Adolescence in America

Young adults in our country live far below their capacities

(an op-ed assignmnet from my Worldview Integration class)

    I am now two days short of graduating from college, and this implies, among other things, that I can anticipate the same exclamation one hears at every major life threshold: “My goodness, they do grow up so quickly, don’t they?”  With all due respect to Aunt Edna, we really don’t.  By historical standards, in fact, Americans grow up almost a decade too late. 

Before the late 1800s, the term “adolescent” did not exist, and neither did the social construct which accompanies it.  Some lifestyles are unsustainable in all but America’s extravagantly-affluent 20^th and 21^st centuries.  “Adolescence,” of course, is the artificial period of limbo between childhood and adulthood, during which time young people must discover and define their identity.  The best way to discover and define one’s identity, naturally, is to spend one’s time, energy, and finances on entertainment and social functions.  This maximizes one’s opportunities to gain wisdom from media outlets and one’s peers.  The privileges of adulthood are conducive to discovering identities; the responsibilities of adulthood are not.  Perpetual narcissism is merely part of the process.  Adolescence is so entrenched in American culture that there are vast social institutions – the video game industry in particular – which depend directly on the existence of adolescent consumers, a market with a surfeit of disposable income and disposable time.

Perhaps my analysis is too cynical; perhaps adolescence is the inevitable response of human nature in the face of adulthood’s limitless possibilities in a complex world.  If adolescence is natural, however, why does human nature chafe against it?  Despite their privileges and freedom, American adolescents are some of the least-contented people in the world.  It is no coincidence that the average person hears the word “angst” for the first time in reference to teenagers or the music they favor.  Parents also chafe against adolescence, anticipating the teenage years of their children with a sense of resignation at best, for by cultural consensus, one of the primary means of self-discovery is fracturing one’s relationship with tyrannical Mom & Dad (while happily accepting their money for car insurance payments).

None of this need be.  I didn’t discover my love for Shakespeare by reading Dr. Seuss; I picked up Julius Caesar.  Similarly, it’s ridiculous that for a young man to set about “discovering” what kind of person he will become in the real world of adults by living in a faint shadow of that world.  The defining characteristics of a grown-up man – and I pick on young men because we are typically the slowest to grow up – include courage, wisdom in discerning the worthless from the worthwhile, ethical maturity, a willingness to take responsibility for one’s actions, a sense of respect and protection toward women, and economic provision for one’s self and one’s family.  A 13-year-old can begin to practice all of these traits if he is willing to forsake the laziness, self-centeredness, and triviality endemic to his sub-culture.

As a recovering adolescent myself, it is not my aim to be accusatory or discouraging.  I simply hope to convince other young people that it is good to grow up.  As an illustration, I am currently working with an engineering competition team to build a small Formula-style racecar.  The leader of our team started his own lawn business as a teenager, working long hours, saving money, and buying capital until he owned $35K in business assets and earned an above-the-poverty-line income by age sixteen.  The money he made helped send him through college, the mechanical expertise he gained by fixing lawn equipment helped him solve many problems that arose in building our car, and it is no accident that he became the team leader:  he had been practicing manhood to a greater degree for a longer duration than had his teammates.

Summer is approaching quickly with ten thousand difficult, worthwhile opportunities for the uncommonly-ambitious.  May adolescent readers truncate America’s 10-year social gestation period and prove themselves men.