Hacker News Reader

Comment by silverquiet | Hacker News Reader

I don't think I've ever really gotten the whole teenage rebellion thing; don't most people grow up and emulate the religion, politics, and lifestyle (education, career type, marriage preference, etc..) as their parents?

View on HN

Rebellion can mean a lot of different things. Mostly it amounts to opposition in a fairly superficial sense. Different clothes, different haircut, different music, maybe some intentional bad choices... But although these things are high-visibility, they're not that fundamental to identity and culture. It's rare for kids to completely cut ties with the fundamentals (i.e. all the things you mention) of their parents, particularly now when kids are still dependent on their parents for longer into adulthood.

For me it was self-exploration and exploring the fringes of my identity using psychedelics and other drugs that my parents didn't particularly approve of. For some of my friends it was sexual identity (which was much more taboo than today). In general I think "rebellion" is the consequence of becoming a fully aware individual capable of independence from parents. Parents want to exert control over their teens, teens want to have agency over their lives, and the conflict between those two positions is framed as "rebellion".

If you think about it, teenage rebellion makes sense from an evolutionary perspective as it encourages a subgroup (teenagers) to explore outside whatever's the norm (aka adults). I wrote more about it in my blog post:

https://praveshkoirala.com/2023/05/31/teenage-rebellion-is-j...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com