THE TRANSFORMED TEEN: Today’s Trendsetters


Just a couple months ago, you may have gotten to spend some quality time with the faces of the future, interviewing today’s teenagers seeking summer jobs. Tese attraction-side chats may have drawn up warm feelings of nostalgia, reminding you of your first summer job in high school: tearing tickets at your local one-screen movie theater, waiting tables at the diner around the corner, or calling park guests over to try their luck at toppling those milk bottles. But today’s teens are far less likely to be summer job hunting than you or I were; in fact, today’s teens are a lot different than us.


San Diego State University psychologist Jean Twenge recently completed a four-decade study of more than eight million teenagers, and published her surprising findings in the journal Child Development. In short, today’s teenagers are significantly less likely to work for pay, have a driver’s license, have sex, drink alcohol, date, and go out with their parents than all previous generations. Wasn’t the whole point of working that summer job to pay for our first car!?


According to Twenge, working for pay is down 21% points, alcohol consumption is down 26% points, drivers license ownership is down 15% points, dating is down 23% points, and sex is down 6% points among high school seniors from their older


siblings and parents. Oddly enough, there are no statistically-significant correlations connecting the demands of homework or extracurriculars to these declines, which have actually stayed relatively stable over the decades. Today’s teenagers are coming of age in an environment vastly different, for worse and better, than our own. Te ever- present internet, and micro-managing “helicopter parents” – the researchers surmise – are at the core of these differences. Average American families have fewer kids these days, able to focus their resources on fewer mouths to feed – which means teens don’t have to grow up as quickly as before, and are choosing to delay some traditionally adult behavior.


Looking around your attraction in the height of summer, you may be seeing clusters of teenagers taking selfies for Instagram and whispering drama- infused hearsay; but what you should be seeing are your future members, volunteers, donors, board members, and vice presidents. Our own teenage experiences can no longer inform us of what today’s teens need to grow and thrive; and in this issue of Destinology, we explore these developments to better equip you for the face of your destination’s future.


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