Adolescent stage of development

In the previous post Anon makes the comment that people don’t need two decades to fully form but they could be fully formed by age 12 - 15. I had previously stated that in my view it takes about 2 decades to fully form.

I think we are both right depending on where you look. The less affluent societies will tend to ‘force’ the youth to grow up quicker whereas the more affluent allow them longer to fully form at least at a psychological level. Consider this diagram:



In Australia, the stage of adolescence has at least doubled in length of time over the past 40 years. It used to be 4 or 5 years and now is 10 to 15 years long. For a person to reach the psychological stage of adulthood they are often in their early 20s. That is for the adolescent stage psychological issues to have largely dissipated takes much longer now.

Why would this be so?



There are a number of possible reasons for this.

1. As a general rule the more educated a society is the longer adolescence will be. If one is receiving schooling then one is not working. If one is not working then one does not have economic independence which is a key feature in finishing adolescence - no longer being financially dependent on others, usually the parents.

2. Marriage is tending to occur later. One does not hear much about weddings occurring with 18 and 19 year olds as they did not so long ago. So in this way people do not have to be ‘grown up’ so early.

3. Related to this child birth is occurring later and numbers of children is reducing. This allows people to be more irresponsible in this sense, all they have to do is look after self and not a child.

4. As a society we tolerate this period called adolescence more so than in the past. In the city where I live every year there is a week or fortnight called ‘schoolies week’. This is where those who have just completed high school (17/18 year olds) go on vacation as soon as their last examinations end. On this vacation they drink too much alcohol, take drugs and engage in gratuitous sex. Whilst I am sure there are many who do not do such things, this is what is highlighted in the press year in and year out. In general it is tolerated by society and even viewed with amusement by some. I would imagine that there are many societies around the world who would not tolerate such things at all.



5. As some societies becomes more affluent they do not need the group of ‘adolescents’ to be working so as to maintain a functioning society. This allows for more navel gazing. As food and shelter become more certain people start to look at their psychological needs and adolescence is a prime example of where such navel gazing can occur.

6. Life span increases. Over that past 50 to 70 years the average life span has increased by about 20 years. So in this sense there is less of a need to hurry through the developmental stages. As people can now be adults for longer they can then proceed through adolescence at a slower rate. And there are more older people to maintain a functioning society so the young are not needed so much to be out there working for the society to survive.

Experts in the area of adolescent development have used the following phrases to describe teenagers in this stage of development:




Graffiti