Although everybody claims that our
are the best of our lives, most of us spend a significant portion of that time wishing that we could be over and done with it already.
Sure, it's fun spending every day with your friends and not having to worry about having a serious job or spending huge amounts on bills (for the most part, anyway), but adolescence is a tough thing to go through, and it can make all the "easy" things seem ridiculously hard.
Because of changing hormones, continuing brain development, and altered social interactions, the transition period between childhood and adulthood can actually be a very tricky time, with many people suffering mental health problems due to the added stress. Thankfully, it doesn't last all that long, and was previously believed to span from ages 11 to 19.
However, in a study called "The age of adolescence", professor Susan Sawyer hypothesized that adolescence now starts at the age of 10, and lasts all the way up to 24.
"Age definitions are always arbitrary", writes Professor Sawyer, who is the director of the centre for adolescent health at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. However, she adds, "our current definition of adolescence is overly restricted".
According to her, "Adolescence encompasses elements of biological growth and major social role transitions, both of which have changed in the past century."
And it's true: life in the modern day is far removed to how it was in 1918, so why would we assume that people still move between childhood and adulthood in the same way that we did back then? Certain lifestyle changes -
, access to medical care, understanding of physical health - have had an effect on our biology, and other social developments - opinions on age of responsibility, use of the internet and social media, changing consensus on
and start a family (if at all) - have altered the way we behave as human beings.
And, while most of the changes we've made in the last hundred years have been overall positive, such a development unfortunately means that the period of suffering known as adolescence now lasts until a person is 24.
But should we let that change the way we think of people in their early 20s?
According to
Dr Jan Macvarish, a parenting sociologist at the University of Kent, we should try to ignore the concept of adolescence altogether, as infantilizing young adults will only hold them back.
"Older children and young people are shaped far more significantly by society's expectations of them than by their intrinsic biological growth," she said.
And, because more people go to college rather than entering straight into the workforce these days, we often perceive them to still be in the learning phase, while those who have steady careers are considered "real" adults. But Macvarish insists that this isn't the case.
"There is nothing inevitably infantilizing about spending your early 20s in higher education or experimenting in the world of work," she said, before adding, "society should maintain the highest possible expectations of the next generation."
So, if you're reading this as someone between the ages of 19 of 24: don't be disheartened. You're still every bit as much of a grownup as you were before this study was done, no matter what stage of life you're at right now. If anything, you should take this extended transition into adulthood as a good excuse to act like a big kid every now and then.
Go on, eat a tub of ice cream. Play video games. Build a blanket fort. After all, this newfound adolescence isn't going to last forever.
