Music and Adolescence

It's a common known fact that music plays a vital role in the lives of adolescence. I believe that the music of a generation reflects the generation itself. Music, by definition, involves personality and emotion. Thus, the essence of a generation is captured and immortalized in the music. Each generation of adolescence brings something new to music. Nowadays, technology is a key component in the making and listening of music. We are growing up surrounded with a variety of technologies, so it's inevitable that the music we listen to reflects that. Personally, music is my safe haven. It serves as an escape just like books do, and I assume it serves the same purpose for all adolescence. Not only is it a way for escape, it is also a source of comfort and hope for many.

Laws and Adolescence

I have noticed that laws regarding adolescence are not fair at all. It seems like adults are always favored to teenagers. I don't understand why adolescence have to be treated like second class citizens. What is so special about eighteen? Why do we have to be eighteen in order to be treated as an equal. For example, if an adolescence is slapped by an adult, it is not considered a crime unless it leaves a mark. However, if that exact situation happened to an adult, the culprit would be charged with assault. I just can't comprehend the logic behind this. I know a number of adolescence who are more responsible and generally more aware of the path of their lives than some adults. There is a false stereotype that somehow directly correlates age and wisdom, and I believe that this is an unfair assumption that seems prevalent when it comes to laws concerning adolescence.

Response to The Invention of Adolescence

For the most part, I agree with this article. It mentions the predominant attributes of puberty and becoming an adolescence. Teenage years do come with a certain desire to assert independence. During this age, one is searching for an identity. This doesn't exclusively mean having a sense of what one aspires to be in life and the best way to achieve happiness or at least contentment. It also includes finding an identity among the people one is surrounded with especially among one's peers. Moreover, a kid's thought process experiences drastic changes as they become an adolescent. As indicated in the article, teenagers gain the "capacity for abstract reasoning and relative thinking." Aside from the scientific evidence, I can attest to this from personal experience. This is the time when kids start contemplating philosophy, mortality, politics and begin to question religion.

However, despite the mostly accurate description of qualities associated with adolescence in this article,there was one part that I didn't agree with. I personally didn't appreciate how the article simplifies the mental capacity of teens. It refers to the mental state of teens as "immature" thus I believe it is not giving teens the credit they so richly deserve. For instance, the article touches upon the subject of romance among teens and goes on to describe teen romance as "absurdly simple". Sure it might not be the "till death do us part" romance adults have, but by any means does that mean the relationships are not to be taken seriously.Furthermore, not only is that insulting, the article is contradicting itself on many occasions. On one hand, it talks about "the clash between physical maturity and mental immaturity" in teens, and on the other hand, it says that as kids evolve into teens, their ability for abstraction increases exponentially. I fail to understand the author's point of view. Does the author consider teens to still be the simpleminded kids they were or young adults on a road to sophisticated thinking?

Aside from that, I don't imagine I have any other problems with the article. Regardless of the fact that it doesn't succeed to getting across its point of view on teens' mental capacity, it did achieve its main goal of explaining the origins of adolescence.