Are "teens" born or made? An interesting twist.
thesocietypages.org
thesocietypages.org
In older times, teenagers (above say, 14) were considered men, or young adults. They would fight in armies, or even lead them. They were likely to be married and maybe even have children.
For all intents and purposes, people of age 16 are not much different from other adults except in that they don't have much experience in life. The only reason they "rebel" is that society still treats them like children. Imagine a 30 year old man being treated as a little hopeless child by his parents; of course he will show signs of resentment. It's not because he's "crazy", it's the natural response.
Perhaps the reason is partly due to school. If you're in school (below university/college level) you're a child "by definition" so to speak (from the society's point of view).
If I was in charge, I would design the school system so that elementary and secondary school end by the age 14 and then when you're 15 you'd be already in college.
I totally disagree on this. There are remarkable physical differences between a 16 yo, and a 28yo.
Your mental capabilities are different, your hormonal level is completely different etc.
Yes, there are cultures or where teens are forced to act as adults to function in society, but that doesn't make them they have the same capabilities as of an adult, be either physical, or emotional/mental.
And, traditionally armies are staffed with 17-20 yo. Do you know why? Because they make better cannon fodder, and more likely to obey orders, take higher risks, which are correlated with the high testosterone levels that teens do have.
(BTW, I am 30, and when I was 16 I was basically acting as supervisor of a team of 12 workers when my family was building the house due to my father having heart problems. Yes, I was good with money, I could negotiate some, tell people what to do to a certain point, but I lacked emotional intelligence, tact, or general maturity to handle more finer problems).
(And thank god, because the 23-year-old me was both insufferably stupid and didn't know it.)
(Now at least I know it.)
At least we know there's a nonzero probability that your perceived insufferable stupidity is monotonically decreasing. :-)
So basically you're saying you was more adept at 16 with dealing with other people, responsibility and money than the vast majority of college grads are in their mid-late 20's. So I'm failing to see your point.
Because of an education you wouldn't have otherwise received you were capable of doing tasks considered vastly beyond your age's observed responsibility level, seemingly even by yourself.
The point you're making applies as much to a 40 year old boss as it does to a 16 year old boss. Leadership is an acquired skill without an age restriction, but people here on HN seem to want to instate an arbitrary age restriction on how they determine "too young" to be a boss. I really don't get why this would be when software and other tech industries are generally youth orientated and seen as ageist.
"Forced"? This is circular logic.
What makes you think they are forced? It seems every one here agrees that teenager want to be treated like adults.
The only reason to think they were forced is if you think they are still children at age 16. You provided yourself as your own counter example, so clearly at 16 you weren't a child.
> but I lacked emotional intelligence, tact, or general maturity to handle more finer problems
This is exactly what I mean by experience. Emotional intelligence and tact (as you put it) doesn't come suddenly when you're 22; it comes with experience. You could very easily be 30 and still lack these things. I would go further and say you are more likely to lack them if your parents keep treating you like a child and prevent you from doing adult stuff and experiencing the world outside of their "protection".
If you never speak to a child from birth to 4 years old, it will be unable to learn to speak. That part of the brain will simply have not developed. There's no reason to believe that this is not true of all the other skills you mention.
If you had started doing that "supervisory" role 3 years earlier, you would have been great at it by 16. Similarly, most people start doing that sort of thing at 22, so at 22 they are where you were at 16, meaning they were 6 years behind.
This is demonstrably not true, and even says so in the article. The brains of a teenager are different than that of an adult. The question the article is asking is not "Are they differen?" because we know they are. The question the article is asking is "Is this difference caused by culture or biology?"
If our brains are continuously changing throughout our lives, you'll see differences on either side of any arbitrary cutoff point.
This is bad logic. It's not much different from saying "men and women are demonstrably different, therefore women should not have equal rights".
Of course they are different. 16 year olds are not the same as 40 year olds. It doesn't follow that 16 year olds are children who are just being rebellious and should be shunned down.
While I personally have concluded !Q, there is more to it than what I have brought up - but that was not my purpose in the post. I wanted to point out a false statement because it was being used to conclude something.
So, to be clear, the original claim was that teenagers are adults minus the experience. That claim is demonstrably not true. See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1241194... or any other story that pops up when you Google "teenage brains."
"You know what the problem with your org is- there's not enough adult supervision"
Keep in mind I was 23, and everyone in the room was over 20.
I'm not sure if this person meant it in the same way, though.
Consider the story of Romeo and Juliet. At an age where he has not yet grown a beard, Romeo has killed (at least) two men. He secretly marries his true love (and the Church blesses the marriage).
