Teen Spirit: How Adolescence Transformed the Adult World

Paul Howe

Sep 2020 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Tim Paige

About this audiobook

Teen Spirit offers a novel and provocative perspective on how we came to be living in an age of political immaturity and social turmoil. Award-winning author, Paul Howe, argues it's because a teenage mentality has slowly gripped the adult world. Howe contends that many features of how we live today-some regrettable, others beneficial-can be traced to the emergence of a more defined adolescent stage of life in the early twentieth century, when young people started spending their formative, developmental years with peers, particularly in formal school settings. He shows how adolescent qualities have slowly seeped upwards, where they have gradually reshaped the norms and habits of adulthood. The effects over the long haul, Howe contends, have been profound, in both the private realm and in the public arena of political, economic, and social interaction. Our teenage traits remain part of us as we move into adulthood. We now need instruction manuals for adulting! Teen Spirit challenges our assumptions about the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood. Yet despite a cultural system that seems to be built on the ethos of Generation Me, it's not all bad. In fact, there is an equally impressive rise in creativity, diversity, and tolerance within society: all traits stemming from core components of the adolescent character.

About the author

Paul Howe is professor of political science at the University of New Brunswick. He is the author of the award-winning book Citizens Adrift.

Tim Paige is an audiobook narrator with a passion for rom coms, superheroes, and telling stories that provide an escape from the world (or a new lens with which to view it). His voice-over work includes national commercials, promos, trailers, and video games.