Growing up in the 21st century …

I already know it: when I come home in the evening, they are standing on the village square. A group of young people who meet and chat there, usually bent over their mobile phones – sometimes it smells unpleasantly of cannabis, drink cans are lying around. Others are casually kicking the ball to each other on the nearby football pitch. A boy and a girl sit a little apart, close together. They are all in the midst of a challenging developmental task – no longer children, but not yet adults either. With the desire to be taken seriously, but also with a hesitation to take responsibility for upcoming tasks. The foundations for this step towards maturity were already laid in their childhood years.

Challenging years

It is also no easy task for parents to guide their children into adulthood. They love and appreciate their adolescents and want the best – an expectation that is often combined with the fear and uncertainty of doing something wrong. Parents know the situations (and don’t actually like them) where conflicts are sparked by small everyday problems: coming home too late, the room resembles a jungle, the hairstyle or clothes are annoying, the music is too loud and finally the mobile phone – a perennial issue. Where is the little girl who was interested in horses and the boy who would have preferred to take the football to bed with him? These differences of opinion can also be representative of more serious issues such as problems at school and in education, drugs, first love relationships and questions about sexuality, conflicts with the law, etc., which are better discussed only when it is unavoidable. And today, of course, in some families it is a controversial topic and cause for discussion: Climate crisis, concerns of minorities, special dietary ideas, racism and more. But more on that later!

A joint learning process

The view that family life with adolescents essentially consists of painful tensions and arguments cannot be upheld according to scientific studies. When adults draw conclusions about all adolescents from observing them, they are not only making an inadmissible generalisation, but also creating new problems. Unfortunately, there is a growing group of young people in our society who find it difficult to cope with the demands of life and live in a parallel world of digital media and unrealistic ideas about life. However, this ignores the many young people who are facing up to their responsibilities in work, family and society.
  However, it is true that the frequency of conflict with parents usually increases in early adolescence, but then decreases again. The decisive factor is their frequency and how they are dealt with, because areas of friction can generate heat, but can also overheat ...
  Both sides, parents and adolescents, must therefore familiarise themselves with new tasks and life contexts, learn to clarify differences of opinion and resolve conflicts, in the knowledge that two different people are facing each other: one with a lot of life experience and a correspondingly broader horizon and the other in search of his identity and future life plan.
  Thus, parents are required to empathise with the special emotional and life situation of their children with the necessary inner calm and composure. Young people, on the other hand, must learn to take responsibility and discuss their ideas and wishes with their parents and other adults fairly and in accordance with the agreed rules. It is therefore worth taking the time to clarify minor everyday issues, to really discuss what is debatable and to agree on clear rules for living together (and to demand them with the necessary generosity). In this way, both sides learn to treat each other with mutual respect.

Parents remain important

Parents are often advised to keep a greater distance from their adolescents during this phase of life so as not to restrict their development. This is a false theory that unfortunately persists. As a result, parents tend to underestimate their own importance and think it is right to ‘dismiss’ their adolescents too early. However, parents and family are particularly important for young people on the threshold to adulthood. They need mature dialogue partners to support them on their path to finding their identity and establishing relationships with their peers. When it comes to personal problems, parents are still the most important people to talk to (if this is not disrupted from the outside, as can unfortunately be observed time and again today), for example when they provide their sons and daughters with information and knowledge about how to organise love relationships and sexuality and also serve as role models so that they do not (have to) rely primarily on their peers and questionable media. Studies also show that parents are still the primary reference persons, especially in political issues, just like teachers.
  This challenges mothers or fathers and other important relationship figures in their own attitude to life. In addition to false parenting theories, they may also regret that their own youth is over. They identify with their growing children and dream of catching up on what they missed in a time that seems freer than the youth they experienced themselves, thus counteracting their own mood in life, which may be characterised by disappointment, emptiness and loneliness. It is obvious that they lack the calm and vision to provide their growing daughter or son with the necessary guidelines for identity formation. For young people, this means being confronted with a role reversal from which they cannot develop the feeling of being equipped for upcoming challenges.

