A Vision of Adolescence

Throughout the years, I’ve had great satisfaction working with teenagers and I’ve dedicated my efforts providing information for them as well as for parents of teenagers and future teenagers, to help them comprehend the wonderful period of time this is. Young ones, in relatively few years, will transform in the persons they will be. Talking with parents, teachers and even with teenagers, I have encountered a chain of bad information of what supposedly a teenager is.
How do we adults describe adolescence? An age of risk, unwanted pregnancies, STD’s (Sexually Transmitted Diseases), drugs and other addictions, violence, delinquency, apathy, indifference, laziness, untidy, unmotivated, rebellious, with complexes, etc.
Pedagogues, Psychologists, Sociologists, Doctors, Teachers, Politicians, Communications experts, Publicists, Marketing experts and all sorts of experts have written and have defined youth “issues”.
Adolescence as a development period is a contemporary term. As a result of “ post modernism” and over all, school legislation, a new stage was born between childhood and adultness. This stage, as we know it, didn’t exist in our society and in most of the world population it still doesn’t exist. Kids go from being children to being responsible adults.
To affirm that young people are not responsible we are taking away the possibility of deciding and of taking action. We are isolating them and minute-by-minute they are isolating us from them. Kids are creating their own world that doesn’t include us.
Population has been divided in segments depending on the conceptual criteria that is applied, physiological, psychological, labor, scholar, etc. Conceptually and in paper, is very practical and it helps us put everything in little compartments and this benefits us, in theory, to comprehend better. In practice, each individual is different, in all the broad meaning of the word…
Modern age or better put, “modern” countries have transmuted these theoretical concepts to the general population. The stage of adolescence appears to have a practical manual of the ailment this phase will bring with it. Mass media communications tell us of what a terrible and preoccupying period this is. We justify any problematic to the fact that they are in a complex stage. Every day we attribute problems to a stage of development and we minimize responsibility to the individual. Irresponsibility is attributed to the age and the environment and each time less individuals are responsible for their own acts. This system brings with it the feeling of “being lost” that we are submitted to by concepts.
What happens with these teenagers when they become responsible adults? Happens, that nothing happens. It’s hard to enter the world in a responsible and accurate manner when there has been no trial and error in the past. It is our social responsibility help empower our youth for them to assume the responsibility they have with themselves and the world around them. This is the only way that they can have a sustainable future in this complex world.