Sex, Brains, and Video Games [Jennifer_Burek_Pierce]

Sex, Brains,
and Video Games
A Librarian’s Guide to Teens in the Twenty-first Century

Jennifer Burek Pierce


Sex, Brains,
and Video
Games
A Librarian’s Guide
to Teens in the
Twenty-first Century

Jennifer Burek Pierce

AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION
Chicago    2008


While extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of information 
appearing in this book, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, on the 
accuracy or reliability of the information, and does not assume and hereby disclaims 
any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in 
this publication.
Composition by ALA Editions in Electra and Sans using InDesign 2 for a PC 
platform.
Printed on 50-pound white offset, a pH-neutral paper stock, and bound in 10-point 
cover stock by McNaughton & Gunn.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American 
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed 

Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.   ∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burek Pierce, Jennifer.
    Sex, brains, and video games : a librarian’s guide to teens in the twenty-fi rst
   century / Jennifer Burek Pierce.
       p.   cm.
      Includes bibliographical references and index.
      ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-0951-5 (alk. paper)
      ISBN-10: 0-8389-0951-5 (alk. paper)
     1. Libraries and teenagers —United States. 2. Adolescence—United States. 
  3. Teenagers—United States.  I. Title.
      Z718.5.B87 2008
      027.62'6--dc22 
 
 
 
              2007021926
Copyright © 2008 by the American Library Association. All rights reserved except 
those which may be granted by Sections 107 and 108 of the Copyright Revision Act 
of 1976.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-0951-5
ISBN-10: 0-8389-0951-5
Printed in the United States of America
12  11  10  09  08 

5  4  3  2  1


s

For HS and MRB
t



s

CONTENTS
t

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  vii

Introduction  1
C H A P T E R O NE

Myths and the American Teen  13
C hapter T W O

Taking On the Teen Brain: Scientific
Perspectives on Adolescence  21
C hapter T HR E E

The Wired Generation: Connections
and Limitations  50
C hapter F O U R

Teen Sex: Facts and Fictions  86
C hapter f i v e

Living in a Multicultural World:

Diversifying Perspectives on
Adolescence  110
C hapter si x

Concluding Thoughts on Working
with Teens in Libraries  120
INDEX  125





s

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
t

In writing a first book, one learns how much the
seemingly individual author depends on the support
of others. Considerable thanks are due these friends
and colleagues. Among them, Mary K. Chelton,
my editor for a previous essay on adolescence, has
proved a steadfast and gracious mentor in publishing and other scholarly endeavors. Thanks to her
and to publisher Ed Kurdyla for permission to revisit
the chapter on adolescent sexual and reproductive
health information seeking, which Scarecrow Press
published in early 2007. My gratitude to American
Libraries editor and publisher Leonard Kniffel for
many years of kind encouragement and advice,
as well as his permission to include selected work

first published in the magazine, is substantial. The
patient and thoughtful encouragement of Laura
Pelehach, my editor for this project, is likewise
much appreciated, as is the attention of copy editor
Cynthia Fostle. Beverly Goldberg and Andrew Ho
provided feedback that helped me move forward
with confidence, and Bethany Templeton’s untiring efforts in obtaining articles and corralling my
errant citations were essential to completing this
manuscript. Thanks, too, to Emily Pawley, who at
Christmas 2005 told me to stir the mince pie filling
and make a wish.

