TEENAGER: PART 1
I invite you to close your eyes. Breathe. For a moment, let yourself become a teenager again. Not the age you carry today, but that restless, uncertain, thrilling age between 13 and 18.
You might be you, or you might be someone else.
You might be dressed in retro bell-bottoms from the 60s or in the sneakers of today. What are you wearing? What are you holding? A phone? A bag? Perhaps someone else’s hand. Teenagers always seem to be holding something, as though grasping onto the world to remind themselves they are real.
Adolescence is about connection. The surge of hormones, the restless spirit, the desire not to feel alone. We clutch at objects, at people, because part of us still longs to be the child cared for and protected — even as another part insists on independence.
With your eyes still closed look around you: who is there? Where are you? Perhaps you’re in a bedroom with posters plastered to the walls, perhaps you’re out late at night with friends, soaking in the energy that vibrates at your “emerging-adult” frequency. Teenagers thrive on that hum of shared intensity as they shed their childlike skins.
Actually, if you discard away with the word “teenager” what is this word and phase really? …. is it a human mammal entering independence? The body is changing — breasts, muscles, voice, cycles — reminding us that biology has its own timetable. These years are messy, painful, sometimes embarrassing, but they are also necessary. The body pushes outward, testing boundaries, not only because it can but because it must.
While trajectories vary across genomes, environments, and habits, the intensity of physical change underscores adolescence as a site of deep embodiment, they feel their bodies intensely in response the the intensity of their lived body growing and changing.
Yet adolescence cannot be reduced to biology. As Dewey (1934) reminds us, experience is both bodily and aesthetic: a process of interaction with environment, suffused with meaning. Adolescence exemplifies this, as heightened hormonal states amplify the aesthetic intensity of lived experience — the desire to connect, the attraction to peers, the restlessness of late-night gatherings. Such moments can become openings to “wide-awakeness,” where subjectivity is redefined in relation to freedom and imagination.
The adolescent phase is therefore best understood as an aesthetic of becoming — a liminal stage where the biological, social, and imaginative intersect. It is a time of vulnerability (aches, appetites, uncertainty) and empowerment (strength, independence, relational agency).
Education is a deeply autobiographical experience. Being a teacher does not mean we need to return to our own teenage self physically however we do need to reflect on this phase in order to meet the teenage students in our care there.
TEENAGER: PART 2
Adolescence is not only about the body stretching, aching, and changing — it’s also about the brain. The prefrontal cortex, the part that helps us make decisions, regulate emotions, and imagine the future, is still under construction. We’ve all heard the jokes: boys’ brains don’t finish maturing until 25, if ever. Girls’ brains, by contrast, are sometimes said to reach maturity earlier, even in early adolescence. Whether or not we believe the stereotypes, what’s clear is that the teenage brain is a brain in rapid expansion, firing at an exponential rate.
At the same time, something else awakens: the instinct to connect, to attract, to find a mate. Mammals have their ways — pheromones, hormones, the pull of instinct. But humans are also cultural beings. Teenagers don’t just grow into independence in isolation; they grow within contexts. Clothes, music, slang, rituals — these are all signals of belonging, ways of curating relationships, of finding your people.
No culture is fixed, no culture is absolute. What is considered “right” or “wrong,” “normal” or “rebellious,” depends on the group you are in. But what all cultures share is the urgency of adolescence: the need to connect, to unite, to step into new ways of being.
So when we picture a “teenager,” we are never seeing just an age bracket. We are seeing a cultural product, a body and brain in rapid growth, a social creature learning how to belong.
Culture, then, is not peripheral but central to adolescent becoming. Norms, protocols, and “universal principles” are always mediated through specific contexts. Greene (1995) reminds us that adolescence must be understood not only biologically but imaginatively, as a search for wide-awakeness within cultural and relational frameworks.
Thus, the “teenager” cannot be reduced to biology or neurology alone. Adolescence is a culturally embedded, socially mediated, biologically propelled process of becoming. It exemplifies Dewey’s (1938) assertion that experience is continuous, shaped by interaction between organism and environment. To understand adolescence is therefore to situate neurological development within the wider aesthetic and cultural forces that drive human connection and identity.
TEENAGER: PART 3
Here’s the twist. Everything I’ve said so far about adolescence — bodies growing, brains maturing, hormones raging — that’s biology. That’s true. But the word teenager? That’s culture. That’s invention.
“Teenager” is not universal. Many cultures don’t use it at all. You are a child, and then you become an adult. The messy in-between is still there, but it isn’t carved out as a separate identity.
In the Western world, though, the word “teenager” only appeared in the late 1950s. The point is that it did not come from science, psychology, or education. It came from marketing. Car companies, keen to capture a new market, realised that young people represented a demographic with disposable income and cultural influence. They recognised that this age bracket were not quite children anymore, but not fully independent adults. They could therefore be sold to. They could be shaped as consumers.
And so, “teenager” was born = A capitalist dream. A new target audience. The word stuck. It became an identity, a life stage, a whole cultural construct.
So when we picture a “teenager” today — moody, rebellious, connected to music, fashion, freedom — we’re not just describing biology. We’re looking at an invention, a word that has shaped how we see young people, how they see themselves, and how whole industries profit from them.
Educationally, this highlights a tension between biological universals of adolescent development (neurological maturation, sexual differentiation) and cultural constructions of youth identity. The figure of the “teenager” demonstrates how categories of age and identity are not merely descriptive but normative, shaping behaviours, expectations, and pedagogical practices. From a Deweyan perspective, such constructs condition the environments through which experience is mediated, illustrating the interdependence of culture, economy, and identity in processes of becoming.
Until next time,
Dr. Mon x
EDUCATOR8 
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