I only wonder why this has just now been looked at. Ask any teenager and you would have figured this out a long, long time ago. A glamorous death is naturally seen as preferable to getting older. they live for the now, tomorrow is just too far away.

The word is jibe.

Not jive.

I understand what you're saying about whether a single question really has any power. But I've read about studies where minority students (I think it was specifically African American teens) were put into two groups. One read an essay/article/something like that that was full of negative stereotypes about African Americans, and the other read a neutral or maybe it was even a positive essay. Then all the students took a test. The students in the first group, reading the negative essay, scored significantly worse on the test. There have been similar studies with girls and math. Words and expectations, even subtle ones, can be powerful.

They have no concept of what 30 means. It's sll just "old."

I don't think that the suggestion that teens think they are immortal means that they literally think that they are immortal, and so those ages don't really matter.

Teens don't know how old 30 is. Or 50. Ask teenagers how old their teachers are, and they'll have no clue. A teacher who is obviously under 30 can tell his/her high school students that s/he is 47 and most of them will believe it. 30 seems really old to them, and so far away as to be indistinguishable from 50. To them, we are all old.

If the study design fasley assumes that students can meaningfully differentiate between 35 and 45, then conclusions about what survival to 35 might mean are all questionable. We might as well just ask them if they think they will live to be "old" and see what they think.

The problem here is that the frame of reference for the teens and researchers are so different that the questions means something different from the teens than the researchers, and yet the researchers are not accounting for this.

Don't make the same mistake, youself.

is probably closer to the truth.

I remember a teacher trying to get us to figure out how old we'd be in the year 2000. I figured out I'd be 28, and though "Great! My life will practically be over by then!" I remember reading "Gone With the Wind" at 12 and identifying with Scarlett O'Hara's angst at not being the belle of the ball before turning 18.

Teens are surrounded by pop stars, actors, models and athletes, nearly all of whom are has-beens before they sprout their first gray hair. Their own real role models (parents, teachers, etc) are paunchy, wrinkled, balding, or otherwise unglamorous. And either hopelessly clueless about "cool stuff" or else trying too hard to stay "with it."

At 15, doesn't death seem preferable to aging?

Thanks Ms. Berman, for posting an article addressing concerns about our youth - a vastly underrated issue and an equally under-served population. Teens are not only directly affected by our real values and ethics, but they also represent our own futures.

The problem of fatalism, even nihilism, in our youth has been known to those of us in social services since the advent of nuclear weapons. Studies done in the 1980's have revealed that many, even white, middle class teens, held the opinion that they were unlikely to reach adulthood.

It's not so simple, though, as to say that teens hold either "immortal" attitudes or fatalistic anticipation of early death. In most cases I'd argue that a great many teens hold both. One major aspect of human development during teenhood is to start figuring out where one stands in relation to the world.

From the information referred to in this blog, a lot of kids are struggling to do just that - in the world we're all familiar with - and their stated opinions are quite relevant to their own environments and experiences.

I want to suggest some corrections, though: A belief in their own indestructibility does not come from what kids are trained to believe as much as from general naivete... limited awareness of real consequences and threats, and limited awareness or confidence in their own efficacy. Which would be why children raised in more benign and protected environments often see themselves as being safe, ergo indestructible, while their more impoverished counterparts who experience things like repeated and dire family crises, gang violence, exposure to crime and drug addiction, etc., see themselves as helpless in the face of threats to life and limb.

So I disagree with the notion that asking kids what they want to do with their lives in adulthood is feeble. Yes we need to create a better world for all kids to grow up in, but the question about their own futures emphasizes to a teenager that he or she has ultimately more impact on their future than the immediate world they've inherited.

And this kind of constructive attention to our teens, I think, is vastly under utilized. One of our primary duties to young children is to protect and nurture them. One of our primary duties to teens is to teach them how to live in the world they're inheriting.

I'd like to see a whole lot more emphasis in our neighborhoods, our educational systems, and our society in general on supervising, training, and encouraging our teenagers to start taking the reigns in their own lives. I'd like to see more mentoring, internships, apprenticeships, and constructive initiation rights provided by people we trust.

Maybe then our more cynical youth will be less likely to participate in the violence they're growing up in, and more prepared, and more hopeful about the future.

Remember that the follow-up to "live fast, die young" is "leave a good-looking corpse." Teenagers may expect to die, but they tend to have a rather glamorous idea of what they means. Adults understand how ugly death really is.

You keep using this word. I do not think it means what you think it means.