There is a rumor going around that teenagers are often rebellious. Some variants of the rumor prefer defiant, unruly, or stubborn, but a thesaurus worth of synonyms can do nothing to remedy its falsehood. In truth, compared to adults, adolescents are extremely compliant.
The myth of the rebellious teenager spawns from a double standard. Actions that earn teenagers the title of rebellious are not rebellious actions in the usual sense.
For instance, a teenager might be called rebellious for arguing with her parents over forced church attendance, but an adult who resists pressure to attend religious ceremonies is only exercising her freedom of religion. A teenager might be called rebellious for struggling against parental efforts to search his cell phone, but an adult who reacts harshly to invasions of privacy—even at the hands of his family—is acting reasonably. A teenager might be called rebellious for engaging in safe sex with a significant other, but an adult who does the same is only pursuing healthy intimacy. A teenager would certainly be called rebellious for “running away”—even if she is financially stable—but society casts no glances at an adult who moves from what she perceives to be a dead-end neighborhood.
In domestic life, teenagers are expected to conform to a multitude of restrictions that most any adult would feel justified in resisting, and failing to do so, or doing so with too much complaint, lands them a rebellious label. When we consider what invasive commands teenagers do obey unflinchingly—in almost all cases the vast majority—it becomes apparent that any normal adult would seem highly rebellious in comparison.
When teenagers aren’t submitting to the injunctions of parents, who may seek to know of and regulate every aspect of their lives, they are in school, bowing to a government that doesn’t regard them as full people.
In ninth grade, I had to take a social studies class that covered human rights. One day, the teacher gave us a series of questions designed to gauge how well a country protects its occupants’ rights. She wanted us to consider the relevance of the issue in our own lives, so she had us use the questionnaire to evaluate the rights of students in our school. One question was essentially “Are you free to leave?” Another meant “Can you influence the rules that govern you?” Needless to say, the school received violently substandard scores on the whole.
Mildly amused by the outcome, we spent a few minutes discussing our status as students. We were ninth graders, in the supposed heart of our rebellious phases, and right after we agreed we were severely lacking in human rights, we moved merrily on to the next order of business and never spoke of it again.
Was that the behavior of unruly mavericks? How would adults, our purportedly less defiant counterparts, have reacted to such an observation?
Paul Graham, in the notes for his talk What You’ll Wish You’d Known, very precisely describes how adults would behave in the shoes of schoolchildren:
“Your teachers are always telling you [high schoolers] to behave like adults. I wonder if they’d like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you’re very docile compared to adults. If you actually started acting like adults, it would be just as if a bunch of adults had been transposed into your bodies. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you’re taught. If a bunch of actual adults suddenly found themselves trapped in high school, the first thing they’d do is form a union and renegotiate all the rules with the administration.”
How unruly! How unmanageable! Graham makes an effective case that adults are significantly more rebellious than teenagers, and allow me to borrow another adjective commonly reserved for minors: Adults are spoiled. Living in an era of full civil liberties for adults of all races and genders, and having distanced themselves from their childhoods, they’ve grown accustomed to a very comfortable degree of autonomy.
Middle-aged people would be affronted, stricken even with disbelief, if they were forced just once by their government to exercise for a few minutes to remain healthy. Meanwhile, I attend gym class for an hour each school day. I’m forced to run, cartwheel, somersault, jump rope, lift weights, swim, kayak, and dance. My heart rate is monitored to ensure I’m investing effort. If I’m suspected of slacking, an overseer not burdened by expectations of civility may demand more intensive exercise of me. I can’t remember a time in my life when it was much different. Forty year olds complaining of government overreach call to mind red-faced toddlers, screaming that they got the wrong toys for Christmas. Here’s a message from Generation Z: Grow up!
I’ve never heard any of my peers object to forced exercise. The media enjoys stereotypes of anti-authority youngsters who shoplift spray paint to vandalize the local church, but real middle-class schoolchildren are cowed yes-men, who would sooner sacrifice all of their self-esteem than say “no” to a teacher.
Teenagers are exceedingly obedient in the face of humiliation, but their smiles aren’t always forced. Some of them don’t feel they’re being shorted at all. They’ve absorbed a sense that they’re actually owed fewer freedoms, in their homes and at school. They believe inspections of their cell phones constitute reasonable acts of love. They believe they need to be forced to exercise. They reject their own intuitions about their competence, preferring to spew statistics and dubious neuroscience that claim to prove them unreasonable and dangerous.
In the room where I once attended health class, there were posters offering an analysis of the “teenage brain,” suggesting that teenagers were universally unable to properly evaluate the consequences of their actions. The posters weren’t printed from the internet by teachers. They were hand-drawn by students with markers. Staring absentmindedly at those posters during class, I began to wonder how anyone could speak of a problem with teenage rebellion. Ours is the most total submission imaginable.
There is no such thing as a rebellious teenager. Heck, there’s no such thing as a self-respecting teenager. We will stand for every indignity. If we don’t like being treated as second-class citizens, we might throw on our headphones and listen to some dark music (should our parents allow it), and we might dress like the color black is going out of style, but we will never react with half the venom one would confidently anticipate from an ordinary human being.
We’re not gonna take it. No, we ain’t gonna take it. We’re not gonna take it anymore, goes the iconic rock song for rebellious teenagers. If “it” refers to violations of what adults consider their due rights, then I assure you, as a teenager and relentlessly honest writer, we are going take it, and we will continue to take it until we are no longer expected to.
Written: 12/29/2015