Imagine, if you can, the reaction of parents, churches and schools today to such behavior.
Isolated from the context of 16th century Verona and stripped of Shakespeare's poetic flair, the plot could easily be taken from a modern slushy teen drama.
And nobody considers that a scandal, compared to them acting against their families' wishes.
I'd be hard pressed to name ONE class that was worth my time to attend.
I had a very fortunate upbringing in a lot of ways, but I think I talked to maybe three adults who were not parents, teachers, or family in an eight year period. That sort of warps one's perceptions on things.
Did your family subscribe to any specific religion or something that would lead to this behavior? I just had never heard of something like this. Although I guess if the age span is 0-8 there's really not that many adults to interact with who aren't family or teachers. It's not like you're going to work or having lunch dates. And it's not like some random 32 year old is going to come over to just hang out. But still, it seems odd to even think that either you were being specifically shielded or you thought you were.
At age 8, or even 10, I never though, "I wish I could talk to more adults". If anything, I probably would've like to talk to fewer adults. :-)
For example, if you read books or watch TV from the fifties, you might have a twelve year old boy with a friendship with a man in the neighborhood, perhaps in the context of sharing their common interest in carpentry or fence-painting, and doing totally innocuous things like having iced tea together during summer. Are you of the impression that remains normal behavior today?
I would be scared out of my wits if a neighborhood kid took a shine on me and started coming over to my house to say hello. That's one worried phone call from mom away from my life being ruined.
Most people in the UK would feel the same way. (I'm not sure if that's true to the same extent in non-English-speaking European countries.)
Asking because I'm curious whether this kind of adult/child relationship stigma is as prevalent there as it is in the U.S.
That's quite possibly true. Maybe the plight of suburbia. While I agree that adult/child hanging out is not common, I don't think it ever was all that common. I can't imagine I'd have any reason to talk to most children. It's not that I'm afraid of a phone call, but I just don't think it would be very interesting to me.
At best I think you find that one adult who you can relate to in some offbeat way. Maybe painting fences, as you suggest. But still that just raises your number of adults to 4. It's just not common that a child will associate freely, and w/o supervision, with 150 random adults in their childhood.
Don't mean to pry, so feel free to ignore this, but how do you reckon not talking to more than 3 adults over a 8 year period is fortunate? I am genuinely interested, not being facetious.
(Ditto for when Mrs. Smith thinks she was triple charged by The Googles for her software because she thinks one mail from me, one mail from Google, and one confirmation page counts as three charges. Not her fault -- my fault. I live and breathe e-commerce -- I should have made that more clear for someone who might only buy one thing online ever.)
An intriguing observation, how did you solve the problem?
I went to your profile and to bingocardcreator.com and appointmentreminder.org just to see how I may avail myself of such excellent service :) While I find myself not currently in the need for either product, I will be on the lookout for potential users for both.
Rock on.
I do not think anyone isolates kids or teenagers. I think, instead, the media attempts to portray such a picture so as to sell more papers.
Regarding your latter comment, in a world where you do not mix even with the seventh graders or the fifth graders if you are in the sixth grade, it would be quite strange indeed if you were "hanging out" with a 40 year old, or 30 year old, in "friendship" basis both for the youngster and for the adult. Moreover, I do not think it ever was seen as "normal" not because of any implications but because there would be little in common not least because a teenager thinks and is preoccupied by entirely different things from an adult.
I grew up in a small middle class neighborhood in a small town and was fortunate in that my dad went to one of the best engineering schools in the country. From ages 6 to 14, two of his friends taught me more about business and science than any kid can hope for, and I had a ball learning it.
The first was a small town shopkeeper who was our neighbor. Initially, I would go to his shop with my dad every Sunday and hang around and explore it for hours while they chatted. He would teach me bits and pieces about business more through example than words: treating customers and employees right, pricing products right, managing people etc. Eventually, I'd often go to his shop alone and hang out and sometimes he'd let me man the cash register for an hour or two. It was a huge responsibility and one that I was proud of. Many people today would consider a 8-14 year old going to a shop and hanging out with a 30 something shopkeeper alone weird, but I only benefited from this relationship. Obviously this was someone my parents knew and trusted, but I can't help but think these few years shaped my desires to be an entrepreneur and helped me along the way.
