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Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

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Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#61

Post by hasenj »

josephcooney wrote: post #54
hasenj wrote: post #13

It's my opinion that "adolescence" is a new social construct that is not universal and not innate. It's more likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy more than anything else. In older times, teenagers (above say, 14) were considered men, or young adults. They would fight in armies, or even lead them. They were likely to be married and maybe even have children. For all intents and purposes, people of age 16 are not muc…

Re: fighting in armies - absolutely true, hence the word infantry, but not necessarily a good thing (and I know you didn't say it was).

Replace "fighting in armies" with "working in the fields".

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#62

Post by electromagnetic »

wtn wrote: post #45
electromagnetic wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (BTW, I am 30, and when I was 16 I was basically acting as supervisor of a team of 12 workers when my family was building the house due to my father having heart problems. Yes, I was good with money, I could negotiate some, tell people what to do to a certain point, but I lacked emotional intelligence, tact, or general maturity to handle more finer problems). So basically you're saying you was more adept at 16 with…

If you read between the lines, the authority of his office made it possible (and necessary) to order people around, but he didn't have the experience and training to be charismatic about it--he had not yet developed leadership skills.

Your point? Only good bosses have learnt leadership skills, bad bosses generally don't have the experience or training to be charismatic about it. I've seen far more bad bosses than good bosses.

The point you're making applies as much to a 40 year old boss as it does to a 16 year old boss. Leadership is an acquired skill without an age restriction, but people here on HN seem to want to instate an arbitrary age restriction on how they determine "too young" to be a boss. I really don't get why this would be when software and other tech industries are generally youth orientated and seen as ageist.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#63

Post by teyc »

rthomas6 wrote: post #32
nostrademons wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are pretty remarkable physical differences between a 28yo and a 40yo, yet the legal and cultural differences between those ages are quite a bit less than between 16 and 28.

I would argue that the mental differences between a 28 and 40 year old are much less, however.

I'd say 28 year old entrepreneurs have very different risk profiles than 40 year olds, and therefore think very differently.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#64

Post by Jach »

giardini wrote: post #48
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #2

I was surprised when I learned that adolescence was first described in the early 20th century. That was around the same time children stopped regularly working with their parents in the family business/farm. As a society, parents have abdicated the "final transision" to adulthood to the school systems, but that isn't working, so kids have no clear path to "adulthood" and, instead, wander aimlessly. Personally, I thin…

SoftwareMaven says: "I'm always looking for good reading on this subject (truly guiding your kids to adulthood), so if you have any good pointers, send them on!" Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.

While not something to read, I always thought the bullet ant way ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ6rFKhyn0 ) was a nice way to go about it.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#65

Post by yters »

hasenj wrote: post #13

It's my opinion that "adolescence" is a new social construct that is not universal and not innate. It's more likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy more than anything else. In older times, teenagers (above say, 14) were considered men, or young adults. They would fight in armies, or even lead them. They were likely to be married and maybe even have children. For all intents and purposes, people of age 16 are not muc…

I'd get rid of school. Teach kids writing, arithmetic and show them the internet. What do they need from teachers?

I'd be hard pressed to name ONE class that was worth my time to attend.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#66

Post by yters »

teyc wrote: post #21
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #2

I was surprised when I learned that adolescence was first described in the early 20th century. That was around the same time children stopped regularly working with their parents in the family business/farm. As a society, parents have abdicated the "final transision" to adulthood to the school systems, but that isn't working, so kids have no clear path to "adulthood" and, instead, wander aimlessly. Personally, I thin…

Formal education is probably the culprit here. It segments young adults into age groups, and then limits the entire days interaction to the same lot of children. You can't define people simply by what year they are born in. Some family environments provide children with an outlet where they end up with a very mature outlook, others don't. The problem with this stratification is that it soon becomes the "norm" for chi…

I blame child labor laws. Since children below a certain age are unemployable adults lock them away in school where they can't cause trouble and learn to do what they're told.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#67

Post by cabalamat »

patio11 wrote: post #46
kenjackson wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One wonders about the wisdom of treating any interaction with an adult as being tantamount to asking for sexual exploitation... but I think I talked to maybe three adults who were not parents, teachers, or family in an eight year period. Did your family subscribe to any specific religion or something that would lead to this behavior? I just had never heard of something like this. Although I guess if the age span is 0…

We were a middle-class(-ish) Catholic family in the suburbs. I think alienation from the larger community is not that abnormal of an experience these days. For example, if you read books or watch TV from the fifties, you might have a twelve year old boy with a friendship with a man in the neighborhood, perhaps in the context of sharing their common interest in carpentry or fence-painting, and doing totally innocuous…

> I would be scared out of my wits if a neighborhood kid took a shine on me and started coming over to my house to say hello.

Most people in the UK would feel the same way. (I'm not sure if that's true to the same extent in non-English-speaking European countries.)

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#68

Post by apl »

yters wrote: post #65
hasenj wrote: post #13

It's my opinion that "adolescence" is a new social construct that is not universal and not innate. It's more likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy more than anything else. In older times, teenagers (above say, 14) were considered men, or young adults. They would fight in armies, or even lead them. They were likely to be married and maybe even have children. For all intents and purposes, people of age 16 are not muc…

I'd get rid of school. Teach kids writing, arithmetic and show them the internet. What do they need from teachers? I'd be hard pressed to name ONE class that was worth my time to attend.

99% of all kids would simply crash and burn.

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#69

Post by follower »

patio11 wrote: post #50
wtn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, the problem wasn't with your text--it was with the parser.

I deny the possibility of such a thing: I'm the professional communicator. If I get misunderstood then there was an opportunity for me to have phrased it better. (Ditto for when Mrs. Smith thinks she was triple charged by The Googles for her software because she thinks one mail from me, one mail from Google, and one confirmation page counts as three charges. Not her fault -- my fault. I live and breathe e-commerce --…

> Ditto for when Mrs. Smith thinks she was triple charged by The Googles [...] I should have made that more clear for someone who might only buy one thing online ever.

An intriguing observation, how did you solve the problem?

Re: Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.

#70

Post by Andrew_Quentin »

patio11 wrote: post #7

One wonders about the wisdom of treating any interaction with an adult as being tantamount to asking for sexual exploitation while simultaneously dumping kids in a youth culture which says that sex is the best thing that everyone except them is having. I had a very fortunate upbringing in a lot of ways, but I think I talked to maybe three adults who were not parents, teachers, or family in an eight year period. That…

That is your experience. Hardly the problem we all have. Do you not have uncles, did they not come for dinner, what of aunties, and did you never go to your friends house where you would meet their parents, etc.

I do not think anyone isolates kids or teenagers. I think, instead, the media attempts to portray such a picture so as to sell more papers.

Regarding your latter comment, in a world where you do not mix even with the seventh graders or the fifth graders if you are in the sixth grade, it would be quite strange indeed if you were "hanging out" with a 40 year old, or 30 year old, in "friendship" basis both for the youngster and for the adult. Moreover, I do not think it ever was seen as "normal" not because of any implications but because there would be little in common not least because a teenager thinks and is preoccupied by entirely different things from an adult.

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