Are Your Teen's Friends Confidence Builders or Confidence Killers?

By: Devin Tomiak, Academic Life Coach

Your teenager comes home, drops their backpack, and announces that a friend was a complete jerk.

Maybe your kid was left out. Maybe someone said something hurtful. Maybe they weren't invited to weekend plans. Or, in classic teenage fashion, they received a text that could be interpreted 17 different ways—and somehow, all 17 interpretations are terrible.

Your knee-jerk reaction?

"What?! That kid is awful. I’ve never liked them anyway!” Perhaps you launch into full prosecution mode. "They're selfish. They're not even that cool. You have much better friends than that.”

Hey, I feel ya. Watching your kid get hurt is brutal. We want to protect them, and attacking the offending teenager can feel surprisingly therapeutic. But criticizing their friend can backfire: your teen may feel compelled to defend the friendship—or learn that bringing you their problems comes with a parental reaction they don't want to deal with. Neither is exactly the outcome we're going for as the calm, rational parents we aspire to be.

In my last blog post, we looked at how teens build confidence by developing competence—and how parents can support that process. But there is a second, quieter pillar of confidence: who your teen becomes around their friends. 

Your Teen's Friends Are Part of Their Identity

Our social circles don't just influence what we do; they influence who we believe we are.

Do your friends make your world bigger and bring out your best qualities? Or do you find yourself shrinking, performing, or second-guessing who you are just to belong? After all, our environment matters. Our friends influence what we think is funny, what we think is normal, what we try, and what we tolerate. 

I like to share a video of MrBeast with the kids I coach. In it he talks about the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people and how his close group of friends played an important role in his growth. Whatever you think of MrBeast, there's a useful lesson there: The people around you dictate your trajectory.

As adults, most of us know to pay attention to who we choose as our people. And we also know how important this is for our kids too. But though we may be able to control bedtime and screen time, and even whether homework gets done, we cannot control who our teenagers choose as friends. This shifts a parent's job from gatekeeper to guide. We want our teens to eventually be able to walk into a room full of people and think:

"I don't need everyone here to like me. I need to figure out who I like being around.”

Friend groups aren't just collections of people your teenager happens to hang out with. Their friends become a mirror of who they think they are.

"I'm a hockey kid."

"We're the funny group."

"We're not those kinds of people."

"People like us don't do that."

Our social circles can reinforce an identity—or quietly put you in a box. So a question for your teen is: "Who do you become when you're around these people?"

Friendships Teach Teens What They Should Tolerate

Through friendships, teens learn, often without realizing it:

• Whether apologies matter

• Whether boundaries are respected

• Whether conflict can be repaired

• Whether affection has to be earned

• What teasing feels like

• Whether they have to constantly prove their worth

And those experiences become their baseline for what relationships in general are supposed to feel like.  The internal compass your teen builds today is the exact same tool they will use tomorrow to evaluate:

• College roommates

• Workplace dynamics

• Close adult friendships

• Future romantic partners

We aren't trying to help our kids find perfect friends—they don't exist. We are teaching them to seek out relationships that stretch them without slowly chipping away at their self-worth.

The Hard Truth: Belonging is Almighty

During adolescence, belonging is basically a full-time job. A teen might know perfectly well that a friend's behavior isn't great and still tolerate it because of the overwhelming urge to fit it.

That isn't stupid—it’s development. The fear of standing outside the social circle looking in is real. That’s why simply telling them, "That person isn't a good friend" often doesn't work. The deeper skill we want our kids to develop is tolerating the discomfort of not belonging when belonging comes at too high a cost. That's a much more sophisticated ability. 

Sometimes teens get stuck in:

"If I can just get them to like me…"

"If I can just get invited..."

"If I can just figure out what I did wrong..."

But there’s tremendous confidence in knowing your worth without needing someone else’s approval.

This doesn't mean giving up on people at the first sign of conflict. Friendships are messy. People screw up. Good relationships require repair. But there's a difference between working through a difficult friendship and constantly trying to earn your place in one.

What We Can Do As Parents

1) Don’t just teach them to choose friends—teach them to notice how they feel.

Instead of asking: "Are they a good friend?"

Ask: "How do you usually feel after hanging out with them?"

Do you feel:

• relaxed?

• energized?

• funny?

• accepted?

• confident?

• exhausted?

• anxious?

• like you're performing?

• like you're walking on eggshells?

Teens can become much better at evaluating relationships when they learn how to pay attention to their own internal signals.

2) Teach Them Evaluative Questions That Go Deeper

It's tempting for teenagers—and frankly, adults—to evaluate friends based on fairly obvious criteria: Are they fun? Are they funny? Are they popular? Are they cool? Do they invite me places? All reasonable questions. But there are better ones. 

"Do you feel like you can be yourself around them?"

"Do you like the person you are when you're with them?”

"Do you feel energized or drained after spending time with them?”

"Do they celebrate your wins?”

"Can you disagree?"

You're not telling your teen what to think. You're helping them think.

3) Build More Than One Social Universe

Friendship drama feels apocalyptic when a teen has only one social group. If that group turns on them, their entire world collapses.

Encourage your teen to diversify their social portfolio:

• Sports teams or local clubs

• Part-time jobs or volunteering

• Art, music, or niche hobby groups

• Neighbor or family friends

  
  

Ask them: "Does your friend group make your world bigger, or smaller?"

The best friends don't just validate us—they expand our horizons, introduce us to new perspectives, and encourage us to grow.

The Goal Isn't to Choose Their Friends. It's to Help Them Choose Well.

As parents, we can't—and shouldn't—control every person our teenager lets into their life. Our job is bigger than that. We want to help them develop an internal compass: to notice how they feel around different people, who they become in those relationships, and whether those relationships bring out more of who they want to be. But perhaps most importantly, to develop the confidence to ask:

Do I trust myself enough to walk away when a relationship isn't good for me?

After all, confidence isn't just about believing you can handle hard things. It's also about knowing who you are, what matters to you, and trusting that you don't have to lose yourself to belong.

Thanks for reading,

Devin