The second person was a guy who had a job building/fixing machinery at gas refineries who my dad went to school with. He was divorced early and never remarried, a recluse who liked to study and talk about physics and chemistry. He was also eccentric and (what I recognized later as) a consummate geek: generally shy but never shy about tearing apart bad/flawed arguments anyone made. He was also unfailingly fair about accepting defeat in arguments when he was wrong. In our small town, judging from the outside, I'd say most people would have called him a weirdo and they probably did. My parents trusted him though and I regularly hung out with him, often alone. He had a huge role to play in my interest in science and (what I hope is) my ability to never be shy about making my case, but to treat opponents fairly. Fun aside: this gentleman retired at 55 from his job with significant savings and went BACK to school for a Ph.D. in math, because he loves to learn.
NB: I do not have kids yet, and it is possible that some biological or cultural switch that goes on when I have children will change my perspective on this making me more protective. I hope it doesn't make me wary of all adults though.
No wonder kids today are more and more emotionally & intellectually stunted. None of them are "the dumbest guy in the room" - because they interact almost exclusively with other kids their exact same age.
30 kids and 1 teacher… the 1 teacher is not enough of an influence to make the kids feel ashamed of being so immature.
I, for one, have thought it was clear from history that "teens" are made. I grew up with lots of responsibility and it was clear to me, even as a 10-year-old, how different that made me from the kids I went to school with. The having of the responsibility wasn't what made me different, but it obviously made me think and behave differently too.
IMO the only reason that upper middle class kids today -- who are the ones always studied -- don't develop the part of the brain that connects cause & effect, & prevents risk-taking, is because they are never allowed to have enough power to fuck up.
How can you learn that stupidity leads to crisis if you're never allowed to make your own decisions?
The brain is plastic, it changes based on what you learn. A child kept away from speech until he's 4 years old will be unable to learn to speak normally. A teenager kept away from responsibility & work of value will grow up to be...
But the "scientists" who do these studies make pronouncements about their studies, but they never say "Sheltered white upper-class kids with two parents have the following traits..." they say "Kids have the following traits..."
This simply isn't consistent with those people who are given a lot of responsibility. Like those who leave home at 12 or so and go into the world on their own. You'd think they grow into the power brokers of this country, but instead they usually get the short end of the stick.
The US prison population is full of people who decided at an early age to shun their parents and branch out on their own. Although one thing I've noticed is that black people tend to think white people are really goofy -- even adults. Maybe while blacks are incarcerated at higher rates, they're actually more mature, on average.
In any case, having the shackles lifted (no adult supervision) doesn't seem to result in a better life.
The thing that is hard to reconcile is that the people who seem to be most lauded as successful have had the most supervised childhoods. Folks like Gates, Jobs, Obama, Clinton, etc... What they do share in common is that they break from the mold at about the cusp of traditional adulthood (around 18-21) -- not at age 13.
What I said was: "What's evolutionarily normal is to have children who are surrounded by, and interact mostly, with adults, in a group where many of the people are your family. The adults bring you up to their level."
And "How can you learn that stupidity leads to crisis if you're never allowed to make your own decisions?"
Children from impoverished backgrounds in the United States are raised, such as it is, with incredible differences compared to children of well-off parents. They have a "30 million word gap" in terms of words spoken to them. They are not asked questions that cause them to think. They do not receive adequate nutrition.
You can't compare a poor child whose parents ignored him with a middle class child whose parents let him make his own decisions, like whether or not to do his homework, go to bed at a reasonable hour, earn and spend his own money, pay for some of his own bills, prepare his own lunches & do his own laundry, make dinner for the rest of the family, clean his room or not, work at a meaningful apprenticeship, date who he wanted when he felt ready to date, get piercings or dye hair, wear what he wants, etc.
In short: you are a troll. I hope you are joking but if you don't realize that you are a troll, you seriously need to deepen your thinking on subjects because you're just flapping about on the surface of a topic but you think you're making waves.
Thanks. I needed a tldr on that one. What you say may all be true. Hard for me to know because my brain hasn't fully formed since I wasn't allowed to do crack rocks and rob liquor stores in the evening with my friends.
In any case you can raise your children to be effectively parentless. That's your choice. Charlie Sheen gets paid better than most.
_How can you learn that stupidity leads to crisis if you're never allowed to make your own decisions?_
I don't agree with this. The whole thing about mixing with adults is the adults will tell the kids to avoid repeating the mistakes they made when they were young. The whole idea of "rebels without a cause" is based on the understanding that if they knew and internalized the knowledge, teens would be much more careful. By not taking teens into the adult tribe, the teens end up having to create their own tribes and culture.
