Trashing Teens

Does society under estimate the abilities and coping capacities of teenagers ? Does society now place too many restrictions on them ? I'm sure St.helen's girls will have strong opinions on this subject.Psychologist Robert Epstein argues in a provocative book, "The Case Against Adolescence," that teens are far more competent than adults assume, and most of their problems stem from  the restrictions placed on them. This is a recent article from Psychology Today. People of my age (63) notice that young people remain juvenile into their twenties an age when most of us had jobs, mortgages and or/children.

Psychologist Robert Epstein spoke to Psychology Today's Hara Estroff Marano about the legal and emotional constraints youth.
HEM: Why do you believe that adolescence is an artificial extension of childhood?
RE: In every mammalian species, immediately upon reaching puberty, animals function as adults, often having offspring. We call our offspring "children" well past puberty. The trend started a hundred years ago and now extends childhood well into the 20s. The age at which Americans reach adulthood is increasing—30 is the new 20—and most Americans now believe a person isn't an adult until age 26.

The whole culture collaborates in artificially extending childhood, primarily through the school system and restrictions on labour. The two systems evolved together in the late 19th-century; the advocates of compulsory-education laws also pushed for child-labour laws, restricting the ways young people could work, in part to protect them from the abuses of the new factories. The juvenile justice system came into being at the same time. All of these systems isolate teens from adults, often in problematic ways.
Our current education system was created in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and was modelled after the new factories of the industrial revolution. State schools set up to supply the factories with a skilled labour force, crammed education into a relatively small number of years. We have tried to pack more and more in while extending schooling up to age 24 or 25, for some segments of the population. In general, such an approach still reflects factory thinking—get your education now and get it efficiently, in classrooms in lockstep fashion. Unfortunately, most people learn in those classrooms to hate education for the rest of their lives.
The factory system doesn't work in the modern world, because two years after graduation, whatever you learned is out of date. We need education spread over a lifetime, not jammed into the early years—except for such basics as reading, writing, and perhaps citizenship. Past puberty, education needs to be combined in interesting and creative ways with work. The factory school system no longer makes sense.
What are some likely consequences of extending one's childhood?
Imagine what it would feel like—or think back to what it felt like—when your body and mind are telling you you're an adult while the adults around you keep insisting you're a child. This infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed, with their distress carrying over into their families and contributing to our high divorce rate. It's hard to keep a marriage together when there is constant conflict with teens.
We have completely isolated young people from adults and created a peer culture. We stick them in school and keep them from working in any meaningful way, and if they do something wrong we put them in a pen with other "children." In most nonindustrialized societies, young people are integrated into adult society as soon as they are capable, and there is no sign of teen turmoil. Many cultures do not even have a term for adolescence. But we not only created this stage of life: We declared it inevitable. In 1904, American psychologist G. Stanley Hall said it was programmed by evolution. He was wrong.
How is adolescent behavior shaped by societal strictures?
One effect is the creation of a new segment of society just waiting to consume, especially if given money to spend. There are now massive industries—music, clothing, makeup—that revolve around this artificial segment of society and keep it going, with teens spending upward of $200 billion a year almost entirely on trivia.
Ironically, because minors have only limited property rights, they don't have complete control over what they have bought. Think how bizarre that is. If you, as an adult, spend money and bring home a toy, it's your toy and no one can take it away from you. But with a 14-year-old, it's not really his or her toy. Young people can't own things, can't sign contracts, and they can't do anything meaningful without parental permission—permission that can be withdrawn at any time. They can't marry, can't have sex, can't legally drink. The list goes on. They are restricted and infantilized to an extraordinary extent.
In recent surveys I've found that American teens are subjected to more than 10 times as many restrictions as mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many as incarcerated felons. Psychologist Diane Dumas and I also found a correlation between infantilization and psychological dysfunction. The more young people are infantilized, the more psychopathology they show.
What's more, since 1960, restrictions on teens have been accelerating. Young people are restricted in ways no adult would be—for example, in some states they are prohibited from entering tanning salons or getting tattoos.
You believe in the inherent competence of teens. What's your evidence?
Dumas and I worked out what makes an adult an adult. We came up with 14 areas of competency—such as interpersonal skills, handling responsibility, leadership—and administered tests to adults and teens in several cities around the country. We found that teens were as competent or nearly as competent as adults in all 14 areas. But when adults estimate how teens will score, their estimates are dramatically below what the teens actually score.


Well, you've read some of the evidence and ideas - what do you think ? Are we over-protective of teen agers ?

