Do you notice the infantilisation of teenagers

[Mamof4andthedog]

Just this really at DS’s school all the kids were told they needed to wear lanyards of a different colour to ensure they were keeping the year group bubbles separated. Now they have all had to give them back as one boy almost blinded another boy with it by hitting him in the eye with it (the plastic card bit while swinging it about). This wasn’t some daft year 7 this was year 11 they boys involved were 16 years old. In all honesty I’m shocked at the immaturity as it is just so infantile. At this age teenagers can legally join the army or get married and in years gone by 16 year olds were often seen as fully fledged adults. This isn’t a one off either I seem to have noticed nowadays that teenagers are so much “younger” and just behave in the most immature ways. Aibu to ask if you have noticed this and why you think this is.

Looking back to the 'high jinx' from y11s and sixth formers when I was that age (well the boys anyway) I don't think it is unusual. That was over 20 years ago.

I think the difference now is health and safety and safeguarding are prioritised more than back then.

Sorry - posted too soon!

If that happened when I was in y11, the culprits would have got a telling off / detention / lines and we would have had a lecture in assembly, but the lanyards would stay.

25 years ago at that age, we used to set the jerseys alight of the kids sitting in front of us in assembly with our lighters (required for those quick illegal fags behind the bicycle shed). We thought we were hilarious. I guess you could say that was pretty immature. Nobody was hurt - but my goodness, the smell of those burning wool jerseys was something else!

I teach in a secondary school and it really depends. But what I do find is that immature behaviour is catching. My fifth year boys are embarrassingly immature for 16yo's doing GCSE's. A good 95% act like they're still in primary school. Whereas last year they were a very level headed and ambitious bunch. It only takes one...

At population level, we treat 16 year olds as children and they act accordingly. If youngsters left school for employment at 14 they would be more responsible at 16 than kids in school are.

What StripyHorse said.

It is more the fear of legislation that has changed, not the teens behaviour. Also the number of parents that complain about puerile things they should just trust the school to deal with.
You see them on MN all the time.

Teenagers (I teach 11-16) can be unbelievably immature. Some of the ridiculous, annoying, dangerous things I’ve seen over the years...

Thankfully, there are many many genuinely funny teenagers out there - really quick witted. I spend a lot of my day laughing at things they say or do!
Some have a cheeky sense of humour, some are dry, some are silly but in a really harmless, fun way. Believe it or not, teenagers are generally cheerful and most know how to behave in different situations- when to have a laugh and when to be serious, how far to take a joke. They’re great.

I agree with thegreatporkchop - they all think they’re hilarious even when they’re not!

Some don’t understand the difference between being funny and being dangerous, rude, disruptive, disrespectful, disgusting or just plain nasty. They’re hard to manage and I think it’s a mixture of immaturity and really poor social skills.

@FrangipaniDeLaSqueegeeMop

I teach in a secondary school and it really depends. But what I do find is that immature behaviour is catching. My fifth year boys are embarrassingly immature for 16yo's doing GCSE's. A good 95% act like they're still in primary school. Whereas last year they were a very level headed and ambitious bunch. It only takes one...

I agree. It really does only take one to ruin the atmosphere.

OMG that is so ridiculous. I walked out of my house one morning to find someone had put an a4 sheet of paper with the words YOUR SON VAPES, SEARCH HIM! On the floor right in front of my front door. I couldn't believe it. What actually really got to me about this is the fact that my son was 16, he had left school the was doing well on his plumbing course. He is a junior karate instructor and a karate black belt, he is also a kickboxer with 9 years training. He also went to beavers and scouts and has gained a lot of badges and was a young leader, so it makes me feel really weird to think that someone out there is so concerned about my 16 year old that they had to leave an anonymous note. So to the person who sent me that note I'll say this........ No I wont search my son and I will definitely not search through his things cos as a 16 year old he should be old enough now not to be wrapped up in cotton wool and not be so bloody protected from the real world. At 16 he could leave home and join the forces like a lot of his family did. It seems these days kids cant be told no or have to be protected from absolutely everything. Why cant kids these days be treat as their age?? Oh sorry I forgot we have to protect the little darlings, cant upset them.

Totally.

Niece is 23 and in her second year of a medical degree but can't seem to figure out how you'd access a national park to hike. Needs constant help, supervision etc. God help her when someone flatlines

They are shagging hope that helps

But we're ALL being treated like infants, all the time by the media, politicians and the press and the advertising industry. Products now come with "Open Me This End", and try "Me before you buy" what 'me'? Inanimate objects aren't 'me's. They're inanimate objects. My shopping basket isn't full of fecking anthropomorphic Disney characters talking to us in chirpy voices but the packaging industry is trying it's damnedest to make that happen.

And I am sick to death of Government by slogan. Everything has to boiled down to zippy three word slogans because the powers that be thinks we're all too thick to do joined-up thinking and cope with anything that involves complete sentences... (Actually, given the past couple of years I'm starting to think they might not be to far from the mark.)

I don't think that they are more immature, but disciplined less. They hurt another child, there should be a consequence. Instead let's take it away because they might do it again. Parenting seems to have gone the same way, less consequence and more talking about things, then sorting it for them

Actually, I'm consistently impressed by how mature my dd and her friends actually are - at 15/16, they are streets ahead of where I was at that age in terms of emotional maturity, self awareness etc. Some of their peers, not so much, but it's always going to be a spectrum, I guess.

Don’t forget the 16 year olds you’re talking about have had over a year of their lives disrupted by the pandemic. I am a teacher and we are being warned to prepare for next school year’s crop of kids struggling more with social norms and being a bit young for their age because they’ll have spent 1.5 years with reduced social development and engagement due to requirements for a quarantine bubble, strict separation at school to avoid COVID spread etc.

Have a bit of empathy for young people now. They are going through something really difficult that none of us went through in our teenage years.