Personally, I think (and have read others who agree, sorry, no references available) that the fairly ubiquitous "coming of age" ceremony is very important. My oldest is 17 and we will be doing something this summer with my father (backpacking or the like) to celebrate his manhood. And, yes, we will even have a formal ceremony.
I'm always looking for good reading on this subject (truly guiding your kids to adulthood), so if you have any good pointers, send them on!
But without the experience of that first failure, and overcoming it with the guidance and support of people around them, these teenagers continue to demand their independence and fail to find any proof of their own self-worth long into their twenties and middle age...
It is natural non the less.
> They are really asking to be challenged or given responsibility, and they probably will fail or need a lot of help.
So it's the responsibility of their parents and the society at large to help them become independent, instead of beating them down and accusing them of being stupid and irrational.
I don't think it's independence, it's this Nietszchean sort of power. (Remember, Nietszche knew that the discipline of the self christian ascetic was as much a will-to-power as the rape and pillage of Attilla or a successful HS football player...)
This entire topic has been heavily on my mind for the last few months as I'm transitioning to legal adulthood and am in the college application process. Questions about who and what I am as a person and what I'll do for the rest of my life have been prime things in the back of my head throughout the day, and along with it, a lot of existentialist crisis.
I've spent the last 7 years at the same 2 public schools and community college, and before that 6 years at private/theme/charter schools that had unique teaching styles and freedoms that they gave their students. I felt like I matured better there than during my time at public high school and middle school. Yet during the last two years at community college (I was/am dual-enrolled) the new feeling of freedom from inane rules like asking for permission to do real silly and small things like going to the bathroom, getting up to sharpen my pencil or blow my nose, and daily attendance to classes I had limited choice over was exhilarating at first. Having all this freedom all at once after 11 years of harsh rules however proved to be too much of a rush and with little to no accountability to authority figures who were always checking on your work and setting soft/easy boundaries on assignments and guidelines to be strictly followed...I lapsed into a phase of constant gaming and wasting time on other non-productive things (like HN ;).
After my grades came back that first semester, along with it was a cold slap of reality and a realization that I had to take responsibility over my own education and learn and excel in everything I do for my own sake. This is when I began to learn Python seriously, treat school as a day-job that I did well on. In normal school, there is little to push the person to do more than what is required after a certain "honors" level (the kinds of classes I took during my first two years of high school before transitioning to dual-enrollment). I never really thought of learning pure math recreationally, or that was A Thing even.
I think Heidegger's idea you mention is a great way to describe the feeling of "becoming" into someone/something that I'm not sure of yet. This idea is explained in pretty-good manner here[1] by Mac thecaster, a really interesting guy who has been lifecasting his own development in life for quite a few years now since he was 15 and now is about 19/20.
Getting involved in real-world activities as a teen has also helped me develop better as an adult; I've worked jack-of-all-trades at an ethnic restaurant, and learned to haggle/negotiate while buying meats, sell products to potential customers, treat them well so they spend more and often, and how to clean many types of things. I've learned from criminals, former DJs and salesmen, and auto-mechanics while working side-by-side with them washing dishes, grilling large orders of steaks, and had many more experiences while being treated as an adult than before in my life.
This is partly why I believe most people who go on summer trips with programs like People to People[2], and EPGY[3], and other summer learning or traveling retreats are more wholesome and well-rounded people. Considering the formidable costs associated with these organized trips and learning retreats, the mostly affluent/well-off kids are able to actually go to them, or even be aware of their existence (from siblings or peer-networking amongst parents from the same socio-economic class). This can be correlated with the recent post about[4] how more confident and successful children born into prosperous families are and decides a lot of things for them in the long run.
[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRgxp71tDgk
If you happen to be Christian I also found "Healing the Masculine Soul" (Dalby, http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Masculine-Soul-Restoration-Man... ) helpful, but it is both explicitly Christian and theology heavy.
Edit: sorry, posted this in reply to the wrong comment by mistake.
Nietzsche was a classicist and Heidegger's whole philosophy (if I remember grad school) was about taking off from classical roots, so it's unlikely they would have changed this concept without saying why. I'd like to know where they say it.
This isn't merely theoretical. My experience has been that Nietzschean self-assertion, at least in its more vulgar forms, leads to unhappiness in the long run - and that taking the focus off self, as suggested by the etymology of "ecstasy", is a more viable strategy. (Then again - not necessarily in adolescence, but later.)
Heidegger didn't really believe in a transcendent self, as far as my very amateur reading can tell. Rather, I think he was critiquing all things transcendent (yeah, Plato and Kant), and trying to show how things and experience would feel transcendent, even if they aren't.