vii



s

Introduction

t

A

s a friend and I planned a casual outdoor dinner one
summer night, she offered the following head count:
“We’ve got six adults, three kids, and possibly two
aliens.” It’s not that she anticipated that the Midwest might become a landing site for extraterrestrials.
“Aliens” was her label for the teens of the household, who were as likely
to be lured away from home by a spontaneous call from friends or simply

to avoid the gathering even without competing invitations as to join us
for our traditional Memorial Day barbecue. It was said affectionately and
with laughter, yet this characterization of teens reflected a certain amount
of bewilderment—and tolerance—for the changes that were taking place
in their lives. It implied questions like Who are these young people? It 
acknowledged the sometimes sud­den and seemingly unpredictable
changes in teens’ behavior. It suggested the difficulty of knowing what is
going on in adolescents’ lives and minds. If this is how parents, present in
their lives from the beginning, feel about adolescents, how are those of us
who work in libraries, who may see teens only sporadically and for short
periods, supposed to work effectively with them?
This book seeks, perhaps ambitiously, to address these and other questions about adolescent development based on contemporary research. It
draws on the fact that many individuals are asking questions about adolescent development. While having the potential to inform library ser­vices
to young adults, much of this research is itself relatively young and in




formation, meaning that there are limits to the conclusions that can be
drawn from it. This book acknowledges those limits and considers previous norms of librarianship as they form a basis for contemporary ser­vices
to young people. At root, then, this book explains what others who work
with adolescents have learned from their professional activities, how that
knowledge might revise our thinking about teens, and how to encourage
new priorities and partnerships in youth ser­vices.

The Purpose of Young Adult
Ser­vices, Then and Now
Library ser­vices to young adults should aspire to two fundamental 
objectives: to engage young people through meaningful and appealing responses to their recreational and informational needs, and to
simultaneously support good developmental outcomes. This dual purpose creates a balancing act for library professionals as they try to figure

out what teens want while giving them what they need. These aims may
appear straightforward, reflecting a common-sense approach to serving
young people, and in fact, advocates of youth ser­vices have long espoused
these aims. Think of Samuel S. Green’s description of youth ser­vices
when he wrote, “I would also have in every library a friend of the young,
whom they can consult freely when in want of assistance, and who, in addition to the power of gaining their confidence, has knowledge and tact
enough to render them real aid in making selections.”1 Yet what it means
to carry out the work of, on the one hand, making the library a welcoming environment for teens, while on the other, helping to make them into
reasonable and healthy adults, has varied considerably over time. A quick
glance at the profession’s past offers examples of the ideas librarians have
had about youth ser­vices that contrast starkly with our own.
In the earliest years of the profession, librarians were concerned
that their young patrons read too much and wanted the wrong sorts of
books. The 1879 complaints of one Mary A. Bean against young people’s
“craze for books” and “indiscriminate reading” were as laudable to her
contemporaries as they are laughable to us.2 Bean’s concerns, now so far
removed from the mainstream of professional librarianship as to seem
nearly alien, were very much congruent with the thinking of her time.
These were the early years not only of librarianship but also of psychology. It would be close to twenty-five years before the first full-length book

  st  Introduction


on adolescent psychology would appear. Then, the author of Adolescence
would become a prominent speaker at library and education conferences
in the early twentieth century, cautioning librarians and teachers about 
the damage that could come about as the result of young people’s reading 
habits. To Bean and her contemporaries, adolescents were sometimes trying but not unsympathetic individuals who could be encouraged to like
what was good for them by improving their taste from its youthful fixation
on romances or adventure stories to an appreciation of the classics that

showed real discernment. In other words, teens—who would not have
been known by that name and instead were included in references to
boys and girls—were unformed but educable, as long as they didn’t linger
under the influence of the wrong sorts of books.
Early youth ser­vices librarians in this country were not hostile to
teens, only very much concerned with their well-being as reflected by
their reading habits. There was dialogue about adolescent boys and girls
and the ways their needs differed from those of younger children. Librarians strove to shape young minds in ways that would support the development of adult lives and careers, not unlike the way their contemporaries
in Progressive Era reform worked to improve society by putting forward
new ideas as well as bringing about actual changes in people’s living
conditions. Despite these advances, pleasure in light reading remained
largely suspect because of its apparent failure to contribute to enlightened
thinking. There was the potential that frivolous or racy books would not
only damage young people’s futures in this life but also damn them in the
next. In 1895, George Cole warned librarians that
nowadays a child who can read will read; and if we do not lead
and direct his taste, the enemy, who is ever lying in wait for
poor, faltering humanity, will give the child abundant opportunity of the knowledge of evil; and this evil, whose knowledge
is death to the soul of every pure boy or girl, is crowding us at
every corner of life.3

