I Believe in the Future: The Importance of Recognizing the Adolescents of Today as the Adults of Tomorrow

This week, inspired by This I Believe, a "national media project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives," I decided to write about a core belief of mine that influenced me to study psychology and the development of adolescents. Essentially, I believe that adolescents are the future and that they must be given every opportunity and every bit of support possible to equip them with the necessary tools to succeed. My posts thus far have focused on negative trends taking place within the world of adolescents, and the buildup of these disturbing events helped me to realize that the adult world is simply failing to encourage some adolescents reach their full potentials. I of course acknowledge that there will always be forgotten children, and that not every young person is destined to become a scholar, doctor, lawyer, or politician. However, I still believe that some of the disconcerting phenomena among adolescents that I have written about so far can be reversed with a little bit of guidance and effort.

I was born into a family of two parents and four teenage half- siblings. My memories are of playing with them, attending their sports events, and thinking that they were not so much older than me. My brothers and sisters virtually disappeared when they went to college, but I failed to notice because I was a child beginning to focus on my own life. The thought that my siblings were off becoming adults never entered my mind. Suddenly one day I realized that the same four rambunctious teenagers I had once played with had become a leading attorney for Yahoo!, a psychiatrist, a stock broker, and a business manager. Not to mention my two half- sisters are wives and mothers. At that moment I made the connection between adolescence and adulthood. In the blink of an eye, from my perspective, four carefree teenagers blossomed into responsible adults with important positions in society. I was struck by the realization that I too would one day grow into a mature adult with the power to make a difference.

Forgetting that the future of society rests in teenagers' hands is all too easy for middle- aged adults. To them, teenagers seem too immature and naive to ever be leaders. 17th century British statesman and author Lord Chesterfield once said, "Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are apt to think themselves sober enough." While adolescents sometimes act like they know more than they possibly could, is this state of mind not better than the state of mind that they know nothing at all and are completely lost and hopeless? Is a confident teenager not more likely to succeed than one with no self-assurance whatsoever? No offense to Lord Chesterfield, but I do not think that is the case. Rather, I believe that adults should foster confidence over a lack of it. A confident teenager will not be afraid to strive toward his or her goals and will stop at nothing to achieve them, and these are the type of people that will serve as the best leaders of the future. Why are today's adolescents dragged down by eating disorders, violence, and risky behavior? These issues will most likely lead the affected adolescents to be much less effective members of society in the future. I believe that they are not being given the correct combination of expectation, encouragement, and opportunity to avoid these setbacks.

In an earlier post, I mentioned Diana Baumrind's definition of four styles of parenting. The authoritative style is characterized by high responsiveness and high demandingness, and is proven to lead to responsibility, self-assuredness, creativity, and academic success. If all parents studied Baumrind's types of parenting and tried to model themselves after the authoritative parenting model, many adolescents would be more confident, responsible, and successful. Indulgence, permissiveness, and excessive rigidity in parenting lead to decreased self-confidence, decreased achievement, and increased occurrence of risky behaviors. Because of this, parents must realize that the way in which they parent directly affects the futures of themselves, their children, and the rest of society. Dr. Dawna Markova, a prominent psychologist and educator pictured on the left, wisely quotes her grandmother by advising that, "What you must do is help your children love to learn and find their spot of grace. In this way they will be able to develop their gifts and share them with the rest of us. You must help them recognize and honor the different gifts of others who are also unique and needed." Markova seems to agree with Baumrind's school of thought that parents are charged with helping their children become successful individuals in society by encouraging them to strive for the highest goals.

The future as manifested by adolescents is not only in the hands of parents. The government must also take responsibility for giving adolescents optimal opportunities to grow into mature, capable adults. The No Child Left Behind Act has made some efforts to optimize education by making schools accountable for achievement on tests, but the act is highly controversial among educators who are skeptical of the homogenization of education required. Educator Steve Araboa likens NCLB to a football program by saying, "All teams (students) must win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches (teachers) will be held accountable. If, after two years, they have not won the championship, their footballs and equipment (state and federal funds) will be taken away until they do win the championship." Because of these drawbacks to NCBL, it is currently undergoing revision to make the act more flexible. Forcing schools and adolescents to adhere to such strict curricula is a mistake. As evidenced by Araboa, teachers are losing interest in education, and so are the students.

