Do Teenage Years Determine Your Social Development?

[TSG]

I have been working on a theory lately. For those of you that can read basic words, it is stated in the thread title. So what I want to discuss here is how your teenage years effect your social development. I believe that it does this greatly, and here are some componets to my so-called theory on it.

Firstly, I believe the way you are treated, or how you socially interact, in high school will determine how you act in the rest of your life. For example, if you are bullied and shunned be your peers in high school, then you may enter your college years with a low self-esteem and not interact with many people because you believe they won't like you. This will lead to you being a loner in the future.

Another example would be a girl that is abused or raped or otherwise mis-treated in many relationships in high school. This is a secnario that could lead your development in many different ways. Said girl could grow-up thinking all guys are like that, and turn lesbian or just shy away from sexual relationships, or maybe even go as far as to not even wanting a platonic relationship with men. Or this could also lead her psychological development into believing she is nothing more than a toy for men, and she could grow up to be a prostitute or simply a "****e" that sleeps around. It could even lead her to such extremes as a serial killer secnario due to the abuse she took earlier in life.

I also believe that past ecperiences in teenage years can lead to sub-concious behaviors in future years. Anybody familiar with the Psychodynamic field of Psychological Studies will get what I'm talking about as I explain it. For example, a person in the future may develop bulimic tendancies due to being bullied in high school due to weight issues. Or somebody may have dreams or other recurring pshychological issues about raping someone, due to being raped in their teenage years. This is something that has actually thought to be the cause of many psychological issues.

So, discuss this. Does anybody think that your teenage years have a significant effect on your future, and if so, how much. Or should all teenage problems of depression and bullying and such be dismissed as "stupid teenage drama" and should we not worry about the effects of it?

 

[Xemmy]

It's an interesting subject, but there's a couple of problems.

1. It isn't just teenage years.- Your entire childhood your brain is in development. Many of the things you listed aren't just occurances in high school. They occur to children in general, and that includes rape.

2. Even your experiences as an adult alter your mind, and therefore your behavior, ideology, ect. It may not be to the same extent as your childhood, due to your brain being fully developed, but it still happens. Your brain is constantly changing, and constantly processing new information.

Teenagers are often used as examples of these due to a combination of being the largest target for media, and raging hormones that hit you like a drug from the 9th grade, and don't really slow down until your system gets used to it, which seems to take one or two years, and even then it's still fresh. These hormones enhance alot of behavior, from sex, anger, and depression- which are the cause behind "teen angst".

 

[SpoodBeest]

Well it probably contributes to how you develop socially for some people. Now I am going to explain my feelings on this as I myself am quite an anti-social teenager in a way. I for one believe the high school social system is a flawed one. You have this huge group of kids in every grade where they are athletic, or in because of who they know, or how they look, or what they do with the school, etc. Due to this these kids think they are above the rest of the kids in their grade and due to this group of kids giving off this illusion that they have some kind of importance, the kids who they shun feel that they are not cool and belong a few steps lower on the "pedestal".

Now due to this I do not want to associate myself with any of these kids expect for my few close friends who actually use enough logic to do the same. I only hang out with these kids during and after school, and I really don't give two shits about the other kids. Even if they happened to be the ones who go out every night and get tanked at parties every weekend. That stuff I really don't care about doing so I don't. If that makes me uncool well then slap that title on me and bring on the ridicule.

I have felt the feeling of being joked at right to my face. Me and my friend had these YouTube accounts where me basically made vlogs on talking about different subjects as well as adding in some goofy antics for entertainment. A couple of the "cool ones" somehow found our channels and watched our videos and decided to come over to us and start ripping us up by calling us only by our YouTube usernames (which is the name of my account on here), as well as taking some of our more goofy lines and mocking them in front of our face. This continued on so bad that my friend closed his account and since I'm as stubborn as I am I kept mine and ignored and I guess I took away some of their fun as they don;t really continue anymore. But this just goes to show if you don;t have a strong will the opinions of other kids and the ridicule they give you can definitely make up some of your decisions, such as my friend closing his account. And the real bummer about that one was they continued it even though they knew he stopped because of them which was the real ignorant part.

Even before I went to high school I was always more of a shy person. I think it all started with a move to a new town. And due to me being scared of change and meeting new people it has kind of stuck with me since I was 11. But I believe that I can overcome such an obstacle simply by a change of surrounding. I have now learned that the program I want to take when I go to college, I will have to go away for. Which means I will be on campus meeting a whole shit-ton of new people. But the positive part about that is those students want to be there and they will be interested in the same things as me and from what I'm being told is that social system isn't anywhere near as flawed as high schools due to the maturity factor being turned up a notch.

