These Kids Today

“Although we still use the term adolescence, its cultural signals are mostly irrelevant. It no longer describes the period of training required to function as an adult in the 21st century, nor does it distinguish the boundary between the knowledge of children from those who have reached puberty.” In Aeon. Paula Fass provides a very interesting look at how several historic forces — including the emergence of the Internet — have led to the end of adolescence. (The irony is that the t-shirted people who build most of our consumer Internet tools live in a world where adolescence never ends.)