Your Teenager Is Not Crazy

by Jerusha Clark

  8. J. Brown et al., “Sexy Media Matter: Exposure to Sexual Content in Music, Movies, Television, and Magazines Predicts Black and White Adolescents’ Sexual Behavior,” Pediatrics 117 (April 2006):, 1018–27.

  9. The Kaiser Foundation, “Gender Roles: A Series of National Surveys of Teens about Sex,” December 2002, http://wayback.archive.org/web/20060308172558/http://www.kff.org/entpartnerships/upload/Gender-Rolls-Summary.pdf. Accessed February 9, 2015.

  10. D. Hallfors, M. Waller, C. Ford, C. Halpern, P. Brodish, and B. Iritani, “Adolescent Depression and Suicide Risk: Association with Sex and Drug Behavior,” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 27, no. 3(2004): 224–31.

  11. Joseph J Sabiaa, and Daniel I. Rees, “The Effect of Adolescent Virginity Status on Psychological Well-Being,” Journal of Health Economics 27, no. 5 (2008): 1368–81; and R. Rector, K. Johnson and L. Noyes, “Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely to Be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide,” The Heritage Foundation, 2003, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2003/06/sexually-active-teenagers-are-more-likely-to-be-depressed. Accessed February 9, 2015.

  12. Ilene Lelchuk, “UCSF Explores Teens’ Post-Sex Emotions,” San Francisco Chronicle, November 16, 2007, http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-UCSF-explores-teens-post-sex-2617439.php. Accessed February 9, 2015.

  13. L. Bogart, R. Collins, P. Ellickson, and D. Klein, “Association of Sexual Abstinence in Adolescence with Mental Health in Adulthood,” Journal of Sex Research 44, no. 3 (2007): 290–98, http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490701444005#.VNkdCEJvmGM, accessed February 9, 2015; and R. Finger, T. Thelen, J. Vessey, J. Mohm, and J. Mann, “Association of Virginity at Age 18 with Educational, Economic, Social, and Health Outcomes in Middle Adulthood,” Adolescent and Family Health 3, no. 4 (2004): 164–70.

  14. Bradley, 25.

  15. Chap Clark, Hurt 2.0: Inside the World of Today’s Teenagers (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 125–26.

  16. Solarz, “Developing Adolescents,” 8.

  17. Tripp, 87.

  Chapter 14 But It’s Mine

  1. You can find Joshua Becker at www.becomingminimalist.com. He is the author of Simplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Life and Living with Less: An Unexpected Key to Happiness.

  2. This and the following quotes come from a personal interview with Joshua Becker, March 19, 2015.

  3. B. Knutson et al, “Neural Predictors of Purchases,” Neuron 53, no. 1 (January 2007), 147–56, http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0896627306009044/1-s2.0-S0896627306009044-main.pdf?_tid=f907716e-ce65–11e4-b500–00000aab0f02&acdnat=1426789989_0049a7fec74d684f3ee77d11cfd8461e. Accessed March 20, 2015.

  4. Marsha L. Richins, “When Wanting Is Better Than Having: Materialism, Transformation Expectations, and Product-Evoked Emotions in the Purchase Process,” Journal of Consumer Research 40 (June 2013), 1–18. Emphasis added.

  5. Martin Lindstrom, Buyology: Truth and Lies about Why We Buy (New York: Crown Business, 2008), 124–26.

  6. Martin Lindstrom, Brand Sense: Sensory Secrets Behind the Stuff We Buy (New York: Free Press, 2010), 5.

  7. Ibid., 134–35.

  8. Tim Kasser, The High Price of Materialism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), 22.

  9. Thorin Klosowski, “Why We’re So Materialistic, Even Though It Doesn’t Make Us Happy,” December 19, 2013, accessed March 20, 2015, at http://lifehacker.com/why-were-so-materialistic-even-though-it-doesnt-make-1486081424.

  10. M. Bauer, J. Wilkie, J. Kim, and G. Bodenhausen, “Cuing Consumerism: Situational Materialism Undermines Personal and Social Well-Being,” Psychological Science 23, no. 5 (2012): 517–23, http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/bodenhausen/BWKB2012.pdf. Accessed March 20, 2015.

  11. Results of market research firm OnePoll.com’s survey of 2,000 shoppers, summarized by Dayana Yochim, “Women Spend 399 Hours a Year Shopping,” The Motley Fool, February 28, 2011, http://www.fool.com/how-to-invest/personal-finance/savings/2011/02/28/women-spend-399-hours-a-year-shopping.aspx. Accessed March 20, 2015.

  12. Melinda Beck, “Thank You. No, Thank You: Grateful People Are Happier, Healthier Long after the Leftovers Are Gobbled Up,” Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2010.

  13. C. Nathal DeWall et al., “A Grateful Heart Is a Nonviolent Heart: Cross-Sectional Experience Sampling, Longitudinal, and Experimental Evidence,” Social Psychological & Personality Science 3, no. 2 (March 2012): 232–40.

  14. Richard Swenson, In Search of Balance (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2010), 40.

  15. G. K. Chesterton, The Crimes of England (1915; A Word to the Wise ebook version, 2013), frontmatter.

  16. See Augustine, City of God, Book IV, 33, trans. Marcus Dods (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2009), 125–126.

