What Happened to Adolescence?

 

What happened to adolescence?

In my seminar on sociology of the body this week, something strange emerged in the discussion. First, a student stated to widespread nodding that it used to be true that children became adolescents when they hit puberty at 12 or so, then existed in this awkward in-between phase of life until they turned 18 and were deemed adults--but that this not the case today. Instead, the student said, girls today hit puberty and instantly look like adults.

The class agreed that 12-year-old girls today look like they're 25. And they felt the reason is because the girls immerse in TikTok videos about makeup applications that are designed for adult women, and then duplicate them. They can do that because, while Millennials at 12 got childish makeup palettes at a Claire's in the local mall, filled with bright colors designed for kids, Generation Alpha tweens were "Sephora kids," taught to desire skincare products for adults and indulged with purchases of them (despite the fact that these contained ingredients like wrinkle-reducing retinol that were not just silly for a child, but actively damaging to their skin). Now, the class agreed, these girls are buying expensive adult cosmetics and applying them as if they were 30.

Students concluded that girls today were instantly transforming into apparent women at 12 or 13, denied an adolescence and the opportunity to be awkward and explore that was supposed to involve. And students thought this also seemed true for some if not all boys as well: they were hitting the gym hard at 12, obsessing about consuming protein to bulk up, and considering illicit steroids as middle schoolers. Adolescence had disappeared.

Later in the class, however, a totally different point was raised. In the 1950s, when you turned 18 you didn't just become a technical legal adult--you really were considered one! The average age at marriage was 20, and lots of people married immediately after graduating high school, or even before. But now college students aren't considered full adults. They don't feel like full adults, either. They hear all the time that the brain doesn't fully mature until around 30. That's the typical age people now marry. There are transphobic bills seeking to limit gender transition that say nobody under age 26 is mature enough to make such a major decision. . .

If we combine these two discussion topics, we can conclude the following: Americans still treat prepubertal kids as children, and we still have adulthood as in the past. But there is an extended span of time from about age 12 to age 26 that is intermediate but that isn't like our prior concept of adolescence. First of all, it's more than twice as long in duration. Secondly, the old idea of adolescents was that they looked awkwardly intermediate between children and adults, which today's 13-year-olds look 25. And finally, while young people may now *look* mature as soon as they start to hit puberty, in terms of their minds or brains, they're not deemed mature at all. Everyone in the class agreed that men of 20 often act like they are 12. Maybe this underlies the internet belief that all Americans are 12 now! 

So here is my question for you. If there now exists, at least in the US, a span of the lifecourse that has replaced the prior category of adolescent, what do we call it?