In the late nineteenth century, librarians working with young people
seemed to bear an ominously weighty responsibility for their patrons’ futures. Teens’ judgments were inadequate to the task of identifying their
own recreational reading matter, and librarians became their protectors
against books that threatened mind, body, and soul alike.
Today, any librarian would say we now know better than Bean and
Cole. We no longer worry that our books will corrupt young people or
discourage them from seeking gainful employment by filling their heads

Introduction  st  

with foolish thoughts. If teens read for pleasure, we’re delighted, whether
they choose glossy magazines or a favorite title that we’ve enjoyed. We
encourage them and protect their rights to a wide range of materials, as
declared in documents as old as the 1953 Freedom to Read statement and
as recent as the 2006 ALA letter opposing the Deleting Online Predators
Act of 2006 (HR 5319, 109th Cong.).4 We’ve turned, over the years, from
guarding teens’ tender minds to launching them into a brave new world
of information and entertainment resources. This stance is intended to
reflect respect for the young person’s growing autonomy as he or she wrestles to create an independent and newly adult identity.
The professional literature in our journals and magazines extends this
theme in other directions. There are expressions of concern about incursions against young people’s rights to privacy: Should parents be able to
review library records to see what books their child has borrowed? Does
this change when fines or replacement fees are incurred? Can parents
limit the materials to which their child has access, whether this involves
books with content of which parents disapprove or R-rated DVDs? Is it
a violation of professional ethics to allow parents, as at least a few libraries quietly do, to request special library cards that restrict their children
to checking out material from the children’s collection? Should parents
or guardians be involved in reference transactions? Many writers in the
profession have argued that young people’s rights merit absolute defense;
some have even suggested that it may be parents against whom teens need
to be protected. The hypothetical situation of an abused young person trying to find help at the library is a specter that has been raised more than
once. How could one argue with the idea of meeting young people on
their own terms when the people most responsible for ensuring their wellbeing might harm them? These ideas about teens’ needs evoke a compelling image of the young person as independent, perhaps even abandoned
by their traditional caregivers; lacking safe places and well-intentioned
advisors; without resources . . . aside from what might be found at the
public library. It’s more than a truism to say we’ve come a long way since
the profession started; it is indisputably true, and it is time to evaluate the
ways our professional actions serve teens’ needs and interests.

The philosopher and poet George Santayana famously observed in
his Life of Reason, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
to repeat it.” In librarianship, we credit ourselves with remembering information history—times when people were denied access to materials
thought to be sensitive or controversial and times when people were prohibited from using libraries because of their age, their national origin,

  st  Introduction


their politics, or the color of their skin. In an effort not to repeat those dark
times, we have articulated goals of providing ser­vices to all, including
young people. We have statements of user rights, with names that echo
our most foundational documents of national governance. We promote
access to information and freedom to read in a Library Bill of Rights and
similar statements supporting individual opportunities for access. There
is training in serving the underserved. These and other activities show
librarians’ commitment to connecting young people and ideas of many
sorts and in many forms, of meeting obligations to young people that others have neglected.
Yet this enthusiasm for equality of users and unfettered access to information overshadows other components of the profession’s past—chiefly,
an awareness of the relevant expertise of other fields. When psychologist
G. Stanley Hall published his two-volume work Adolescence in 1904, some
have argued, he invented both adolescence and adolescent psychology.5
Librarians were among those who considered the advice of the first adolescent psychologist as they grappled with efforts to serve and to guide the
young people who entered their facilities. As the twentieth century wore
on, efforts to understand teens persisted. A writer for Publishers’ Weekly in
1929 observed, “Of recent years the adolescent girl has been much in the
public eye. Her psychology, her behavior problems, her needs, all have
been discussed at great length.”6 Librarians of that era were encouraged
to follow these discussions. Together, the American discovery of adolescence and the reform impulses of the Progressive Era engaged librarians’
interests in finding ways to support young people’s development.
Many ideas about youth ser­vices put forth by Progressive Era librarians, among whom even Bean and Cole could be numbered, would strike

