# Teenagers are NOT a myth.
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [April 15, 2001, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072 "2001-04-15T17:42:24Z")
**Posts on this page:** 13
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Joff-Rey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joff-Rey)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2001, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/1 "2001-04-15T17:42:24Z")
[http://www.home-school.com/Articles/PlattTeenagers.html](http://www.home-school.com/Articles/PlattTeenagers.html)
Read this. If I say another thing, this will be moved to the pit. Must… restrain self…
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### Author:  [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2001, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/2 "2001-04-15T18:30:13Z")
Basically, this guy is complaining that “Youths” are instead being called “Teenagers”.
Semantic nonsense, all of it.
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### Author:  [@Sterra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sterra)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2001, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/3 "2001-04-15T18:44:38Z")
This from someone who had his name copied by P Diddly:)
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### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2001, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/4 "2001-04-15T18:50:24Z")
And, worse, it’s semantic nonsense that has been said before.
Ho-hum.
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### Author:  [@Duck\_Duck\_Goose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duck_Duck_Goose)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2001, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/5 "2001-04-15T18:57:39Z")
And I love it when they cite _Rebel Without a Cause_. Um, hello? That’s a movie, it’s fantasy?
Yah, let’s all blame James Dean, Jack Kerouac, J.D. Salinger, those “porn merchants” Henry Miller and Hugh Hefner (am I the only one who’s never even read _Tropic of Capricorn_?)
Not to mention television, cars, dope, the Pill, and (gasp) the evil Rock and Roll…
> [@](#):
>
> A new music, Rock, through whose dances the couple was annihilated, contributed mightily to the destruction of courtship.
:rolleyes:
And, finally, “the substitution of daily newspapers for daily prayers”.
Yep, things just haven’t been the same in America ever since they started adding fluoride to the drinking water (or is it the mercury in dental fillings? I forget.)
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### Author:  [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2001, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/6 "2001-04-15T19:09:13Z")
OK, for the _most_ part the article is right-wing propaganda, but I think the guy has some semblance of a point, in that we’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy by _expecting_ teenagers to cause trouble. We’ve also stripped them of a lot of the responsibilities that used to connect young people to society as a whole. A hundred years ago, teenagers were generally expected to contribute to the family’s welfare, either through paid work or by taking over a significant share of the chores. Today most of them are not (even those with jobs are generally working for their own pocket money). Although this is a consequence of the fact that life is easier nowadays, in some ways I think it’s a bad thing; people tend not to develop a sense of responsibility toward a larger social unit until later in life, if at all.
This point gets lost, of course, in all the random ranting about sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, but I think the basic idea is worth thinking about.
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### Author:  [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2001, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/7 "2001-04-15T20:23:23Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Teenagers are NOT a myth.
Well, I should hope not! I’d hate to think I haven’t been existing for the last six years.
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### Author:  [@Monster104](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monster104)
#### Post date: [April 15, 2001, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/8 "2001-04-15T20:40:53Z")
Well, I’m another living proof of the existence of teenagers. Although, in a few short days I will legally be an adult…
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2001, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/9 "2001-04-16T00:23:15Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Fretful Porpentine \*
> \*\*OK, for the _most_ part the article is right-wing propaganda, but I think the guy has some semblance of a point, in that we’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy by _expecting_ teenagers to cause trouble. We’ve also stripped them of a lot of the responsibilities that used to connect young people to society as a whole. A hundred years ago, teenagers were generally expected to contribute to the family’s welfare, either through paid work or by taking over a significant share of the chores. Today most of them are not (even those with jobs are generally working for their own pocket money). Although this is a consequence of the fact that life is easier nowadays, in some ways I think it’s a bad thing; people tend not to develop a sense of responsibility toward a larger social unit until later in life, if at all.