So in closing I will say this I don't think high school would start developing your social skills for your future as I believe that begins with childhood. And from your experiences in grade school will further develop what you think it will be like in high school. High school definitely worsened it for me as I was doing pretty good as I graduated from elementary school and then went to high school and basically found myself resenting about 1/2 of the school's population and then I received verbal mockery for the first time in my life and that made me hate the place even more and now I only want associate myself with those few close friends I have and as of now have no desire to hang out with the egotistical ones only because it would make me cool. I will now continue my ways until I get shipped off to school and only then will I be able to see social activity in a different light.

 

[LSN80]

Firstly, I believe the way you are treated, or how you socially interact, in high school will determine how you act in the rest of your life. For example, if you are bullied and shunned be your peers in high school, then you may enter your college years with a low self-esteem and not interact with many people because you believe they won't like you. This will lead to you being a loner in the future.

This can be true, but much of it is based upon future events as well. For example, the popular kid at the small high school can go away to college and wind up being the small fish in a big pond. So in order for what your saying to be true, the person has to have no external factors come into place following their high school years. A single person, or people, can come along that can completely alter the way a person thinks, views life, and behaves. Its the theory of human development and progression that all of us are in a never ending cycle of going through.

Another example would be a girl that is abused or raped or otherwise mis-treated in many relationships in high school. This is a secnario that could lead your development in many different ways. Said girl could grow-up thinking all guys are like that, and turn lesbian or just shy away from sexual relationships, or maybe even go as far as to not even wanting a platonic relationship with men. Or this could also lead her psychological development into believing she is nothing more than a toy for men, and she could grow up to be a prostitute or simply a "****e" that sleeps around. It could even lead her to such extremes as a serial killer secnario due to the abuse she took earlier in life.

This more lends itself to the theory of traumatizing events, and the Post Traumatic Stress that follows it. Ive met women like that who are exactly the same as the woman that you described. The thing that happens with many of those women, however, is that they meet a man who treats them completely differently, and allows them to think and believe another way. It takes time, granted, but if a person can show that woman a consistent pattern of behavior over time, then the perspective of that woman changes. This in turn affects her behavior.

If noone steps in, however, then most women do wander the road that you described. They wind up sufferring from post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD), and often become the "loners" you described earlier, even moreso then those who are bullied or shunned or high school. A great fear sets in of being hurt again, and it goes without saying that the longer a woman goes without having a significant figure step in and alter their thinking based on treating them differently, the further they seperate themselves from the rest of the world.

I also believe that past ecperiences in teenage years can lead to sub-concious behaviors in future years. Anybody familiar with the Psychodynamic field of Psychological Studies will get what I'm talking about as I explain it. For example, a person in the future may develop bulimic tendancies due to being bullied in high school due to weight issues. Or somebody may have dreams or other recurring pshychological issues about raping someone, due to being raped in their teenage years. This is something that has actually thought to be the cause of many psychological issues.

This happens all the time. The psychodynamic of the subconscious has a way of working that we're often unaware of. It seperates our emotional mind from our logical one, and the person tends to vascilate on one end of the spectrum, or the other. In other words, their actions are completely based upon emotions(where rape, bullying, and abuse occur), or their actions are based purely on logic, where they allow no emotion whatsoever to "cloud" their thinking. Neither are healthy ways of thinking, nor do they result in socially acceptable behavior.

I stresss this again though, that much of this is predicated on people stepping in and making it a difference. Generally speaking, going through therapy(Im a therapist) and medication aren't enough. These people generally need the combination of the former(therapy and medication), along with people in their lives who show them socially acceptable behaviors through the way they treat them. This is a tough task, as the further away from "rational" the person gets, the harder it is for them to come back.

So, discuss this. Does anybody think that your teenage years have a significant effect on your future, and if so, how much. Or should all teenage problems of depression and bullying and such be dismissed as "stupid teenage drama" and should we not worry about the effects of it?

They do, and they don't. There's no simple answer to this question. Enviromental factors are the biggest key to one's development, much of which is begun to shape in our adolescent years, not our teenage ones. But to dismiss what happens in one's teenage years at the same time would be silly, as they can have a huge impact upon the person's behavior from here into the future. It really depends on the person, their coping skills, and the positive or negative environmental factors that surround it. Good thread TSG.