few of us as truly progressive. Yet as the Progressive Era unfolded, these
librarians did something right in seeking out the ideas and advice of those
whose research in the social and behavioral sciences would contribute
to their ability to work effectively with young people. They understood
that their own professional training could and should be supplemented
by those who had other kinds of information about teens. They believed
that their work with adolescents would be improved by seeking out ideas
beyond the boundaries of their own field. Educators and psychologists
were among the experts these professionals consulted, but these librarians
also monitored prominent general-readership magazines that from time
to time published commentaries about young people and books.
It has been argued that providing library ser­vices in a dynamic contemporary environment is most appropriately guided by the profession’s

Introduction  st  


core values and enduring principles. While the profession’s past and
present values are far from irrelevant, I argue that professional ser­vice to
young adults is far more complex than the ideals we espouse as librarians.
To work toward the ends of engaging youth and encouraging their wellbeing, librarians must have an informed understanding of adolescence.
More than personal memories of that sometimes strange and awkward
time, librarians’ sense of what it means to be an adolescent should derive
from contemporary research that offers changing and even challenging
perspectives about our young clientele. More than knowledge of current young adult titles, the latest teen enthusiasms, or even the library
and information science research literature should inform a young adult
librarian’s professional practice. The work of other disciplines is essential
to understanding teens in the twenty-first century, and it can help us as we
think about the issues involved in balancing our efforts to connect with
teens and to support their transition into adult life.

W ho Is a Young A d u lt ?
A Glossary
Toward the end of a recent ALA Conference panel for young
adult librarians, one practitioner brought up this question: Who is
the young adult? The problem, she observed, was that different
people seemed to describe entirely different age groups when
using the phrase librarians have adopted for patrons between
the ages of twelve and eighteen. What was a young adult librarian to make of this confusion? she asked. How were young adult
librarians to know when someone talking about young adults
was actually talking about young adults? This librarian was correct in noticing that the people who are called young adults don’t
always belong to the group whom she intends to serve; further,
the young clientele of young adult departments may be given
different names as well.
Those outside of library and information science (LIS) who
work with young people have different vocabularies that reflect
the history and norms of their respective fields. Many other dis-

  st  Introduction


ciplines, including public health and psychology, refer to the
group we call young adults as adolescents. Adolescence has
been divided into three phases—early, middle, and late—to acknowledge the developmental differences between a thirteenyear-old and an eighteen-year-old. Still, there may indeed be
instances when other fields use our preferred term or the cohort that an individual writer describes includes teens as well as
slightly older individuals; however, the surest assumption when
someone outside the profession uses young adults to describe
a group is that this person refers to individuals who are no longer of middle school or high school age. To these and other researchers, young adults are eighteen and older; in other words,
they are those who have rather recently gained legal status as
adults in the United States. The combined newness of their status as adults and their age relative to others in the cohort makes
them young adults.

Librarians’ choice of the term young adults came about in
1957 after years of using a variety of terms to talk about teens.
The early journal literature of the field discusses ser­vices for “intermediates” and “older boys and girls.” Although it has been
contended that the term teenager came about as the result of
marketing and advertising campaigns following World War II,7
variations on that phrase were in use as these early professionals sought to work with teens. One occurrence was a 1922 sex
education pamphlet that spoke directly to its audience of teens.
Margaret Edwards, recognized as a key figure in the development of modern young adult ser­vices, disliked the word. One can
hear both the newness of the expression and Edwards’s disdain
for it: “‘Teen-agers,’ besides being a bit undignified, may sound
patronizing or scornful and does not seem to include the more
mature sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds.” Her assessment of the
terminology for labeling her young clientele seemed resigned to
its inadequacy: “Who are young adults? They are people in their
teens for whom there is no adequate nomenclature.”8 Nonetheless, the label has endured, and in recent years, its long-standing meaning seems to be on the verge of changing, as tweens,
or preteens, have become a market for young adult books.