Markova said that parents must help their children love to learn, but how can children love to learn if the teachers are disenchanted and the material is cut and dry? The government should take a look at some of the essays on the This I Believe site, such as an essay by Henry that proposes that boys should be given educational video games because that is what they love to do. According to Henry, "Instead of catering to boys' learning styles, many U.S. schools are force-fitting them into an unnatural mold. Girls can tolerate the sit-still-and-listen program better than boys." Henry proposes teaching students through activities they already enjoy rather than trying to force them to love traditional education. Adolescence is a crucial time of identity formation. The legislators need to ask themselves if they would rather have robots or real people leading the nation in twenty years. Individuality should be embraced and encouraged rather than squelched, as it has historically been in this great nation of democracy. Even in the modern world of advancing technologies, artists and musicians are needed just as much as scientists and doctors. Failing to fund artistic programs in schools, as well as ignoring each child's unique gifts and flaws, is a grave error that will lead to a somber and unmotivated set of adults in the future. The government, as well as parents and the community, must recognize that the adolescents of today are the leaders of tomorrow. They have the right to every tool and opportunity necessary in ensuring their futures, as well as everyone else's.

Nature Plus Nurture Equals Inhibition: Stress Genes Combine with the Environment to Make Kids Shy

The February issue of Current Directions in Psychological Science contained a study by Nathan Fox (pictured) that found that kids who are consistently shy while growing up are especially likely to be raised by stressed parents and to possess a gene associated with stress sensitivity. According to an article on PsychCentral, this means that the genetic factor that causes parents to be stressed can be passed down to their children, and the behavior of the parents combines with the gene to make the children more socially withdrawn. Fox says that, "Moms who report being stressed are likely to act differently toward their children than moms who report little stress." The American Institute of Stress reports that the many effects of stress include forgetfulness, increased irritability, overreaction to petty annoyances, and excessive suspiciousness. These are all behaviors that would have a significant impact on a child by making the child feel afraid to aggravate the stressed parent. If the parent is too overwhelmed to be supportive of the child, social development will be significantly impaired. This conclusion is supported by Diana Baumrind's parenting dimensions and styles. Baumrind theorized that there are two dimensions of parenting: demandingness and responsiveness. The four types of parenting are authoritative, authoritarian, permissive/ indulgent, and indifferent. The authoritative parenting style has been found to be the best style of parenting across cultures because it is high in both responsiveness and demandingness, which means that parents have high expectations but also give their children a high level of support. Children who have been raised by authoritative parents tend to be responsible, self- assured, creative, and successful in school. The behaviors discussed above that go along with stress seem to fit the authoritarian parenting style, which is low in responsiveness but high in demandingness. The combination of high expectations with low levels of support cause children to become passive, dependent, and lacking of self- assurance, intellectual curiosity, and social skills. This personality profile fits that of someone categorized as shy. In summary, a parent who reports being stressed is most likely to take on an authoritarian parenting style and therefore cause his or her child to become shy.

Of course, those risks are just the ones that exist before genes are thrown into the mix. While the authoritarian parenting style associated with stress can definitely put a child at risk for becoming shy, Fox found that among children exposed to a mother's stress, it was only those who had inherited the short forms of the genetic alleles who showed some forms of stress sensitivity. Fox said, "If you are raised in a stressful environment, and you inherit the short form of the gene, there is a higher likelihood that you will be fearful, anxious, or depressed. Another fact that makes the genetic component of stress and shyness so important is that all parents of adolescents are somewhat stressed. Parents with adolescents report less satisfaction with their marriages and relatively high levels of personal stress, and parents with adolescents who challenge them report lower levels of life satisfaction. The truth is that conflict within the family is a very normal part of adolescent development. As adolescents become more cognitively skilled and independent, clashes with parents over mundane issues such as school and lifestyle are inevitable. Also, most parents of adolescents are close to forty years old, which means that many of them are going through significant developmental changes of their own. Rosalind Gould concluded that, for adolescents, this phase in the family life cycle is a time of boundless horizons, but for parents it is a time of coming to terms with choices made when they were younger. The bottom line here is that all families are marked by conflict and stress during adolescence, but not all children turn out to be shy. Children who become shy over development most likely do so through a combination of these everyday stresses and genes.