I also think he used a lot of irony -- he talks about authenticity, and he sort of means it but he also sort thinks that any personal transcendence is just balderdash; so authenticity is facing both death and the lack of any final answer as to what is authentic. (All that a Dasein "is" is something that wonders what it "is". This self-questioning of being, or "is-ness", of both the world and ourselves, is fundamental to the human condition, and is where the "Being" of "Being in Time" comes from.)
Re ecstasis: He was talking about the phenomenological experience of interacting with the world. And I interpret "ecstasis" to mean "the process of expansion into the world" -- sort of getting outside one's "self", but with a sort of ironic notion of selfhood. Again, there is irony and allusion to the classical notion, but recast in his own phenomenology.
My rather loose interpetation of Nietzsche is that supposedly nietzschean self assertion is not really Nietzschean at all, but rather naive and foolish and immature. Zarathustra counsels against going to the city and indulging in pleasure.
YMMV -- I am just a guy talking in a bar about these things.
I guess the advantage of talking in a bar is that you can get an intuitive read of where the other person is coming from, then line up your personal vocabulary to better match theirs. This makes for more satisfying communication. Online discourse seems particularly ill-suited to talking about anything hard to define.
Nietzsche was nuts and Heidegger, like some sort of pre-computer age Perl programmer, had extreme difficulty explaining or even, apparently, _understanding_ what he had previously written. Sound familiar? Today philosophers' continue to argue about what they believe Heidegger was _trying_ to say as well as what he said.
If you absolutely _must_ consider any of this further I could do no better than recommend "Why Heideggerian AI Failed and how Fixing it would Require making it more Heideggerian" by Hubert L. Dreyfus, perhaps after a half-carafe of wine. For true inspiration, LSD would likely be better.
Sorry, that's the best I've got.
You can't define people simply by what year they are born in. Some family environments provide children with an outlet where they end up with a very mature outlook, others don't.
The problem with this stratification is that it soon becomes the "norm" for children. My kids would say, for example, he wouldn't talk to some other kids because they are in another grade or in another class. It is a totally artificial barrier.
In days past, you'd have a grandfather or grandmother around. Kids would hang around their uncles and cousins workshops. There no distinct border. Children can see how they are expected to transition from one role to another.
Fast forward to the present day, the "teen" is now effectively a market segment, and it has become "weird" or uncomfortable to deal with kids who are too young for them or adults who are uncool for them. The narrative behind TV shows and books only serve to reinforce this.
As parents, we have a duty to help our children recognize these artificial barriers and help them overcome these perception.
Now, many people would consider it abuse, forcing a child of 14 to help out at work. Especially if they were only paid a nominal fee. They should be doing their homework, getting one-up on their peers. Unless they are from a family that doesn't value education, and then they should be learning to cope with a job market that won't value them.
The real matter is because there is no regular "place" where teens are welcome. Not in the office, nor in a workshop. They end up being with other "lost" teens.
"I'm always looking for good reading on this subject (truly guiding your kids to adulthood), so if you have any good pointers, send them on!"
Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.
To reiterate I found both "Manhood" and "Raising Boys" by Steve Biddulph ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Biddulph ) and "Healing the Masculine Soul" (Dalby, http://www.amazon.com/Healing-Masculine-Soul-Restoration-Man... ) helpful, although be warned that the last book is explicitly Christian in viewpoint.
Culturally, I think the ages that are marked hardest are 13 (Bar Mitzvah's and the like) and about 21. There is sort of intermediate transition time, when (basically) you can have children but you are still a junior member of our society.
I have tutored a fair number of teens, and my trick is to treat them like adults who are still practicing (and thus need some supervision). I am straight up about it too.
I think a lot of public school is geared toward getting working class people ready to be treated like children all their lives at the factory/ restaurant/ wherever. But usually the system wears them down, and they are docile alcoholics or tv addicts, afraid of their bosses and schoolteachers, with really low self esteem by the time they are 20 or so. So kids rebel or "have fun" (sex, drugs, rock and roll) while they can -- who wouldn't?
I went to a private school myself, where we were all getting ready to have self-driven, challlenging, interesting lives, and except for those of us with seriously screwed up family life (yes, I blame them ...), everybody had really good relationships with teachers and parents. It made total sense to us to study and learn to interact with older people. Who wouldn't?
Most compelling were his discussions about the -numerous- societies around the world who don't even have a word for "teen". That, and his observations regarding how young adults are segregated from society and are basically barred from work (excepting the most menial and unfulfilling), completely changed my conception of then entire issue.