Introduction  st  


Professions Invested
in Adolescence: Information
Sources and Potential Partners
Who are these people with interests in teens and their de­velop-­ 
mental outcomes? What information do they have that can help
us to help teens? Researchers in a number of disciplines have sought to
learn more about young adults as media consumers, computer users,
health-care recipients, and even simply as growing and changing individuals. Similarly, educators share some of our concerns about young people’s literacy. These fields are identified and described briefly in order to
offer an overview of information sources that may be useful to librarians.
In some cases, practitioners in these fields may be potential partners for

librarians who want to draw on content-area expertise to support outreach
and other programming for young adults.
Communication researchers are strongly interested in teens’ involve­
ment with mass media. Their definition of mass media encompasses television and radio, magazines and newspapers, the World Wide Web and
video games, and even movies, music, and blogs. These researchers use
diverse methods to see what programs and pages attract teen attention,
what teens make of the media, and what effects media consumption has
on teens. The processes by which media create their effects are also of significant interest. Consequently, communication researchers know about
what media teens turn to and what their brains make of the in­for­ma­tion
available through all sorts of communication channels.
Additionally, some communication researchers focus on interpersonal communication, or the interactions that occur between two people
or some­times small clusters of individuals. These researchers can determine patterns of expression and barriers to effective communication. As
as­pects of teens’ distinctive development become recognized, scholars of
interpersonal communication have begun to consider the implications of
cross-generational conversation and related issues.
Health researchers may be in schools of medicine or public health, in
departments of nursing or specialty fields. There are also federal, state, and
municipal health departments that collect data and carry out programs to
ensure the public’s well-being. Collectively, these researchers and prac­ti­
tioners produce a simply astounding body of literature each year. Among
the massive number of publications, there are articles concerned with
ensuring teens’ healthy development. Some of these materials address basic health-care matters such as access to doctors and clinics, while others

  st  Introduction


focus on the reproductive and risk-taking behaviors that tend to distinguish teens from younger children. Based on behavioral assessments and
other research, these studies identify the kinds of health information that
young people need and also consider teens’ information-gathering practices. This results in a rich body of literature that can enhance librarians’
efforts to offer teens meaningful and appropriate materials that address

their developmental needs.
Since G. Stanley Hall argued that adolescents were a distinctive
population who were undergoing a sort of rebirth that resulted in emotional and intellectual turbulence while the processes of change worked
themselves out, psychologists have been interested in teenagers. In the
twenty-first century, researchers in adolescent psychology have considerably more tools at their disposal than did the field’s pioneers at the start of
the twentieth century. One specialized research area is neuro­psychology,
which examines “the relation between brain and human cognitive, emotional, and behavioral function.”9 Some neuro­psy­chologists use magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) and other new technology to capture images of
the brain that provide insights into which parts of the brain are active or
changing at different times. Other kinds of studies are also contributing to
a changed understanding of adolescence. Because much of this research
is still new, researchers sometimes find themselves reporting observations
that contradict previous thinking, but they are not yet able to provide
specific recommendations that might guide our interactions with teens.
Nonetheless, the recent and ongoing work in psychology significantly revises the theories of Piaget and other developmental psychologists whose
models have been used to explain youth development.
Education research, like the research undertaken in psychology, em­
ploys a range of methods and comprises numerous special areas. Some
work taking place includes scrutiny of newer genres, like graphic novels,
as means of encouraging reluctant readers. Some researchers are considering the effects of video games on young people’s cognition. These findings regarding literacy and learning are of potential use for librarians.
These are some of the fields on which LIS practitioners can draw
in their efforts to provide meaningful and appropriate ser­vices to young
adults. The studies conducted in these areas alternately build on and revise what we know about young people. Given the nature of the revisions
that are suggested by this research, though, understanding what is taking
place outside the profession is increasingly important if we are to work toward ensuring the well-being and healthy development of the teens who
visit our libraries. It has been observed that youth literature is a vast and

Introduction  st  

interdisciplinary field; this turns out to be true of working with young
readers as well.

