Age Shaming, Failed Foresight and the Pandemic

As teenagers and young adults, almost all of us are guilty of having made some spectacularly poor decisions. Full stop. Before succumbing to the tyranny of euphoric remembering, and flipping into the even more pernicious oppression of adult denial, take a moment to reflect. Think. Remember. Cringe. Exactly right.

As adults, and from the perspective of social commentary, when we observe the behavior of tweens, teens, and young adults, a whole raft of myopic criticisms come to mind—thoughtless, impulsive, selfish, reckless, kids are just like that—and, there it is. “Kids are just like that”—and, lo and behold, from a neurobiological perspective, kids are, in fact, “just like that”—leading us directly into a conversation about the failure of foresight and misplaced age shaming in the era of a pandemic.

The Way We’re Wired—or Not

Several years ago, Frances Jensen, author of The Teenage Brain and chair of the Perelman School of Medicine’s neurology department at the University of Pennsylvania, noticed a radical, almost overnight change in her teenage son. He was transformed from a happy, predictable child into a sullen, angst-filled teenager in what amounted to the blink of an eye. Ever the scientist, Jensen wondered if the same fate awaited her son’s younger brother. Realizing she had a real-time, in vivo experiment right under her own roof, she started looking into what was happening.

Jensen’s ministrations yielded some fascinating findings about brain development and why tweens, teens, and young adults tend to exhibit impulsive and emotionally charged behavior, in varying degrees, which often—and sometimes inevitably—drives poor decision-making. Her work was not confined to the vacuum of her own experience but built upon previous findings challenging the notion that the brain reached a point of finite development in adolescence.

Neuroplasticity, and Not in a Good Way

It turns out the brain develops more or less back-to-front. The last part of the brain to get "wired in," as it were, is the pre-frontal cortex—that portion of the brain controlling impulsivity, emotionality, judgment, foresight, and decision-making. So, the plot thins. Kids are, in fact, demonstrably, “just like that."

With that in mind, brain development over the lifespan depends upon the constant creation and deprecation of synaptic connections; the somewhat recently coined term for which is neuroplasticity. Think of neuroplasticity as ruts in a cart track. The more you drive a cart through the mud of the track, the deeper the ruts get. When you change your path, the old ruts fall into disuse, becoming deprecated, and new ruts, or patterns, are created. This is the fundamental model for both learning new behaviors and changing old ones.

The problem this model presents with regard to tweens, teens, and young adults, is in many—if not most—situations, they don’t even have a cart track yet. They’re just staring into a virgin field, wondering which path to take, particularly when confronted with new or novel situations.

(Sidebar: What happens when the introduction of novel behavior is attached to a completely novel global circumstance? Sit with that for a moment, because I, personally, am a trained social scientist and psychologist with a plethora of life experience and I am, in the moment, fully overwhelmed.)

So, while we, as adults, armchair quarterback all the dumb stuff kids do (and, in authentic retrospect, probably did, in some form or fashion, ourselves), we often fail to recognize they may not yet have the tools to make the choices and decisions we might now make, as adults, in the same circumstance—because they are only, as of yet, firing on five cylinders.

A Reason, Not an Excuse

Understanding kids are still developing the capacity to see outcomes—and regulate behavior in response to that—doesn’t give them a hall pass. With a bit of applied compassion from their elders, it may, from where we sit, lend them a bit of latitude, but that’s about it. On the other hand, it gives us, as parents, teachers, guardians, mentors, and caregivers, a potential playbook for teachable moments.

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“Wear your mask” and “keep your distance”—which, truth be told, likely fall on the same deaf ears as “don’t drink," “don’t smoke," “don’t have sex," “drive the speed limit,” and “wear your seatbelt”—might, in these novel times, be transformed into lessons around social responsibility and ethical action. Those lessons may also, in the moment, fall on deaf ears, but experience—and a whole lot of research—suggest framing and modeling go considerably farther toward influencing later behavior and decision-making than does specific direction.

You Can’t Blame the Ground Crew

In the face of the pandemic—and the accompanying viral spread we’ve seen in schools and on newly opened college campuses—there has been a great deal of both age shaming and finger-pointing. Reviewing the popular press, or scanning social media, there is a preponderance of commentary blaming kids for these inevitable eventualities. There is also a similar commentary by parents blaming other parents for their children’s bad behavior—an accusation also pointed at teachers, professors, coaches, and administrators—and their inability to "control their charges."

This response is, in all instances and as one commentator put it, the fundamental equivalent of a pilot taking off in a storm and then people blaming the ground crew for not keeping the plane safe. We can’t have an expectation of control in a situation where the participants don’t have control. In the case of the ground crew, the plane is no longer on their radar. In the case of yet-to-be-wired tweens, teens, and young adults, the foresight needed to inform them of the consequences of their actions is, well, not on their radar. Again, not an excuse, but something to be roundly considered—and taken into account—well before blame is placed and shame doled out.

The Failure of Foresight

Human beings—tween, teen, young adult, or allegedly fully-formed grownup—fail miserably at foresight. We thrive, instead, on instant gratification. Playing the long game—particularly in post-modern American culture—is not something readily within our purview, or worldview. So, it’s not just about the kids and the trajectory of their psycho-biological development. It’s about all of us, in varying degrees.

As adults, one of our obstacles to foresight is our resistance to change and the narcissistic game of power-and-control that goes along with it. Plainly put, we are more likely to dig in and push back than pivot to meet both our immediate and future needs. We may, or may not, be able to presage the consequences of our choices, but, in either case, the need to stay put outweighs that. Relative to the pandemic, this is witnessed by any number of eventualities, not the least of which is the nonsensical notion that mask-wearing is somehow an infringement on personal freedom.

For tweens, teens, and young adults, things are even more complicated. Their obstacles to foresight are tied to the natural process of individuation—a process including a fair dose of rebellion—balanced against a literal inability to anticipate consequences. Throw a bit of adolescent immortality into the mix, and what we’re witnessing in schools and on college campuses across the country is not just predictable, it’s inevitable.

Adults want things to "go back to normal" because we’re dug in and resisting change. That’s not going to happen, as we now live in a changed—and ever-changing—landscape that is not only a new normal, but a now normal. Kids, on the other hand, are just going about their business, as they see it, and, predictably, their business does not support the adult cultural imperative of going back to the way things were before the pandemic.

Ultimately, this all comes down to compassion—self-compassion, other-compassion, social compassion, and fierce grace. Self-compassion means seeing and acknowledging where we are, personally, as individuals. Other-compassion means seeing others as they are in the moment—particularly tweens, teens, and young adults—who may not yet have the tools we, as alleged fully-formed adults, might expect of them. Social compassion means seeing, accepting, and recognizing our new and now normal. Fierce grace means quitting the blame and shame and embracing our new reality as an opportunity, rather than an obstacle.

© 2020 Michael J. Formica, All Rights Reserved