Author: Lexi Tobin

A letter from the Director,

A few months ago, Glass Youth Collective was just a little dream of being able to do big things for the teens in our community. Today that dream officially comes to fruition and is one of the things I am most proud of in my life. 

There is a stereotype that the suburbs are a safe and wonderful place for teenagers to grow up and for a lot of them, it simply is not true to their experience. My experience was lonely, isolated, and full of boredom. I walked a lot, not always to places I should have been. I met a lot of people; many I probably shouldn’t have spoken to. And ended up in a lot of situations that would have been avoidable had I felt safe to communicate with my parents or other trusted adults. 

Now I’m raising a teenager here and I must be doing something right because not only does he talk to me openly, his friends do, too. Through Glass Smut, we’ve been able to reach even more teenagers who just need a safe space and they all seem to feel safe talking to me as well. My only goal with them is to listen and validate their experiences. This isn’t always something a parent can do. It is also not our goal or ambition to take on a parental role, just a safe adult who listens and encourages dreams that may seem unattainable. 

Glass Youth Collective is the safest place for teens I could imagine. One where art is easily accessible. Where if it isn’t, we will find it. A place where judgement, bullying, and hate is not tolerated at all. This is a safe third space because sometimes home and/or school doesn’t feel safe. There are no expectations here aside from kindness and respect for one’s self and each other.

I truly believe that we grow better together when we do so with love, kindness, encouragement, patience, and a desire to always be a little bit better tomorrow. 

To Glass Youth Parents, 

Thank you for trusting us with your teenagers. It happens in a blink of an eye, our babies become independent people and their interests build and change while they figure out who they are. It can be really scary to let go of the reigns but I promise you will love them even more deeply when you see them loving themselves unapologetically.

To our Glass Youth Collective teens,
We will not let you down. GYC was built for you. To hear you. To see you. To love you exactly where you are at any given moment. To watch you create who you are.

We will not let you down.

Here’s to the teens,

Lexi

Director

Glass Youth Collective

Why Are We Banning E-Bikes Instead of Regulating Them?

If you ask a room full of adults what kids should be doing, you’ll get a hundred different answers.


If you ask a room full of teens, many of them will tell you exactly what they want to do: ride.


They want to ride e-bikes, dirt bikes, scooters, motorcycles, skateboards, and anything else that gives them a sense of freedom, independence, excitement, and connection with their friends.


And honestly? We should be listening.


Across the country, the response to youth riding has increasingly been to ban it, restrict it, or make it harder to access. The reasoning is usually the same: some kids get hurt, some kids ride recklessly, and some kids are disrespectful. Those concerns are real and safety matters. However, banning something because some people use it irresponsibly has never been an effective long-term solution.

The kids who ride responsibly aren’t the problem. The teen who wears a helmet, follows the rules, respects pedestrians, and simply enjoys riding is not made safer by a ban. Instead, they lose access to an activity that brings them joy, confidence, community, and independence.


And what happens when something that young people love is banned?


It doesn’t disappear.


It goes underground.


Instead of teaching safe behavior, bans often encourage sneaky behavior. Kids become more focused on avoiding getting caught than on riding safely. They stop asking questions. They stop seeking guidance. They avoid adults who could help them learn proper safety practices. That doesn’t make anyone safer.
So why aren’t we talking more about regulation instead of prohibition?
We already regulate activities for adults. We require driver’s licenses. We create designated lanes. We enforce traffic laws. We issue citations and fines for unsafe behavior. We require safety equipment in many activities.


Why shouldn’t we take a similar approach with youth riders?


Imagine a system that focused on safety rather than punishment:
– Designated riding areas and lanes
– Safety education programs
– Helmet and protective gear requirements
– Community riding events
– Clear expectations and consequences for reckless behavior
– Enforcement targeted at unsafe riding rather than riding itself


This approach acknowledges a simple reality: young people need opportunities to take risks, explore independence, and experience freedom.


The goal shouldn’t be eliminating risk entirely. The goal should be helping young people navigate risk responsibly.