Understanding Adolescence,
Here and Now
There is increasing attention to youth development, and there 
are many efforts to follow the emerging understandings of young
people, not just in academia but in the popular press as well. Magazine
covers and news stories call attention to the ways that young people in
the twenty-first century differ from previous generations, if not because of
what these teens and tweens know and do, then because of what is newly
known about them. A glance at newsstand offerings shows publications
like Harper’s and even the New Yorker joining the conversation that others, including Newsweek and the Washington Post, have made a recurring feature in recent years. There are discussions of how the brain grows
and changes, whether girls’ and boys’ brains harbor sex-linked differences,
teens’ sleep patterns and alertness, and the social environments in which
adolescents operate, including online activities carried out through 
social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. One 2006 New
Yorker cover showed a back-to-school-destined youngster, head filled not
with the once-conventional subjects of reading, writing, and mathematics, or even the only-just-finished summer vacation; instead, this young
man’s brain was divided among adolescent preoccupations like Scarlett
Johansson, AOL Instant Messenger, and manga, with a relatively small
allocation for algebra lurking beneath the current, buzzy, electronic subjects. Inside, the magazine contained stories on the Mozart effect and infants’ acquisition of knowledge, plus cartoons on adolescent ennui. That
same month Harper’s—best known as an intellectually left-leaning commentator on politics and current affairs—presented a print panel on the
effects of video games on young minds. Occasionally the library literature
provides a glimpse of these issues, too. It seems to be acknowledged everywhere that young people form a distinct culture because of what happens
in their heads.
Librarians must attend to these conversations that are taking place
in a range of venues. In fact, the diversification of the places where such
information can be found—it is no longer only the province of scholarly
journals that demand a technical vocabulary—has increased the accessibility of evolving ideas about adolescence. Information and ideas about

10  st  Introduction


young people’s development are crucial to developing ser­vices and programs that are in tune not only with teens’ sense of their own needs but
also with the findings of experts who are able, through the distance of
time and objective research frameworks, to provide perspective on why
teens behave in particular ways. The conclusions that can be drawn from
skillful research are sure to change as time passes and more is learned
through the replication and refinement of studies, but we should not wait
for the definitive word before engaging these ideas. It is time for more
than a few people in LIS to recognize the importance of such projects; it
is time for the community of youth ser­vices practitioners to begin evaluating the conclusions that scientists and other scholars are forming so that
we can apply the latest knowledge to our own work with young people. In
the end, doing so may mean raising our own questions about young adults
in addition to considering others’ answers.
This book examines the ways in which the perspectives of other fields
that investigate the conditions and the outcomes of U.S. adolescence
can speak to our aims of working with young adults in libraries. It strives,
where appropriate, to use empirical research to answer questions about
the nature of young adulthood. It calls attention to matters that should
raise questions about our assumptions about teens and our resulting practices. It points toward change, but identifying all the elements of that
change is beyond its scope. Instead, it outlines key areas of interest, gives
attention to leading scholars and their work, and recommends resources
that librarians might enjoy and find informative. In all this, it suggests
further ways of thinking about the beings librarians call young adults.
Notes
1. Samuel S. Green, “Sensational Fiction in Public Libraries,” Library Journal 4
(1879): 345–355.
2. Mary A. Bean, “Evil of Unlimited Freedom in the Use of Juvenile Fiction,”

Library Journal 4 (1879): 343.
3. George Watson Cole, “How Teachers Should Cooperate with Libraries,”
Library Journal 20 (1895): 115.
4. American Library Association, Freedom to Read statement,  
.org/ala/oif/statementspols/ftrstatement/freedomreadstatement.htm; American
Library Association letter opposing the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006,
/> 5. Jeffrey Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the Twentieth
Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000).
6. M. A. Ashley, “Sex O’clock in America,” Publishers’ Weekly, October 26, 1929,
2077.