Growing up – a task 
with bumps on the road

In everyday life, it is hard to overlook the fact that young people (at least in our western culture) spend a large part of their free time with their peers and less with their parents. It is often a question of having the same interests in areas in which parents are less at home: Music, sport, fashion and the affirmation of their own tastes. They seek to belong to peer groups that seem important to them and that often distinguish themselves through certain clothes, language codes and behavioural styles. It is no coincidence which group attracts the sympathy and interest of a young person, but it takes a certain affinity to want to join that particular group. This search is important for the development of their own self-image. Unfortunately, today’s (un)social media disseminate embellished photos of protagonists who are built up by the advertising industry as icons of a hedonistic lifestyle, but who present unrealistic life plans that insecure young people emulate and no longer see or appreciate their own strengths. This can lead to peer pressure, which can become problematic if admired circles cultivate behaviour that is unworthy of the community or even descend into criminal activities.

Learning to meet with dignity

Expanding the social environment and shaping relationships with peers are among the developmental tasks of young people. Peer relationships are voluntary and if you want to maintain them, you need the appropriate social skills. Although young people bring with them previous experiences from their families and models of relationship formation from their first years at school, they now have to learn to find their way in a new context. This includes adopting the other person’s perspective, recognising what triggers them and how far they can go without hurting the other person. But it is also important to clearly define your own boundaries. This is why the path to new and more mature relationships with young people of the same age of both sexes is not always easy, especially as intimacy is added to the relationship. Mastering these tasks well is important for later life tasks in romantic relationships, the world of work and the social environment.

A rift between the generations – 
a misconception that is being talked up

The media often talk about an unbridgeable gap between the generations. This misconception is fuelled by sensational reports about serious family incidents. An assertion that is only invalidated by the fact that the transition from being a child to becoming an adult is very different in families and that conflict and turning away during puberty are by no means a common feature of all ethnic communities worldwide, as ethnological research shows. 
  This is where the now numerous counselling centres and teachers have a responsibility to orientate their work in such a way that they do not cause or deepen dissent between parents and young people when adolescents turn to them in trust and in the hope of resolving family problems and personal insecurities. They have a lot in their hands to contribute prudently to a genuine clarification of unresolved issues.

Maintaining a clear view

And the young people on the village square? Are they difficult? They live in a world in which they are confronted with different values that are very different from those that have applied in the past. This difference in values and ideas about life has become even more pronounced in recent years. And this is not due to the young people. It is often overlooked that so-called progressive and burning issues and sometimes even utopian political demands, which can also manifest themselves in youth unrest, are not raised by young people under the age of 20, but are part of the political or ideological calculations of other circles that want to exert political influence. To this end, psychotechniques and propaganda methods are used to target young people – in the knowledge of their development-related insecurities. It is difficult for young people to orientate themselves in our society, which is characterised by arbitrary values, and to develop their own point of view. They are often overcome by a feeling of confusion, inner emptiness or meaninglessness, a mood that is fuelled by (un)social media. They see themselves growing into a world that is threatened by war and in which it is difficult to realise human values and ideals.
  This is precisely why it is important to talk about conflict-laden topics within the family, without arrogance, but also without trying to pander. Young people need and want to know how their parents form an opinion that may differ greatly from the one loudly proclaimed in the media. This lays the groundwork for them to take a well-founded standpoint of their own. They can also learn to see through how opinions are formed today and that the tolerance and arbitrariness that is always demanded today is in reality more to do with ideology, dogmatism and the calculation of power. Young people feel taken seriously and empowered by such discussions, and they are happy to gain a perspective on how they can meet their friends of the same age at eye level.

What is already there – 
it’s worth thinking about

Many parents, perhaps without realising it, have already laid the necessary foundations in the early years of their children’s lives to protect their sons and daughters from the fascination of certain groups and the influence of manipulation. They have shown them many different ways of exploring the world and shaping relationships – and have also shown them how it is possible to stand up to their own opinions and a value system that they perceive as positive. Even if the previously valid family values are sometimes critically and perhaps even vehemently questioned by adolescents – especially if they differ from a current dogma of opinion – they still know or feel and have experienced ‘what actually applies’, even if they would not yet admit this to their parents.  •

The following books have accompanied me:

Alsaker, Françoise and Flammer, August. (2011). Developmental psychology of adolescence. The exploration of inner and outer worlds in adolescence. Bern: Verlag Hans Huber. ISBN 3-356-83572-8

Buchholz-Kaiser, Annemarie. Individual psychological educational work – aspects of the analytical treatment of personality problems in groups. Zurich: Verein zur Förderung der psychologischen Menschenkenntnis.

Haidt, Jonathan. (2024). Generation Angst (The Anxious Generation, 2024, ISBN 978-0-5936-5503-0). Hamburg: Rowohlt. ISBN 978-3-498-02836-7