Teen Maturity - From January 21, 2009

I keep hearing that teens are much more mature now than when we were younger. I think people are confusing knowledge with maturity. I listen to kids talk, my wife and I have a great relationship with our daughter (no, I don’t believe I know everything that goes on…I was a teen once myself). She often has her friends over and they talk freely around us, often including us in conversations for our opinions (amazing isn’t it, guess showing respect to youth gets respect in turn). One of the girls at our New Year’s gathering said teens are more mature now, 13 was the new 16 I think she said (or something equally inane). I disagreed without putting her down. I did agree teens were more knowledgeable than when we were kids, but more mature, no, I have seen to many news stories of kids getting in trouble for “sexting” (sending nude pictures of themselves via cell phones), cell phone bills that are in the $1000’s of dollars, and just recently a man had a cell phone bill where his daughter was sending text messages about 1 every 2 minutes for all the waking hours for a month (yes those numbers are correct), they said if he hadn’t had the unlimited text plan it would have totaled $14,000 dollars. And then the girls themselves had stories of girls being proud of being unwed mothers in HS (some with more than one) to be considered mature, girls and boys who would run up ridiculous cell bills texting because they can’t be out of contact with friends. Girls and boys who freak out if not in constant contact with their significant other (puppy love). What I have seen so far is no different from when I was in school. The knowledge level is greater, due to the technology level being greater, more access equals more possible knowledge, but it seems in this day in age in most cases, even less maturity. Only 1 in ten teens really wants a job, most feel it’s the parents responsibility to provide everything they want, including money. That just shows me that they have a very low maturity level, no sense of responsibility to themselves or others. See what they fail to realize is that maturity does not come from the ability to stay connected, heck most of these connected teens can’t even hold a decent conversation, it is not being connected that causes maturity, maturity comes from living life, making mistakes and learning from them, and technology can’t change that. So 13 is still 13, 16 is still 16, and 40+ is still old. Can anyone show me an example which proves me wrong?


Final Note:

If teens mature so much faster now, why are the states imposing more restrictions on driving, smoking and drinking? Because these keep teens alive until they grow up.