Try to imagine this scene. A group of high school girls gathered at someone’s house for a sleepover. The girls are sitting together on the floor listening to music albums played on the family phonograph. They’re reading album covers, liner notes, enclosed photo booklets and talking about their favorite musicians. Sound like a scene from the 1970s? How about 2008?

Yes, 2008. In the world of music, where 99.7 percent of all music is sold via CDs or digital downloads, you would think vinyl record albums have gone the way of the T. Rex, the dodo bird and the drive-in movie — extinction. But have they? Vinyl record albums are making something of a comeback. Like 1970s-era vintage gear (think Puma sneakers), full-length LPs are cool again. While vinyl records still only make up 0.2 percent of overall album sales, vinyl album sales by themselves were up 15 percent in 2007, while CD sales were down. One force in the trend may be serious music fans, who insist vinyl records played on a quality record player exhibit a warmer more nuanced sound than MP3s heard through the tinny sound of earbuds or headphones. However, a recent Time magazine story noted another reason that gives us insight to the world of teenagers. Teenagers are rediscovering the unique social experience of listening to music on albums. Crowding around a record player with friends, playing a record with the image of the artist printed on the vinyl (a little modern technology can’t hurt), sharing the foldout photos, even turning the record over make vinyl records a more socially interactive way to listen to music, striking a chord among some teenagers who have grown up in a world where music is increasingly a private experience.

In 1979, Sony introduced the Walkman. This novel innovation started a near 30-year trend toward a portable, private and individualized music experience that can be summed up today in four letters: i-P-o-d. Everyone who travels to a Young Life camp knows that MP3 players fall somewhere just below toothbrush on the packing list. While a growing interest in sharing music via albums on a turntable may not be a sign that CDs and MP3 players are headed toward extinction, it may be evidence that the fundamental adolescent need for face-to-face interaction is not being led to extinction by the trend of privatizing music technology either. Some cultural observers have been concerned that the attractiveness of modern communication technology, such as social network sites (MySpace, Facebook) and cell phones (especially text messaging) among adolescents will leave them not only with less face-to-face interaction with fellow human beings but diminished communication and relational skills later in life. What this trend in vinyl records indicates is that, in spite of the attraction of trendy technology, the basic adolescent need for social interaction is not suppressed or snuffed out. What is even more significant is that teenagers themselves, on their own initiative, are looking past the popular and ever-present technologies to find more interactive, meaningful social experiences.

It would be a huge stretch to conclude that we, as Young Life leaders and staff, need to go out and buy a turntable or go up into the attic (ours or our parents!) and dust off the old one up there so that we can have a cutting-edge social scene that is attractive to our adolescent friends. What is not a huge stretch is that in the face of technology that allows for a lot of individualism and even anonymity, our adolescent friends are demonstrating they are not content to rely solely on themselves. There is a deep longing for true social connection hidden behind the earbuds and the text messages, and if we are truly serious about relational ministry, perhaps we can “move into the neighborhood” with a bit more confidence, knowing that nothing meets them in their longings like shared life experiences.