Introduction  st  11


7. Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (New York: Avon
Books, 1999).
8. Margaret A. Edwards, The Fair Garden and the Swarm of Beasts (New York:
Hawthorn Books, 1974), 16.
9. Neuropsychology, APA Journals (journal description), />journals/neu/description.html.

12  st  Introduction


s

C H A P T ER O N E

Myths and the
American Teen

t

N

umerous ideas about American adolescence prevail in
the twenty-first century. The picture created by these
images is not always clear, though. Teens are said to
be so technologically adept that they are capable of
electronic multitasking with ease, astonishingly promiscuous yet overprotected, overscheduled yet unprepared for intellectually rigorous testing, and more. Their youthful virtues and vices receive, if
not the sort of outcry that has arisen in the past when teens evinced values
and behaviors that differed from their parents’ ideals, then certainly a fair
amount of media attention. Not all contentions about youth cohere, nor
do the portrayals always stand up to scrutiny. Some media outlets turn our
attention to the extremes of youth culture, and others offer researchers’
more subtle perspectives on the same activities. Sometimes a phenomenon will seem to be genuine, based on media depictions of real young
people and supported by experts whose advice may speak to parents and
teachers but less so to librarians. Yet it is equally important for librarians to
understand and apply emerging research on adolescence in their ser­vice
planning, collection management, and other work with teens. Our abilities to welcome young people into our facilities and to engage their interests can be enhanced by other professionals’ information about teens.
Most librarians would acknowledge that whether because of media
reports or actual interactions, our views of adolescence are changing. 
We think of young people differently in part because teens think of 

13


themselves differently. Market researchers in the late twentieth century
were among the first to observe this trend, to which they gave the acronym
KGOY: Kids Getting Older Younger. This label reflected the idea that
the toys that once sold to twelve- and thirteen-year-olds were sitting on

store shelves. Preteens spurned Barbie as a baby doll and turned their attention and consumer power to things like cell phones and music. Some
of our recent questions about what it means to be an adolescent in contemporary U.S. society emerged from concerns about how to sell things to
teens. However, researchers with less commercial interests also sought to
understand the implications of a maturing and technologically inflected
adolescence; they have been slower to enter the marketplace of ideas, less
vociferous in contending for our attention.
This book responds to shifting cultural ideas about adolescence by exploring some of the contemporary research that likewise seeks to change
the way adolescence is understood. This chapter highlights a few particular claims that are promoted by the media and that will be examined further in the chapters to follow. These ideas might seem counterintuitive,
yet recent research indicates their sense and their ability to help us make
sense of the adolescents whom we try to work with in our libraries.
Myth 1
Teenagers Are All But Adults

News reports relay complaints about so-called helicopter parents 
who seem to hover over their adolescent children instead of allowing them to be independent. The idea that a young person who drives,
works part-time, and is on the cusp of legal adulthood isn’t capable of
making certain decisions independently strikes some commentators as
incongruous. Yet research in multiple fields indicates (while not denying
that parents can be overinvolved in teens’ lives) that every adolescent isn’t
exactly an adult-in-waiting. New information about brain development
and awareness of changing societal norms are two factors that have influenced researchers’ thinking about adolescent development.
Of all the ways that ideas about adolescents are changing, perhaps
most significant is the recognition that adolescence is in fact a time of
profound change, intellectually and in other respects. Once psychologists
believed that teens had acquired fundamental cognitive skills by the time
they entered middle school. These days, psychological and sociological
research raises the threshold at which young people transition to adult
capabilities. New research has found more extensive brain development

