The “turmoil” of adolescence is entirely a product of industrial capitalism and its mistreatment of teenagers.
In 1991 anthropologist Alice Schlegel of the University of Arizona and Herbert Barry III, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, reviewed research on teens in 186 preindustrial societies. Among the important conclusions they drew about these societies: about 60 percent had no word for “adolescence,” teens spent almost all their time with adults, teens showed almost no signs of psychopathology, and antisocial behavior in young males was completely absent in more than half these cultures and extremely mild in cultures in which it did occur.[1]
In fact, I recently learned that the popular notion that the brain isn’t “mature” until age 25 is probably a myth.[2][3]
Personal anecdote
I grew up in the Deep South (Georgia), and when I was 16, my high school girlfriend and I were dying to fuck, but we never could, because every adult in our lives made it their life’s mission to prevent all “kids” from having literally any privacy whatsoever.
The closest we got was brief, ten minute periods after Friday night football games, while we waited for our parents to pick us up. Band kids like us would hide in the auditorium and make out, but the band directors were constantly sweeping the building, trying to catch kids being “naughty” in order to traumatize and admonish them. I recently learned that that was also a plot point in Handmaid’s Tale—my best friend was unable to finish the book because that scene was too triggering.
It’s been over twenty years and I’m still resentful about it.
That infographic does worry me a little bit, I’ve known too many people who fried their brain from too much weed as teenagers, and cannot function properly because of it. Was them being a teen the reason behind the damage? Maybe not, but it was the reason why they didn’t have enough moderation.
Though my solution wouldn’t be “ban all drugs from kids” because that’s literally how this sort of shit happens, they get high, have a great time, nothing bad happens, so they keep doing it, and end up relying on it, and in turn, because all the adults around them just have a “you should never take drugs” attitude, they never actually have a proper talk about their issues and so it just ends up getting worse.
A better “drug education” for teens would be to teach moderation and proper knowledge of side effects, not “if you take drugs it’s destroy your life” but “smoking weed every now and then is ok, but too much too often can and will fuck you up.”
I really wish that Epstein(real unfortunate name) cited some actual peer-reviewed research papers. Otherwise this “research” paper is just a vibes based analysis without a works cited.
a series of long-term studies set in motion in the 1980s by anthropologists Beatrice Whiting and John Whiting of Harvard University
Studies by Beatriz Luna of the Laboratory of Neurocognitive Development at the University of Pittsburgh
An electroencephalogram (EEG) study by Irwin Feinberg and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis
a 1993 study by Jsus Pujol and his colleagues at the Autonomous University of Barcelona
Other studies, conducted by researchers such as Elizabeth Sowell of the University of California, Los Angeles
a 2004 study conducted by James Bjork and his colleagues at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, at Stanford University and at the Catholic University of America
I wish the article included links (a common complaint in science writing), but I doubt Scientific American would have allowed the article to be published if the referenced studies were all hallucinations.
Magazine articles like this are often reduxes of formal literature reviews. I’ll see if I can find a more formal one.
The “turmoil” of adolescence is entirely a product of industrial capitalism and its mistreatment of teenagers.
In fact, I recently learned that the popular notion that the brain isn’t “mature” until age 25 is probably a myth.[2] [3]
Personal anecdote
I grew up in the Deep South (Georgia), and when I was 16, my high school girlfriend and I were dying to fuck, but we never could, because every adult in our lives made it their life’s mission to prevent all “kids” from having literally any privacy whatsoever.
The closest we got was brief, ten minute periods after Friday night football games, while we waited for our parents to pick us up. Band kids like us would hide in the auditorium and make out, but the band directors were constantly sweeping the building, trying to catch kids being “naughty” in order to traumatize and admonish them. I recently learned that that was also a plot point in Handmaid’s Tale—my best friend was unable to finish the book because that scene was too triggering.
It’s been over twenty years and I’m still resentful about it.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-teen-brain-2007-06/ ↩︎
I learned it from this infographic. I haven’t fully vetted everything on it, but I’m sharing it to promote discussion:
↩︎
https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/brain-myth-25-development ↩︎
That infographic does worry me a little bit, I’ve known too many people who fried their brain from too much weed as teenagers, and cannot function properly because of it. Was them being a teen the reason behind the damage? Maybe not, but it was the reason why they didn’t have enough moderation.
Though my solution wouldn’t be “ban all drugs from kids” because that’s literally how this sort of shit happens, they get high, have a great time, nothing bad happens, so they keep doing it, and end up relying on it, and in turn, because all the adults around them just have a “you should never take drugs” attitude, they never actually have a proper talk about their issues and so it just ends up getting worse.
A better “drug education” for teens would be to teach moderation and proper knowledge of side effects, not “if you take drugs it’s destroy your life” but “smoking weed every now and then is ok, but too much too often can and will fuck you up.”
Yeah, the drug part is my primary reservation.
Edit: It appears to be the opinion of the infographic’s creator rather than a topic explored in its cited literature.
this is very interesting, thank you!!
I really wish that Epstein(real unfortunate name) cited some actual peer-reviewed research papers. Otherwise this “research” paper is just a vibes based analysis without a works cited.
We’re talking about my first source, right?
References
I wish the article included links (a common complaint in science writing), but I doubt Scientific American would have allowed the article to be published if the referenced studies were all hallucinations.
Magazine articles like this are often reduxes of formal literature reviews. I’ll see if I can find a more formal one.
Edit: Not by Robert Epstein, but related papers:
https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.nature.com/articles/nn1099_861
https://sci-hub.ru/https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11343525/
https://sci-hub.ru/https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00767-3