At Glass Youth Collective, we believe youth deserve a voice in conversations that directly affect them. If teens are repeatedly telling us that riding is what they love, what gives them confidence, what gets them outside, and what connects them with friends, then we owe it to them to listen.


Not every concern requires a ban. Sometimes the better question is not “How do we stop kids from doing this?” It’s “How do we help them do it safely?”


Because young people don’t stop needing freedom simply because adults are worried. They need guidance, structure, education, and trust. And those things have always been more effective than a ban.

The Suburbs Are Already a Prison—Parents Don’t Need to Be the Guards

We built the suburbs to feel safe. Quiet streets, manicured lawns, cul-de-sacs where nothing unexpected happens. On paper, it’s a dream: controlled, predictable, insulated. But for teenagers, that same environment can feel less like safety—and more like confinement.

Because here’s the truth we don’t like to admit: the modern suburban teenager is already living inside a system of invisible walls.

They can’t walk anywhere meaningful. There’s no corner store to wander to, no public square to exist in without purpose. Parks are geared towards younger children. Our skate parks, built for teens in mind, are consistently overrun by small children on scooters and overbearing parents reminding teenagers to “WATCH OUT” in a space that was supposed to be for them. Every movement requires permission, transportation, and often money. Their world shrinks to school, home, and whatever structured activity adults have pre-approved. Even their “free time” is often scheduled, supervised, or monitored.

We took away their freedom of movement—and then wonder why they push so hard against the freedom we have left to give.

So what happens when parents respond by tightening control even further—tracking every location, monitoring every conversation, restricting every risk? We’re not protecting them from a dangerous world. We’re reinforcing a prison wall they’re already struggling to breathe inside.

Teenagers are not meant to be contained. They are meant to expand.

Adolescence is not a phase to lock down—it’s a phase designed for loosening. For testing identity, making imperfect choices, learning the consequences of those choices, and slowly building autonomy. It’s supposed to be messy. It’s supposed to feel a little dangerous. That’s how independence forms.

But in the suburbs, we’ve replaced organic risk with artificial restriction.

Instead of letting teens navigate real-world situations in small, manageable ways, we eliminate those opportunities entirely—and then panic when they don’t know how to handle freedom later. We trade scraped knees for anxiety. We trade independence for compliance. And we mistake obedience for safety.

The irony is, the tighter the grip, the more explosive the pushback.

When teens feel over-controlled, they don’t become safer—they become sneakier. They don’t stop taking risks—they just take them in ways you can’t see, without the safety net of honest communication. Control doesn’t eliminate danger; it drives it underground. 

What teens actually need is something far less comfortable for parents: trust.

Not blind trust. Not absence of boundaries. But a gradual shift from control to collaboration.

They need space to make decisions—and yes, sometimes bad ones—while they still have you nearby to help them process the fallout. They need to feel ownership over their lives, not like they’re living on parole in their own home.

That means loosening the reins when every instinct tells you to pull tighter.

Let them go out. Let them figure things out. Let them be bored, curious, reckless in small ways. Let them build judgment instead of borrowing yours indefinitely.

Because one day, whether we’re ready or not, the gates open.

And if the only thing we’ve taught them is how to live inside a controlled environment, they won’t walk into adulthood prepared—they’ll stumble into it either terrified or desperate to overcorrect.

The goal of parenting teenagers isn’t to keep them contained. It’s to prepare them to leave.

And if the suburbs have already done the job of building the walls, the least we can do is stop acting like wardens—and start acting like guides.

The Suburbs Are Failing Our Teens (and We’re Pretending It’s Fine)

Title feel a bit dramatic? I promise it isn’t. This is absolutely an attack on the idyllic suburban image we’ve been sold for decades. Safe streets, good schools, quiet neighborhoods, and “a better place to raise kids.” On paper, it sounds like the ideal environment for children to grow, explore, and thrive. For children, it very may well be the dream. For teenagers, it can be a completely different story.

A story that is a lot quieter, a lot lonelier, and a lot more limiting than we are comfortable to admit.