If I could be bothered to read a book about parenting, it would be his.
But isn't that just a matter of how they count? Admittedly it would be nicer if we said, tenie one, tenie two, tenie three, tenie four, etc... But he's saying that this is the crux of the problem?
Arabic doesn't have a word for teens (not even a loan word), but they have a word for adolescence.
This may be a bit embarrassing, but I only recently understood the real meaning of "teenager". I used to think it's just an arbitrary word that has the same meaning as "youth".
I believe the most detrimental part is the fact that teens themselves often don't see themselves as "complete", "grown up", or as adults. This leads them to see and treat everything through a particular lens that they can excuse any behavior on. If from the start they were convinced they were adults (were complete and grown up), I believe they would take much more responsibility earlier on for their actions. I know I would've.
Ultimately I find the suggestion that lack of discussion of adolescence in other societies is an indicator of their adolescents' brain development being different absurd in the absence of any supporting evidence actually related to the brain. I doubt many pre-industrial societies have a word for "feminism", yet would be amazed if someone were to advance the argument that a female perspective on the world only became significant and distinct enough to warrant discussion in the early 1900s - even more so if they were to use it to buttress an argument on female cognitive development.
Consider the alternate hypothesis: little attempt is made to describe and analyse adolescence in non-Western societies because: (i)those cultures are much less inclined to offer teens freedom of choice and expression (ii) those cultures have little interest in understanding the psychological development of teens. Juvenile crime is not a distinct phenomenon if juveniles are subject to (and deterred by) the same draconian sanctions as adults. Teenage resistance to education is not an issue if teenagers are expected to work to eat. Teenage sexuality is not an issue if society treats sex simply a means to procreation and allows the genders to mingle only in the interests of arranging parentally sanctioned heterosexual marriage.
Even if these differences do have a noticeable effect on brain chemistry, I'll happily accept the angst of my teenage years as the price of living in a post-industrial society.
But the following quote clearly sounded over the top: Teens are subject to, Epstein explains, “…more than 10 times as many restrictions as are mainstream adults, twice as many restrictions as active-duty U.S. Marines, and even twice as many restrictions as incarcerated felons.”
I'd sure like to see some proof of that. Surely teens get a raw deal, but to that extent? It set off my "critical thinking" alarm.
It's also possible that there was a smaller difference in the brain a few hundred years ago from factors like food availability. The current over-abundance of food is changing the the timing of puberty for example.
Is it food availability, do you have a citation - I hypothesised that this was due to the wash of oestrogen-like chemicals and hormone disruptors in domestic use in the more developed nations.
Edit: an example citation - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthcomment/geoffrey-lean/...; other articles note the increase in the use of soya in countless processed foods and the high levels of oestrogenic chemicals it has.
http://edrv.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/24/5/668
Could be chemicals, could be nutrition or genetics, doesn't look like they pinned it down. But in the context of this discussion, culture shouldn't be the only culprit.
And the trend (more and more learning needed) will probably continue, judging from the stuff my teen kids are doing in their last 2 years of high school - things that I came across in my honours year of engineering (e.g. electronic data acquisition) are now taught in year 12. Wow.
Abuse is a violation of a right. What rights do children have that adults lack? What rights do we lose when we reach the age of majority? That's a hard way to look at this problem from a society that purports to grant additional rights (or to lift prohibitions) as a person ages.
Many of us on HN understand that non-academic labor is the best way to gain experiences that we find indispensable in the pursuit of happiness. Withholding opportunities from minors is an even greater abuse than the working conditions that prompted the prohibition of child labor and compulsory schooling.
Perhaps another valuable question would be what trait of children allow their exploitation in times past? Naivety? Lack of physical power? Was our opposition to child labor the demanding physical requirements, or the sacrifice of schooling?
"Developed societies have a special age group for people who are no longer children but are not yet adults, and this group becomes a source of social change. In societies that have only two age groups, children and adults, a culture can go along virtually unchanged for generation after generation, but as soon as there's a special age group for teenagers, things start to happen. The teenagers look for ways of demonstrating their fealty to their own age group ways of showing that they're different from adults. They use weird forms of adornment that adults find unacceptable, and they invent new words or use old words in new ways. If people didn't keep graduating out of the teenage group and taking their vocabulary with them, eventually they would create a whole new language and the adults wouldn't be able to understand them. Which, of course, is just what they're after!"
If so, then something like adolescence could likely also be susceptible to such an effect.