Adolescent Autonomy Threatened: MySpace to Give Parents Access

In January, MySpace.com announced that it would soon give parents access to their children's information on the social networking site. According to the United Press International, free software named "Zephyr," set for release this summer, will allow parents to see the name, age, and location their children are displaying on MySpace. A parent would see something like the image on the right, but it would be the page of the parent's child. This move to give parents more access is apparently an attempt to prevent being sued by thirty- three U.S. attorneys general. MySpace is giving parents what they want because MySpace does not want to lose money. Unfortunately, MySpace has forgotten about the teenagers' privacy. On the surface, the decision to allow parents to see their children's MySpace names and ages seems harmless at the least. After all, law enforcement officials report that dozens of teens have been molested and some murdered by people they first met through MySpace. The problem is that the information parents will be allowed to see (name, age, location) cannot help them stop their children from meeting dangerous people online, unless of course a teenage girl decides to call herself "I want to be raped." Teenagers will continue to meet dangerous people online, and parents will gradually be given more and more access until their teenagers' web pages are no longer private forums. During human development, it is necessary to achieve certain salient developmental tasks in order to adapt in a healthy manner and move on to the next stage of development. The salient developmental tasks to be achieved during adolescent development are intimacy in friendships and romantic relationships, academic achievement, and autonomy from one's parents. The adolescent must gradually move away from the parents in order to create his or her own identity. In "What to Know About Teen Independence," Kathleen Boyce Rodgers, a former assistant professor of Family Life, reports that, "Adolescents need to explore their world more independently so they can learn to feel confident in themselves and their abilities...They may begin to experiment with new ways to dress; or spend more time with friends and less time with family." Naturally, parents struggle with their teens' newfound independence. They are tempted to remain protective and controlling. Contrary to common belief, this is not in adolescents' best interest. Rodgers advises parents to monitor the behavior of teens without being intrusive, to let teens practice decision-making with minimal parental guidance, and to provide opportunities for teens to be independent within a safe environment.

The truth is that MySpace is a safe environment. The victims of sexual assault who met their attackers on MySpace had to agree to meet these strangers in person. MySpace is simply another place for predators to find victims. It is not any different than the mall or the park. We have all been taught "Don't talk to strangers." This mantra needs to be revised to say, "Don't talk to strangers whatsoever, whether you are online or at the mall." Teenagers that fall prey to predators online are not victims of poor security, but rather victims of poor education. While parents constantly checking their kids' MySpace pages will do nothing more than aggravate teenagers struggling to achieve autonomy, pro-actively educating these same teenagers may save their lives. Furthermore, evidence shows that most teens use MySpace responsibly, not hap- hazardly. A 2006 Pew Internet & American Life Project survey of 953 American adolescents ages 12- 17 found that 66% of teens with MySpace profiles allow only approved friends to access their profiles. Moreover, most teens knew the difference between private and public profiles, and most of them who reported using MySpace to make new friends were actually referring to friends of friends that they had met, not strangers. Steve Jones, pictured on the left, is a communications professor who studies new media at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Jones states that, "One of the things to take away from this report should be a sense of 'the kids are alright.' It's clear that teens are not just willy-nilly using social networking sites and making themselves vulnerable to predators." Jones admits that there are some teenagers who are careless and some even invite trouble, but the independence of the responsible adolescents should not be intruded upon by overly concerned parents. Contrary to what most parents believe, teenagers not wanting their parents to see their web pages does not mean that the teenagers are hiding anything. They are simply trying to use MySpace for the purpose that the name suggests, to have a private place to express themselves and exert their growing independence. The money and time being spent on creating software for parents to annoy their teenagers by nagging them about their MySpace names would be much better spent on software or programs to educate adolescents about the dangers of online predators.