The Illusion of Safety Over Real Freedom

Suburbs are build around control- controlled environments, controlled risk, and controlled access. Everything is spread out, curated, and designed for predictability and security. 

But teens do not thrive in controlled environments. With a boost of brain development, teens not only desire friction, but they create it unintentionally. They desire independence and places to go that aren’t constantly monitored or monetized. 

In the suburbs:

  • You can’t get anywhere without a car
  • Public spaces are limited or policed
  • Hanging out becomes “loitering” the second it appears unstructured.

So what happens? Teens stay inside. Or they get labeled as a problem for simply existing in public spaces.

We traded real-world exploration for the illusion of safety – and teens are paying the price. 

Isolation Disguised as Comfort

Suburban life is physical spread out, and that distance creates emotional dissonance.


It becomes harder to walk to your friend’s house on a whim. No running into people organically. No sense of shared, spontaneous culture. 

Everything has to be:

  • Planned
  • Scheduled
  • Driven to


That may work for adults and young children, but for teens it creates a low-grade and constant isolation.

When making connections becomes inconvenient, it slowly stops happening. Alternately, we see teens making connections – albeit not always healthy ones, through social media. 

There’s Nowhere to Just Be

One of the biggest unspoken problems? Suburbs don’t give teens anywhere to exist without spending money or being supervised.

Think about it:

  • Malls are dying, heavily monitored, and far away
  • Parks often feel designed for little kids, not teens. Many banning skateboards, electric bikes/scooters
  • Coffee shops expect you to buy something in order to stay

There’s no equivalent of a teen “third space” – that crucial space outside of home and school where identity and community actually form. 

Without the coveted third space, teens bounce between two worlds. Isolation (home) and stress (school).

That’s not a life. Thats a loop. 

Creativity Gets Squeezed Out

My mother always used to tell me “only boring people get bored”. My boredom as a teen came from loneliness and the monotony of suburban life and no where to go. 

Suburbs are optimized for sameness. Same houses, same routines, same expectations.

But teens? They are in the trenches of figuring out who they are. A process that is usually messy, loud, and experimental. All things the suburbs are actively against. 

So instead of:

  • Expression
  • Exploration
  • Risk-taking

They get:

  • Rules
  • Restrictions
  • “Be normal” pressure

When they’re nowhere to try things, fail publicly, or be a little chaotic in a safe way, creativity doesn’t just shrink – it gets replaced with anxiety. We learn things by doing dangerous, scary, or new things carefully.

Mental Health Isn’t A Mystery Here

We love to talk about rising teen anxiety, depression and disconnection like it’s some elusive unsolvable puzzle and not a direct result of a problem we created while seeking security for ourselves. 

It’s not. 

When you remove:

  • Independence
  • Community 
  • Physical movement
  • Unstructured social space

….and replace it with:

  • Screens
  • Isolation
  • Pressure to perform
  • Lack of autonomy

You don’t get thriving teens. You get overwhelmed ones.

So What Do We Do About It?

This isn’t about abandoning the suburbs entirely – it’s about rethinking them and changing the stigmas and biases against suburban teens.

If we actually want teens to succeed, we need to start designing spaces and systems with them in mind. 

That looks like: 

  • Creating teen-centered third spaces (not just for little kids or adults) 
  • Supporting local creative hubs, workshops, and DIY spaces
  • Normalizing teens existing in public without suspicion
  • Building walkable, accessible areas where connections can happen naturally

And here’s the kicker… letting teens have a little more freedom – even if its uncomfortable. Because growth is uncomfortable. That’s the whole point. 

The Bottom Line

The suburbs aren’t “safe” if they’re quietly suffocating the people growing in them. 


Teenagers do not need perfection and they don’t need to BE perfect. They do not need constant supervision or hyper-curated lives.
They need space, movement, community, and a little chaos.

They deserve a space to become themselves and right now, the suburbs aren’t giving them that.

We could continue to pretend everything is fine…

Or we can listen to our teens and build them something even better.