Teens Don’t Know Adults

Search Institute and Best Buy recently released the results of a national survey of over 1,800 15-year-olds.  While some of the findings sound a bit hokey (or at least hyper-sociological), one finding in particular is interesting: Less than one in five 15-year-olds has a significant, meaningful relationship with an adult outside of his or her own family (you can find out more about the survey by going here).

I can’t say I’m all that surprised at the results of this survey, but it is curious to see cultural analysis confirmed by polling (though of course polling is a general guide at best).  For years our culture has broken down society by age category.  From birth to death, we are transferred from one age group into the next.  These groups can be as limited as one year (this span is extremely significant in the “first years” and early schooling) to as long as a decade or two (people are often grouped into their “40s” or “70s” or by their “generation”).

These groups, unfortunately, are not mere sociological tools.  They affect our everyday lives.  In school every child and teenager is separated by class so severely that a child often has little-to-no communication with children just a few years older or younger than his or her peers.  Outside of school parents consistently seek to have their child in the house, playing with other children his own age, or participating in “recreational activities” with children of his exact age group.

Nor does it stop there – now even our churches have latched on to this clinical, modernistic categorization of every stage of life.  Churches offer Sunday school classes broken down by age group, childrens’ church for those children who supposedly cannot possibly appreciate or learn from the sermon, teens groups, young adults groups, young marrieds groups, over-50s groups, parents groups – the list goes on.

Everyone is broken up and subdivided in every sphere of their lives.  We should not be surprised that 15-year-olds do not have strong relationships with any adults outside of their own families.  We’ve been shoving them into a peers-only box for a decade and a half.  How many times have they even had the opportunity to have a conversation with an adult that lasted more than 15 minutes?

This arrangement has had and will continue to have a negative impact on our society.  By disconnecting one generation or age group from the next, we are destroying the necessary bonds of tradition, wisdom, teaching, and discipline.  Each generation is bound to repeat the mistakes of the previous generations.  In fact, our latest generations may fare even worse, because they’ve been told their entire lives that they ought to take time to find themselves, experiment, and develop a positive self image, and when corrupt, fallible human beings look only to themselves for guidance, the result is certain to be at odds with truth.

We desperately need to rediscover the value older people can have in the lives of our youth before we lose their wisdom forever.

Zachary Gappa is a Consultant for the Center for a Just Society and Operations Manager at Gappa Security Solutions.  Some of his other articles have been published in various places online, including Town Hall, Crosswalk, and The Christian Post.