14  st  Myths and the American Teen

ongoing during the adolescent years than much prevailing psychological
theory had suggested would be the case. One now often-cited idea is that
the brain doesn’t fully mature until a person is in his or her midtwenties. There are individual variations, certainly, and these generalizations
are not meant to imply that teens are incapable of reasoned behavior or
thoughtfulness. Instead, many researchers think teens still benefit from
active adult involvement in their lives: young people make increasingly
challenging decisions while they are in the process of developing sound
skills of reasoning and judgment. Professionals in multiple fields are giving their attention to the implications of these findings.
Although the research getting the most attention pertains to teens’
brains, sociological observers see the environment in which young people
mature as more demanding, too. It also has been observed that “as young
people adapt their lives to a more complex world, it becomes more difficult to say at which point they have reached adulthood. There are more
paths to be taken through life and few maps to guide youth on the increasingly complex transition to adulthood.”1 For multiple reasons, then,
concepts of adolescence and maturity are becoming extended.

H ealthy Comm unities ,
H ealthy K ids
When the Urban Library Council conference met at the Chicago
Public Library in early December 2005, keynote speaker Dr. Felton Earls of Harvard University advocated envisioning neighborhoods as “small democracies to produce healthy environments
for . . . children to grow up in.” Doing so, he argued, was a step
toward ensuring that adolescents would experience fewer risks
to well-being as they mature.
“If you want to understand something about human de­vel­
op­ment in urban environments, you have to come to Chicago,”
Earls said. His research, which shows a complex interaction between neighborhood environments and health, cautions against
stereotyping and easy generalizations. Earls and his research
team sought to explain apparently unrelated illness and mortality rates, ultimately finding patterns related to the strength of
neighborhoods. He noted that socioeconomic factors alone did

not account for a “growing disparity” within the city and cited
instances of neighborhoods that were poor yet cohesive and

Myths and the American Teen  st  15


middle-class neighborhoods that were experiencing problems
related to lack of parental supervision of teens.
Healthy neighborhoods possess a quality Earls refers to as
“collective efficacy,” meaning that residents work together for
their mutual well-being. “Libraries have to help us stabilize this
fragile system of how people become active in their communities,” he said. “But young people have to identify themselves as
citizens.” Producing healthy and successful adolescents, then,
means working with all members of a community.

Myth 2
Teens Hate Their Parents

When I worked as a young adult librarian, there was a par- 
enting resource book that routinely provoked laughter in the 
department. It was called I’m Not Mad, I Just Hate You. Although the book 
focuses on mother-daughter conflict, its title seemed emblematic of parent- 
adolescent conflict. Everyone recognized that irrational yet deeply emotional conflicts developed between parents—or authority figures generally—and teens. Despite the sense of recognition that develops around
the idea of difficult relationships with teens, most problems are not pervasive and the vast majority of teens see their parents as supportive. Parents,
in fact, typically enhance their teens’ abilities to cope with discomfort
during adolescence.
For example, a study about young people’s proneness to worrying
found that when teens confided in their parents, they were less likely to
report concerns about peer pressure and popularity. Additionally, teens
who talked with their parents reported feeling less worried than those

who turned to their peers.2 Elsewhere, surveys have found that teens do
speak with their parents about issues like sexuality and regard them as a
preferred source of information about these sensitive matters. Similarly,
parents have been found to be very influential in the personal decisions
teens make. Overall, statistics indicate that nearly 80 percent of teens believe they have good relationships with their parents.
A library director whom I have interviewed was adamant about the
threats parents might pose to their children; she insisted on the need
to protect children’s borrowing records and other library activities from
parents who might not act in their children’s best interests. Recognizing
that the situation she feared is not typical seems like an important step in

16  st  Myths and the American Teen