After reviewing the lectures in the Instructional Materials, share your thoughts here. Do you believe the way we approach adolescence today is beneficial to teens and their development, or is it detrimental? Defend your position. Provide two examples to support your argument. These examples can be based on your own experiences, observations, and research.

Adolescence as an Invention

Throughout much of history, children were not revered as they are today. The focus was not on protecting their self-esteem, valuing their play time, or even showing them affection and providing them emotional support; instead, children were treated like miniature adults. Children in agricultural families began working at an early age, helping around the house or on the farm and taking on significant responsibility even before they were teens. Very few went to high school, much less college; college was reserved for the elite who could afford it. By 18 or 19 years old, most teens were working full time. The Industrial Revolution changed everything. Rural families began moving into the city in search of factory jobs, and children and teens began working in these factories, as well. Child labor laws were eventually created to protect the welfare of children, largely removing them from the factory workforce. But these laws had what some saw as the added advantage of keeping teens out of the workforce, too, because while children did menial labor, teens were able to do the higher paying jobs that adults wanted for themselves.

A new image of the teenager began to emerge at this time: the same teens who had been considered fully capable of work were now seen as too immature and in need of much guidance before they were ready for such challenges. It was also around this time that compulsory (i.e., required) secondary education began. Requiring that students attend high school not only provided them the opportunity to be trained for skilled jobs, but also helped to enforce child labor laws by keeping them out of the factories.

Thus, it has been argued, adolescence as we know it today emerged when child labor became illegal and high school became required. Instead of working long hours in a factory among adults, teens now spent most of their time with other teens and had significantly more leisure time than in the past. Adolescence, as we know it today, was born.

The Adolescent Brain

According to Piaget, adolescents are in the formal operations stage of development, where hypothetical and abstract thinking becomes possible, as well as the ability to use deductive reasoning and to logically "think things through." But these skills are not only underdeveloped, they can lead to flawed logic and thus poor decision-making.

For example, when Jenna was learning to drive, a friend of hers told her that it was okay to exceed the speed limit as long as the car behind her was also speeding. The police officer would pull over the car behind her, not her. It's not difficult to see how this friend might have logically come to that conclusion, but was it accurate? Was it sound advice? Of course not. Because adolescents have this ability to think things through, though, they feel confident in their ability to make their own decisions and will buy into flawed logic if it makes sense to them.

Research on the adolescent brain has also found that what teens do or do not do during this time can affect them for the rest of their lives. The brain is in a process of pruningtrimming away weak connections so that stronger connections can flourish. Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health calls this the "use it or lose it principle" and claims "If a teen is doing music or sports or academics, those are the cells and connections that will be hardwired. If they're lying on the couch or playing video games...those are the cells and connections that are going to survive." This also means that behavior such as substance abuse can impact teens beyond putting their safety at risk; it can permanently affect their brain.

Adolescent Sleep

During puberty, the time of night that melatonin levels begin to rise becomes later and later. In fact, from the start of puberty to the end, there may be as much as a 2 hour difference! If allowed to regulate their own sleep schedule, most teens will naturally fall asleep at 1 am and sleep until 10 am. Obviously this schedule does not work well with school schedules; most middle and high schools in the US start around 8 am. Adolescents need an average of 9 hours of sleep per night. If they aren't falling asleep until 1 am, though, and need to be to school by 8 am, they are not getting near enough sleep. It's no wonder adolescents are tired in their morning classes and tend to sleep late on weekends.

Puberty!

Puberty isn't just an awkward time for adolescents, it's an awkward thing to discuss. But if you thought conversations today couldn't get any more awkward, check out this montage of old movie clips!

Closed-captioning provided.

The Stormy Decade: Fact or Fiction?

If you're interested, you can read Bandura's full article, "The Stormy Decade: Fact or Fiction?" opens a PDF, published in Psychology in the Schools, July 1964.

Adolescent Brains are Works in Progress

You can learn more about adolescent brain development and Dr. Giedd's research in this article from PBS's Sarah Spinks opens in a new window.