Adolescence and Increased Sensitivity to Social Teasing

Source: Car Pickhardt

Teasing mostly uses speech to make fun of, to criticize, to taunt, to isolate, or to otherwise harm. Teasing uses wounding words to ridicule how someone thinks, how they look, how they act—how they are.

Teasing can draw negative social attention to the person teased. Even when supposedly jokingly given (“I was just kidding!”), teasing can be hurtfully received. At worst, others can laugh at what one is humorously name-called -- about how you look, how you act, how you are, for painful example.

Teasing puts another person down.

Playful or painful

Some teasing can be playful, when giving a joking compliment, for example: “Is getting all A’s the best you can do?” More often, however, teasing can be painful—the use of demeaning words to kid or mock someone, to socially embarrass or insult, to make light of them, to pick on them, to demean or diminish them. “With looks like that, you ought to be in a zoo!”

When teasing provokes teasing in return, teasing contests can ensue as escalating insults increase hostility and cause serious harm to see who can hurt each other the worst.

Because of the uncertainty, insecurity, and self-consciousness, adolescence is a more sensitive age than childhood. Now growing up can be made more scary when teased for physical changes that naturally unfold when they attract this hurtful play—which is what teasing is.

Teasing adolescent stages

Each stage of adolescent growth can be vulnerable to teasing in a somewhat different way:

• Stage one: Separating from childhood (ages 9 to 13) creates the loss of old security. You can be teased for acting childlike: “You're such a baby!”
• Stage two: Forming a family of friends (ages 13 to 15), creating more peer pressure. You can be teased for not belonging: “Nobody likes you!”
• Stage three: Experimenting with acting older (ages 15 to 18), creating more risk-taking. You can be teased for not daring: “You’re scared to try!””
• Stage four: Stepping off on one’s own (ages 18 to 23), assuming full responsibility. You can be teased for immaturity: “Just act grown up!”

Adolescence is challenging as others strive for opportunities that you want, too, and there is more social comparison to discount the competition. Teasing is a way this is done—one-upping others by putting them down.

Teasing can hurt

As I wrote in my 2010 book about social mistreatment in adolescence, Why Good Kids Act Cruel, five common kinds of social meanness (teasing, exclusion, bullying, rumoring, and ganging up) often increase in the late elementary and particularly middle school years as the eight-to-ten-year coming of age passage called adolescence unfolds.

Even when humorous or playfully intended, teasing can be insulting—verbal criticism that demeans how a person is, appears, or acts, thus increasing normal vulnerabilities of growing up. Others laughing at the insult only make it harder to bear.

At worst, being teased can feel like being targeted, mistreated, set apart, endangered, and emotionally wounded. So, most parents don’t want their teenager to be the object of harmful teasing or a participant in it.

Teasing is hostile

Come adolescence, there can be more social use of sarcasm. Teasing humor can become part of verbal jousting as verbal give-and-take matters more—to make fun of, pick on, and push around peers. For example, more often, boys may use teasing to establish standing with other boys by acting tough, while more often girls can use teasing for dominance with other girls by acting mean. In both cases, teasing can assert social power, and, of course, boys can sometimes act mean and girls can sometimes act tough.

When a pattern of teasing among one’s peers takes hold, socializing can feel more dangerous to do. The constant push and shove, even while playful, can take more vigilance to survive as the hurtful powers of mean teasing become painfully clear. The hostile humor or insulting intent of teasing makes social life more scary and dangerous. Young people can become more guarded lest harm be done.

Teasing shows the power of wounding words: how you can hurt another person deeply without even physically touching them.

Adolescent change creates more self-consciousness, insecurity, and sensitivity. In consequence, young people become easier targets for teasing by vulnerable peers who may strive to keep themselves up by putting others down. Aggressive though teasing is, it is also revealing because young people often tease others for what they fear being teased about themselves.

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Adolescent vulnerability

On the receiving end, at best, teasing can feel playful when lightly intended: “We like joking around!” However, at worst, it can be painful to receive: “Being laughed at really hurts my feelings.”

Teasing can be hostile and personally damaging when taken to heart. And it can be socially embarrassing: “Everybody laughed at me for how I dressed, and I can see why!” Because they are at a more changing and comparative age, adolescent teasing is usually not taken lightly, even when jokingly intended. “I’ll never wear that outfit again!”

Thus teasing can hurt feelings, and, to make matters worse, any hurt can be blamed on the person teased: “What’s the matter with you; can’t you take a joke? I was just kidding around!” But the rule is if the person being teased finds it painful and not playful, then it’s not funny. Hurtful teasing can cause the person targeted to feel emotionally injured and socially unsafe.

Advice about teasing

So, what might parents say to their teenager about teasing or being teased?

• “When others hurtfully tease you; that doesn’t show anything wrong about you, but expresses something mean about them.”

• “When you join in teasing anyone, you are making relationships more socially unsafe for everyone.”
• “Teasing isn’t funny when the person laughed at feels insecure and worse about themselves.”
• “The more you and your friends tease each other, the more guarded with each other you may all become.”
• “Teasing can hurt long after the teasing has been done when you blame yourself for being teased.”
• “Never give teasing words lasting power by believing they are deserved, because they never are.”
• “Whenever you are feeling hurt from being teased, that is a time for treating yourself well.”
• “Better to be a pleaser than a teaser: give compliments to help others feel well; don’t give insults to put them down.”

Teasing at home

As adolescent growth change keeps upsetting and resetting the terms of one’s existence, there is more vulnerability to teasing. Young people can use teasing to assert and protect social place and in the process give offense and do injury.

The more caring the relationship, the more injury mean teasing can do, so in the family, parents need to monitor how everyone treats each other. Because mocking from family members can feel threatening and damaging to be around, parents need to keep a safe and tease-free home: "Just as we don't allow you to physically hit and hurt each other, the same goes for not using hostile words to do each other harm. We want to keep a safe home for everyone, so no embarrassing or hurtful teasing allowed."