Evidence from Research on SNS

These are comments from the actual 2011 research into teen behaviour on SNS sites. Notice how people feel free to write what they like, no matter how cruel, and how this frequently can lead to physical violence. The first statement is about a boy whose Facebook page was full of homophobic messages. "Yeah, and, like, a bunch of people from this school, like, attacked his page and, like, wrote really, really homophobic things on it." Often teens felt bolder, ruder, or more empowered because they did not fear physical violence in the online space. One middle school girl told us that she thought people were ruder online “because you can’t hurt anybody online. You can’t punch nobody through the screen.” MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL 1. “I think I act ruder to online people. MODERATOR. You act ruder? How come? MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL 2. Because she doesn’t have to see them, so they can’t beat her up.” For some teens we spoke with – particularly middle school girls – fights and drama on social media flowed back and forth between school, the street, and Facebook, often resulting in physical fights during the in-person portions of the conflict. MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: I read what they were talking about online, then I go offline and confront the person who was saying something to her. MIDDLE SCHOOL GIRL: …Like that’s how most people start fighting because that’s how most of the fights in my school happen – because of some Facebook stuff, because of something you post, or like because somebody didn’t like your pictures. One middle school girl detailed the circular flow of conflict between her social network site and her in-person life, and the ways that she, at her mother’s behest, tries to break the cycle. “…the other day, Monday, I was not cool with somebody and so they tried to put on their status something about me. But I didn’t reply to that because my mother told me not to say nothing back because she didn’t want anything more to happen.” She further explains a physical fight she was supposed to have and the ways in which others taunted her offline and online about her allegedly skipping out on the conflict. She describes her attempts to ignore online comments made about her “ducking” the fight, until the taunting escalated to insulting her friend. Again, I would be interested in your comments ?

Noureen on the Net

Some thoughtful views of Noureen on the Net.I have often heard people discuss friends on SNS and say they are "loud on facebook" but not always loud in person. Maybe it is not a way for people to cyber bully others, but its a way of communication where people feel it is easier for them to speak up. Some people are shy in person but active users of SNS at home, in their comfort zones. Others, however, may be cruel to others on SNS without realising it. For example, many young teens like to "tag" people on photos to see "who is your smartest friend?" or "who is your shortest friend" and some people may find this offensive. Because of the advances of SNS, bullying could multiply after one person encourages it. People can 're-tweet' and share what their friends have already written so more and more people can see their posts. This multiplying effect may be how bullying can turn into such a wide-spread act, by a simple click. I can personally say that I have seen cruelty on SNS, usually written as sarcasm, which is all the more worse. Nonetheless, SNS bring out the people who stand up for each other so SNS can bring many people together. Noureen

Nice v Nasty The Net and Us

Many of us are members of social networking sites such as Facebook. It can be a good way of keeping in touch with our friends and sharing information. However, a study last year, 2011, looked at how often people saw mean or cruel comments compared with generous and helpful ones. This is especially important at the moment because of the prevalence of cyber bullying which can be very harmful to those subjected to it. Do people feel free to say things on Facebook they would never say face to face ? Some people hide behind nicknames and keep their profile anonymous. Is it best to leave SNS alone and read a good book ? SNS means ‘social networking sites. I want to have a closer look at this study because its findings are relevant to all of us. Adult SNS users were asked a question that did not appear in the teen survey: “When you’re on a social networking site, how often do you see people being generous or helpful?” Some 39% of adult SNS users said they frequently saw acts of generosity, 36% said they sometimes saw it, 18% said they saw it “only once in a while” and 5% said they never saw it. The SNS users who were most likely to say they frequently saw people being generous or helpful included whites (41%), college graduates (45%), and those living in households earning $75,000 and above (46%). This was an American study and these results showed that people who were white, well-educated and relatively well-paid saw less cruelty than others. Why might other groups be more likely to be cruel to each other ? When it came to unpleasant behaviour on SNS, adults have seen their share, but it tends to be evident to them far less frequently than it is to teen SNS users. Both groups were asked the same question: “When you’re on a social networking site, how often do you see people being mean or cruel?” Some 49% of SNS-using adults said they saw mean or cruel behaviour displayed by others at least occasionally, far lower than the 88% of SNS-using teens who said they had seen mean or cruel behaviour at some point. Moreover, 29% of SNS-using adults said they had never seen mean or cruel behaviour on the sites, compared with 11% of teens who said they had never seen it. Social network site users reported quite similar rates of witnessing mean and cruel behaviour as their younger peers in the teen cohort: 9% of SNS-users said they frequently saw mean and cruel behavior; 25% of them see it sometimes; 48% see it “only once in a while”; and 16% said they had never see it. Frequent users – those who use SNS at least once a day – are also more likely to see mean or cruel behaviour more often. So why is it that teens are use Facebook to be cruel to each other on a wide scale ? Is it because it’s used as another way of bullying people who are bullied at school ? I would be interested in your comments – you can contact me on school email. Dr.Brown.