The Modern Age: Turn-of-the-Century American Culture and the Invention of Adolescence

Introduction

Introduction What Adolescents Are Really Like Featured prominently at newsstands across the country and a free gift for renewing subscribers, a special 2005 issue of U.S. News & World Report is devoted to exposing one of the most widespread and sinister cover-ups of contemporary American society. Surprisingly, the scandal has nothing to do with Enron or Iraq’s fictitious weapons of mass destruction. “Mysteries of the Teen Years: An Essential Guide for Parents” features the latest data from statisticians and out-of-the-box insights from psychologists that attest to the fact that there has been something of a misunderstanding about America’s teens: it turns out they’re not so bad after all. “[M]any of the common complaints about generation Y, also known as the ‘millennial ’ generation, are quite simply wrong,” the magazine announces on its inside front cover. “Adolescents now are less likely than their parents were to smoke, do hard drugs, get pregnant, commit violent crimes, drop out of school, and drive drunk . . . the current generation is doing well by doing good.”1 Although its enticing cover, catchy headlines, and wide distribution garnered the attention of many readers, it turns out that U.S. News & World Report cannot be fully credited with the scoop on the widespread misunderstanding of the country’s least favorite age demographic. Over the past decade, scholars in a variety of disciplines have reached similar conclusions about America’s attitude toward its young people. An extensive two-year study completed by the FrameWorks Institute and the UCLA Center on Communications and Community in 2001, for example , revealed not only a marked dislike and distrust of teens but also a 2 Introduction pronounced discrepancy between this view and all of the current data relating to the age group. A summary of public opinion polls in the study revealed that “[o]nly 16% of Americans say that ‘young people under the age of 30 share most of their moral and ethical values,’” putting teens only slightly above homosexuals, welfare recipients, and rich people. Furthermore , when a 1989 Gallup Poll asked 1,249 adults to compare contemporary youth to those twenty years ago, topping the list were the words “Selfish ” (81 percent), “Materialistic” (79 percent), and “Reckless” (73 percent). These descriptors and the other data cited in the study are diametrically opposed to how teens actually view themselves. A survey of 1,015 high school students cited in the study found that the values teens hold most dear are “being honest” (8.6 on a 10-point scale), “working hard” (8.4), “being a good student” (7.9), and “giving time to helping others” (7.6). Furthermore, 75 percent of teens surveyed said that they felt happy most of the time. But perhaps even more striking than this discrepancy was the study’s findings regarding the persistency of adult misconceptions. When six different focus groups from three separate cities were given a news story that outlined positive trends for teens, an overwhelming majority of the adults rejected it as false.“I questioned almost the whole story,” one father vehemently asserted.2 In his 1999 book Framing Youth, Mike Males meticulously exposes the falsity of negative myths about contemporary teens. From mistaken reports of excessive violence to hysteria about rising pregnancy and substance abuse, Males demonstrates that data has consistently been disfigured by government agencies, interest groups, and the media to perpetuate fear about the next generation. Consistently, as studies continue to reflect more positively on teens, unfavorable stories persist with increased vigor. “Whether the issue is violence, crime, suicide and self destruction, drugs, smoking, drinking, risk, or attitude, the sequence is the same,” Males concludes . “Teenagers are universally denigrated when, in reality, they are behaving well amid severe stresses.”3 Indeed, there is no shortage of data indicating that American society relentlessly clings to negative misconceptions of adolescents. But even though the veil has begun to be lifted from this misunderstanding, very little has yet been proffered to explain why such myths exist. If there are consistently negative beliefs about teens being recirculated in American society, whom do they benefit and why does our culture sustain them? I believe the answers to these questions lie in the earliest constructions of Introduction 3 the developmental stage of adolescence, the precursor to the contemporary teen. The Modern Age: Turn-of-the-Century American Culture and the Invention of Adolescence examines both theoretical and fictional discourses that circulate around the developmental stage of adolescence in order to argue that...