>
> This point gets lost, of course, in all the random ranting about sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll, but I think the basic idea is worth thinking about. \*\*
Yes. Better economic times means fewer people having to work, and our society has decided as a whole that it’s more important for teenagers to get an education than to be working. However, you might be underestimating the amount of work that teenagers actually perform in America today. Poorer families certainly do need teenagers to be responsible. Also, middle class teens who work are probably more likely to do it for college tuition rather than “pocket money”. Anyway, if teenagers do shoulder slightly less responsibility, what negative side effects are we seeing. The article claims that college-aged kids had better “moral conduct and good manners” in the past than we do today, but is unable to provide specific evidence. Us dopers have debunked the idea that modern teens have looser morals and more violent attitudes so many times that it hardly seems worth arguing about once again.
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### Author:  [@DaveRaver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveRaver)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2001, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/10 "2001-04-16T00:33:39Z")
Back in the 60s, we rebelled against people like this author, and for good reason. Eat my shorts!
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### Author:  [@Amedeus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amedeus)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2001, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/11 "2001-04-16T02:38:03Z")
But if teenagers are a myth, what about adults who act like teenagers. What does that make us. Sort of a modern day Hercules?
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### Author:  [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2001, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/12 "2001-04-16T03:11:33Z")
Although the link is, of course, reactionary clap-trap, I do agree with the idea that we are to concerned with lumping people into age-defined catagories. I believe much of this comes from marketing–we’ve learned to identify ourselves by the same labels as advertising firms use. I realy think that on the list of words one uses to identify oneself, one’s generation should be way way down the list.
The really cynical side of me thinks that advertising companies train us to be like this right from the get go–think of all the “just for kids” “by kids for kids” lingo we are exposed to as small children. The implication is that there is some sort of “pan-childhood” sentiment that out to draw everyone the same age together. By putting us in groups that we identify with, they can advertise specifically to those created groups. It is conditioning.
Schools contribute to this problem by lumping us into our age groups and discouraging interaction across age groups. Families contribute to this by putting the cousins all at the children’s table and by expecting the children to have no interest in what the adults talk about–children tend to do what is expected of them.
Even after-school jobs–teens mostly work McJobs, with other teens. I really like it when I see teens intern or whatever in places that have people from a variety of age groups.
So many of my peers are so terribly uncomfortable with people more than a few years older or younger than themselves. Furthermore, I see many of them who seem to have tremendous trouble making the paradigm leap from “teenager” to “adult”–if you point out to them that they are as old as thier mother was in their first memeories of her, they are truly baffled.
As a side note, while teenagers are not a “myth”, exactly, surely you see that they are a social construct?
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### Author:  [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)
#### Post date: [April 16, 2001, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/teenagers-are-not-a-myth/62072/13 "2001-04-16T04:07:56Z")
Up front: I had a perfectly easy, cushy adolescence, in the 1970s, and I enjoyed every moment of it. So, while I agree with a fair amount of what the author said, I’m NOT some crotchety old geezer griping about how “I worked 72 hours a week, supporting my family when I was a kid… but these kids today, with their long hair, and their loud music… what they need is some good old-fashioned discipline!”
What the author is saying is undeniable, though unoriginal.
Now, I expect the author is, as others have guessed, a right-winger. And he’s undoubtedly nostalgic for some imaginary time when young folks were responsible, respectful of their elders, more conformist, etc. But give him his due:
Today, when 13 year old Scott Rabinowitz of suburban New Jersey declares “Today I am a man” at his bar mitzvah, everyone laughs, and says “how cute,” knowing that little Scott is FAR from being a man in any meaningful sense. But a few centuries ago, a 13 year old WAS on the verge of manhood. He was already working on the farm or as an apprentice, learning a trade. A 13 year old girl was just about ready to be married off. Just a few centuries ago, the idea that a 13-17 year old was a mere child who wasn’t responsible for his/her own actions, or for supporting himself/herself, would have seemed ludicrous. Today, of course, the age at which we expect people to support themselves, and at which we expect them to be stable, law-abiding citizens is a LOT higher.
Do I want to return to those days? No, and I can’t imagine how I’d go about restoring them if I DID want to! Still, until fairly recently, NO society regarded the teenage years as a time when kids should be free to pursue their pleasures, while still having their parents as a safety net.