Teens Get Real
Adolescents get a bad rap today, but many are choosing an unfamiliar route: Doing good
School dropout rates are lower. This is especially true for African-American kids, but there are other encouraging statistics. High school students are taking more challenging courses. Girls are closing the gender gap by taking more rigorous math and science classes. SAT scores are up from two decades ago (even adjusting for the recalibration of the test), as the pool of test takers has grown larger and more diverse. More and more kids are going to college.
Still, it is the teen as outcast that captures the popular imagination: the sullen, secretive loner, sulking in his basement room, or the angry, out-of-control rebel, experimenting with sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. These images have evolved over time, says communications researcher Meg Bostrom. In 1952, 57 percent of people surveyed said they believed young people had as strong a sense of right and wrong as they had at the turn of the century. But by March 1999, even before the Columbine shooting, only 15 percent thought so.
Thomas Hine, author of The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, says the way society viewed teens shifted dramatically around the time of the Great Depression. Before then, teens worked and were considered virtually grown up. But facing a workplace without jobs, Depression youth turned to education as a consolation prize. As high school attendance rolls swelled, the status of teens as full-fledged members of society declined. "Now that they were students rather than workers, they came to seem younger than before," Hine writes.
By the 1950s, the cultural presence--and influence--of teenagers had exploded. Blackboard Jungle, the seminal 1955 juvenile delinquency film, introduced the enduring concept of high schoolers as "wild animals": It featured tough-talking teens, alternately angry and sullen, smart-mouthed and reckless; rowdy gang members with greased-back hair who drank, smoked, stole, and beat up teachers.
What's distinctly different for today's teenagers, experts say, is the level of cultural negativity they're exposed to, from the over-the-top sexuality in advertising, television, and film, to the prevalence of gun violence and family dysfunction. "Their exposure to risk is so far beyond what other generations have dealt with," says Robert Blum, a pediatrics professor and head of the adolescent health program at the University of Minnesota.
Luckily, the majority of kids cope successfully with these stresses, and they owe that in large part to the adults in their lives. A recent National Institutes of Health study found that kids who feel connected to home, family, and school are better protected from violence, suicide, sexual activity, and substance abuse. Adolescents also fare better if their parents are home at key times of the day--in the morning, after school, at dinner, and at bedtime. And teens whose parents had high expectations about school also reported fewer emotional problems, such as suicide attempts or depression, according to the same study. "When you look at something as horrific as Columbine, you expect a profoundly violent generation," says Blum, who worked on the study. "But it's not there."
Amid chaotic lives, teens are finding inner resolve and confidence. Here are five young people navigating, not perfectly, but with an impressive degree of success:
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