Extended adolescence has become a major trend in American life. Read insights from a veteran youth leader about the impacts of drawing out this developmental stage.
Throughout the decades and centuries, the experience of being a teenager has many similarities. But plenty of dissimilarities also exist. Many of these shifts are things we’re all aware of, if we stop to think about them.
Examples include increased pressure and stress, constant access to and bombardment of information, instant everything (including an expectation of instant, no-presence-required communication).
Each of these interwoven shifts (and others) have an impact on the spiritual lives of teenagers. So youth workers must be thoughtful about where we pander or acquiesce. We also must carefully consider where we take counter-cultural stands.
Our role is to help teens know and embrace what I call a “truthier truth.” (I suppose “truer truth” would be more grammatically correct. But I like the former, so deal with it.)
Perhaps the biggest shift in American adolescence is the duration. Adolescence is now, on average, an almost 20-year trek, lasting all the way through the 20s. Of course, some 20-somethings are fully living as adults long before they reach 30, which used to be the marker of entering middle age. Then again, plenty of young 30-somethings still living in an extended adolescence.
Insights on Extended Adolescence
We could ask hundreds of questions about this topic and thousands of questions about the implications. But I want to zero in on one key query:
What impact does extended adolescence have on the faith formation of teenagers? (Okay, and a second question: How should we respond?)
Wouldn’t it be nice if this paragraph, the one following those critically important questions, had a nice, neat answer? Nope, sorry. This stuff is too new, and changing too quickly, to have a nice, neat answer already.
I’ll tell you this… The overwhelming response by the church so far (by those who are at least aware of the issue) is to create a homogeneous pocket of isolation. They beef up young adult ministries in the church.
Churches are realizing two things: Teens leave church after graduating from youth group, and no young adults are in our church. Sure, there might be a lame little young adult group of some sort. But in many churches, your average high school graduate wouldn’t be caught dead attending it.
In response, churches around North America are creating young adult youth groups. Really, that’s what they are (of course, they wouldn’t call them that). And this, my friends, is only perpetuating and extending some of the very problems we’re discovering about how we’ve approached youth group for the past few decades.
Why This Matters
Isolation isn’t the church. Homogeneity doesn’t have much of a scent of the Kingdom of God. And creating these pockets of isolation only further removes the onramps to adulthood that teenagers (and now “emerging adults”) so desperately need.
Here’s why I care about this. Just as I don’t want my 13-year-old son to have the same faith he had when he was 8, I hope he isn’t stuck with his current faith when he’s 26. And, I feel the same for every teenager in my church. To be honest, I feel the same about every teenager in your church.
Extended adolescence is too big of a deal to ignore.
