Smells like teen spirit
October 19th, 2008
Okay, so my son sags his pants. When I was 15, the hem of my raggedy bell-bottoms dragged under my shoes. A dozen fights with horrified mom and dad. A dozen garbage rescues. In all primate species — whether we’re talking about humans, baboons, or macaques– the young are most likely to have the accident doing some foolhardy thing, while their elders shake their heads and cluck “I told you so.”
Ahhhh…those foolhardy skater dudes!
And yet, it’s the young who often push the world forward. Alexander the Great founded his first colony at the age of 16. Joan of Arc led the French army before the age of 20. The Beatles were 17 year old kids when they took the world by storm in 1960 and changed the sound of pop music forever.
1960 Beatles — and we’d never be the same
Something new? It’s not mom and pop who embrace it. It’s the same with all primates. When japanese snow monkeys discovered washing food in seawater, it was the youngsters who picked up the practice. The old folks looked on dumbfounded, if they looked on at all. Have a computer problem? Who would you trust more, the retired accountant across the road, or your 14 year old saggy panted son?
Snow Monkey at play
Some researchers point to the prefrontal cortex, which has been shown to be not yet fully formed in the teen brain. As a result, teens may find it difficult to override certain impulses in face of logic. Researcher Robert Epstein says not so fast. Correlation does not mean causation. According to him, the idea of a teen brain different from an adult brain is “a hoax, pushed to some extent by drug companies who are funding research.” Research in mental functioning has shown that teens are as competent as adults across a wide range of abilities. Studies of intelligence, perceptual abilities and memory function show that teens, in fact, are in many instances far superior to adults.
Paul Anka croons Nirvana’s “Smells like Teen Spirit”??
One thing for sure, all social primates have evolved a tendency for its youngsters to take off into the wilds and leave the safety of their own group. In chimps it would be the girls. In the Old World monkeys, like baboons, it’s the boys. According to neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, “It’s a simple fact driven by genetics and evolution: if everyone stayed on, matured, and reproduced there, and if their kids stayed on, and their kids’ kids too, then ultimately everyone would be pretty closely related.” (Sapolsky p. 78) Genetically, not a good idea.
Still, what’s going on in our primate genes, hormones, and neurotransmitters to make us hit the road? Why would we risk predators, disease, and loneliness? Animals hate novelty. And according to basic behaviorist theories, we tend to do things for which we are rewarded and tend to avoid things for which we get punished. And it’s not that we primates are pushed out. We choose it!
“We don’t know,” Sapolsky admits. “But we do know that following this urge is one of the most resonantly primate of acts. A young male baboon stands riveted at the river’s edge…To hell with logic and sensible behavior, to hell with tradition and respecting your elders, to hell with this drab little town, and to hell with that knot of fear in my stomach.”
Extreme bikers raising the hair on the back of your neck.
So, next time you see a teen with his jeans sagged down to his knees and grinding his skateboard down a handrail, smile and recognize that it’s his version of setting out into the open savanna. He’s following a deep seated urge as old as the hills and programmed somewhere deeply in his other set of genes.
Skateboarder Rodney Mullens — sagged pants and all
“Smells like Teen Spirit” Take 2 — String Quartet Tribute
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Epstein, Robert. “The Myth of the Teen Brain,” Scientific American Mind Vol. 18, No. 2 (2007): 57-63.
Sabbagh, Leslie. “The Teen Brain, Hard At Work,” Scientific American Mind Vol. 17, No. 4 (2006): 21-25.
Sapolsky, Robert M. The Trouble With Testosterone. New York: Touchstone, 1998.