When I was 13, an art teacher who worked for my mother (who ran after school programs) got into the X-Files. This was season 1. Neither of us knew anyone else who was into it, and she wasn't very online given that this was 1994, so she had nowhere else to discuss it. I'd call her every Friday night after the episode, and we'd obsessively go over it.
I'd probably have called her my best friend at the time, though I very much doubt she'd have said the same, partly because having One Single Best Friend and being super weird about which of your friends gets this coveted spot is not something middle-aged people care about.
Some of you have very weird ideas about 13-year-olds living in hermetically sealed bubbles. Frankly, many neurodivergent weirdo 13-year-olds who grew up to be Tumblr users were far, far better at talking to adults at that age than at talking to other 13-year-olds. Many of you would have had a way happier year if you'd also had an old-ass "best friend" to talk to back then.
People really need to be more normal about intergenerational friendship.
This concept that it is still "weird" even if it isn't predatory is cutting kids off from community and from the concept of safe adults. And I think it's really really important to have that outside of spaces where people can legally control you.
And as far as what the adult gets out of it. Basically the same thing you get out of any other friendship? Teens are people just like adults are people. You may not be on the same maturity level, but that doesn't mean they aren't fun to hang out with and talk to.
Also, is ‘friend of the family’ not a thing any more? At thirteen I was good friends with a 27-year-old whose family had been friends with mine for three generations at that point. Our generations were a bit out of sync (due to differences in when people had kids) but it didn’t stop us being friends.
I don't think there's anything weird or predatory about them being friends, intergenerational friendships and social groups are great, more 13 year olds should have regular interactions with non-family adults especially in a peer setting.
I think the specification of "best" friends pushes it into territory that is weird, and while not necessarily predatory, certainly potentially deeply unhealthy for one or both parties. It suggests that one or both does not have equally close friendships within their own age cohort, which in turn suggests a deeply isolated child or socially stunted adult. Neither of which is someone that the other should be looking to as a primary confidante or companion. Intergenerational friendships do not negate the need for socializing with similar-aged peers.
Yeah, it's the "best friends" that is weird. It's not necessarily bad, but a 30 year and a 13 year old being mutual besties is weird in the sense that it is very unusual.
The "best friends" part is weird, as noted in the comment above.
A kid definitely shouldn't be an adult's best friend, because that implies that the adult has forgotten about the power imbalance between them.
If an adult is the kid's best friend, then obviously that kid is not getting the social interaction they need with their peers, and ideally something should be done to correct that, but a friend is better than no friends.
But it's absolutely Normal and Good for adults and kids to be friends, and honestly there's something weird going on with our society that anyone thinks that's a controversial statement (though the responses on this poll are a lot better than I might have expected).
I know part of it is that so many millennials and the generation coming up behind us as well simply cannot afford children, so we aren't used to them being in our social spaces, but children require socialization, mentorship, and support and care of their entire community.
