Are We Giving Teens a Bad Rap?

Scan any bookstore shelf for new titles about teenagers and you’d think the younger generation is no longer going to hell in a handbasket -- it’s already there.

Here are three dire-sounding new titles: “Parenting Your Out-of-Control Teenager”; “How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to Do if You Can’t”; and, stating what parents have long suspected, “Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy!”

Except that your teen is not, according to a small but growing chorus of professionals who are trying to focus the public on the fact that teenagers are developing, not deficient, creatures. They say false impressions are negatively affecting how parents parent and teachers teach, how lawmakers and taxpayers allocate money for youths, and how young people think about themselves.

“People are absolutely convinced that teens are dangerous and in danger, silly and self-absorbed, lazy and corrupted by consumerism,” said Susan Nall Bales, a communications analyst who runs the FrameWorks Institute, a Washington research firm.

In nationwide surveys for FrameWorks, only about one in six adults said youths today share their ethical values, such as honesty and hard work. In reality, when youths are polled, large majorities rate those same traits highly.

Adults in one survey were asked what words most applied to today’s young people, compared with young people 20 years ago. They chose “selfish” and “materialistic” for today’s youth, “patriotic” and “idealistic” for youth in the past.

“We need to tell ourselves a new story about youth,” Bales concluded.

James Youniss agreed. The developmental psychologist has examined national behavior data on teenagers from the 1950s on and said: “I was surprised. The present generation of youth is remarkably healthy.”

Violence by kids has dropped significantly, according to the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey, an instrument of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of teenage pregnancy is declining, as is the proportion of teenagers who have had sex.

Cigarette smoking, drinking and the use of most illegal drugs are down. The suicide rate, although higher than in other Western countries, has held steady for several years.

More students are graduating from high school now than 10 years ago. School test scores are the same as 30 years ago, with minority students scoring slightly better than minorities in the past. Religious participation is stable, and the number of young people performing community service has risen slightly.

“No one is going to deny the difficulties that teenagers face,” Youniss said, “but you can’t sustain the argument that there’s something really odd about these kids.”

Yet the stereotypes endure, for several reasons, the image changers say. Age segregation is one. Psychologist Peter Scales, senior fellow for the Search Institute, a Minneapolis think tank on youth issues, notes that fewer U.S. households have children or adolescents now than 40 years ago. Teenagers don’t have the contact with older adults they once had, and humans tend to fear that with which they’re not familiar.

Such fear and misunderstanding are exaggerated by the way teenagers are represented in the media, analyst Bales says. In newspapers, young people most often appear in crime stories, as either victims or perpetrators. Television portrays teenagers absorbed in problems with friends or creating problems for their families.

Scientists who study youths and agencies that serve them frequently must demonstrate major deficits in teenagers to acquire resources from government agencies and private foundations. If such specialists aren’t careful, they can easily conclude that many young people are troubled, and pass on those conclusions to an uninformed public.

In “Yes, Your Teen Is Crazy!” (Harbor Press), Philadelphia psychologist Michael Bradley makes such claims more than the authors of the two other new books. To make his case that teenagers are temporarily insane, Bradley draws on the work of Jay Giedd, a psychiatrist at the National Institute of Mental Health.

Giedd and other researchers used magnetic resonance technology to show that the part of the adolescent brain that regulates emotions, impulses and decision-making grows rapidly until age 20. Bradley claims this means that until they reach adulthood, teenagers are “brain challenged.”

“This wild brain development may create new, unpredictable thought pathways,” he writes, “wherein action thoughts can outrace judgment capabilities just as they did in early childhood. ... Both toddler and adolescent brains at times are unstable, dysfunctional and completely unpredictable.”

But Giedd said it’s wrong to compare the teenage mind to the adult’s.

“Neurologically challenged is not how I would frame this,” he said in an interview. “Teens are impulsive, but just as children grow taller, so teens’ frontal lobes get better at sorting out consequences. It’s like height in children. Children grow taller, but we don’t call them bad for being short.” Bradley’s writing, he adds, “makes teens sound incapable of making sound decisions. Parents should guide them, but they are increasingly capable.”

As indicated in his book’s title, “How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to Do If You Can’t” (Workman), Washington psychologist Neil Bernstein focuses most of his attention on problems that can make parents feel they’re nearing the end of their rope: “I have dealt with family issues ranging from daily annoyances [sarcasm, dirty rooms, procrastinating over homework] to significant crises [antisocial behavior, substance abuse, flagrant defiance]. ... Regrettably my business is booming.”

The book with the scariest title, “Parenting Your Out-of-Control Teenager” (St. Martin’s) is the least frightening: Social worker Scott Sells makes it clear he’s describing only those young people who repeatedly demonstrate extreme behaviors.

These authors defend their problem-oriented approach by saying they must hook potential readers where the readers are, in a state of confusion and concern. Then they can introduce the parenting techniques that encourage, as well as limit, teenagers.

“It’s hard to hear anything positive about your kid when he has just given you the bird,” Sells said.

Bradley is blunt: “I don’t think anyone would pick up a book building on the good.”

Work by the Search Institute suggests otherwise. Six years ago, the institute began helping communities identify and increase the opportunities for local youths to learn and serve. To date, 560 communities, 24 states and two Canadian provinces have signed on to the Search effort.

Starting from old assumptions may not get people to believe anything but the old assumptions, argues Ross Thompson, psychology professor at the University of Nebraska: “As we shift through all the evidence relating to a particular subject, we tend to remember that which confirms our earlier impressions, and discount or forget that which is different.”

Expecting the worst from teenagers has serious consequences, Bales and others say. It may help explain why lawmakers have spent millions to send juveniles to adult prison, and why schools now suspend students for silly infractions. It also may clarify why voters deny funds for better schools and after-school care: If a task is seen as too difficult, people simply won’t attempt it.

The worst-case scenario also frightens parents and distances them from their children, Sells said. Mom and Dad either absolve themselves of responsibility or become over-controlling, obsessed with keeping their offspring safe.

Adult pessimism also likely affects how teenagers feel about themselves. “In the midst of all the other threats to their self-esteem, society’s mistrust can’t help but partly account for the moodiness of this period of life. We expect bad behavior, and that may be why we get so many sad youth,” Thompson said.

Early, critical voices haunt teenagers into adulthood, whispering things like, “You ruin everything” or “The nurses must have dropped you on your head,” says Cheri Huber, whose new book, “There Is Nothing Wrong With You, for Teens” (Keep It Simple Books), shows teenagers how to disregard destructive words from others.

Social scientists, journalists and others must do a better job of putting their horrifying revelations in the context of normal adolescent growth, according to Bales.

“We must start looking at adolescents not as impaired adults,” Bales said, “but as inexperienced young people experimenting with their identity in order to become adults.”