  Chapter 15 Hold On, I Just Have to Send This

  1. M. Becker, R. Alzahabi, and C. Hopwood, “Media Multitasking Is Associated with Symptoms of Depression and Social Anxiety,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 16, no. 2 (February 2013): 132–35, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23126438, accessed March 23, 2015; and V. Rideout, U. Foehr, and D. Roberts, “Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year Olds,” Kaiser Family Foundation, January 2010, accessed March 23, 2015, at https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/8010.pdf, accessed March 23, 2015.

  2. Frances E. Jensen with Amy Ellis Nutt, The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults (London, UK: Thorsons, 2015), 207–11.

  3. Personal interview with Dr. Jay Giedd, March 1, 2015.

  4. Amanda Lenhart, “Teens, Smartphones & Texting,” Pew Research Center Report, March 19, 2012, http://www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/19/teens-smartphones-texting/, accessed March 23, 2015; “Share of teenagers who owned a cell phone or smartphone in the United States in 2012, by race/ethnicity,” Statista.com, http://www.statista.com/statistics/256542/teen-cell-phone-and-smartphone-ownership-in-the-us-by-ethnicity/, accessed October 12, 2015.

  5. Alex Cocotas, “Kids Send a Mind Boggling Number of Texts Every Month,” Business Insider, March 22, 2013, http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-number-of-texts-sent-2013-3. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  6. L. Rosen, K. Whaling, L. Carrier, N. Cheever, and J. Rokkum, “The Media and Technology Usage and Attitudes Scale: An Empirical Investigation,” Computer in Human Behavior 29, no. 6 (November 2013): 2501–11, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4338964/. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  7. S. Lemola, N. Perkinson-Gloor, S. Brand, J. Dewald-Kaufmann, and A. Grob, “Adolescents’ Electronic Media Use at Night, Sleep Disturbance, and Depressive Symptoms in the Smartphone Age,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 44, no. 2 (February 2015):405–18, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10964–014–0176-x#page-1. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  8. Payne, 104, 112.

  9. Todd Wilms, “It Is Time for a ‘Parental Control, No Texting While Driving’ Phone,” Forbes.com, September 18, 2012. Accessed October 19, 2015, at http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2012/09/18/it-is-time-for-a-parental-control-no-texting-while-driving-phone.

  10. Dr. Gary Chapman and Arlene Pellicane, Growing Up Social: Raising Relational Kids in a Screen-Driven World (Chicago: Northfield Publishing, 2014), 44.

  11. E. Tandoc, P. Ferrucci, and M. Duffy, “Facebook Use, Envy, and Depression among College Students: Is Facebooking Depressing?” Computers in Human Behavior 43 (February 2015): 139–46.

  12. Keith Wilcox and Andrew T. Stephen, “Are Close Friends the Enemy? Online Social Networks, Self-Esteem, and Self-Control,” Social Science Research Network, September 22, 2012.

  13. University of Edinburgh Business School, “More Facebook Friends Means More Stress, Says Report,” Science Daily, November 26, 2012, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121126131218.htm. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  14. We recommend Chapman and Pellicane’s discussion of this in Growing Up Social, 80–82.

  15. “Statistics: Product,” Youtube.com, https://www.youtu
be.com/yt/press/statistics.html. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  16. Susanne Ault, “Survey: YouTube Stars More Popular Than Mainstream Celebs Among US Teens,” Variety Digital News, August 5, 2014, https://variety.com/2014/digital/news/survey-youtube-stars-more-popular-than-mainstream-celebs-among-u-s-teens-1201275245/. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  17. Katie Marsal, “Apple’s iOS App Store reaches record 7.8M daily downloads,” Apple Insider, http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/11/24/apples-ios-app-store-reaches-record-78m-daily-downloads. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  18. “Google Search Statistics,” available live at Internet Live Stats, http://www.internetlivestats.com/google-search-statistics/. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  19. “Total Number of Websites,” statistics available live at Internet Live Stats, http://www.internetlivestats.com/total-number-of-websites/. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  20. Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (New York: W. W. Norton, 2011), 125 and 116.

  21. Kathy Koch, Screens and Teens: Connecting with Our Kids in a Wireless World (Chicago: Moody, 2015), 83.

  22. Ibid.

  23. Swenson, 205.

  24. Andy Henion and Mark Becker, “Multiple Media Use Tied To Depression, Anxiety,” Michigan State University Today, December 4, 2012, http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2012/multiple-media-use-tied-to-depression-anxiety/. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  25. Leaf, Switch On Your Brain,102.

  26. Gaëlle Desbordes et al., “Effects of Mindful-Attention and Compassion Meditation Training on Amygdala Response to Emotional Stimuli in an Ordinary, Non-Meditative State,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, November 1, 2012, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3485650/. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  27. Maria Konnikova, “The Power of Concentration,” New York Times Sunday Review, December 15, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/opinion/sunday/the-power-of-concentration.html?_r=0. Accessed March 23, 2015.

  28. Robert Siciliano, “Teens’ Online Behavior Can Get Them in Trouble,” McAfee, June 3, 2014, https://blogs.mcafee.com/consumer/teens-and-screens. Accessed March 24, 2015.

  Chapter 16 It’s Not That Bad

  1. Siegel, Brainstorm, 90–91.

  2. Steinberg, 17.

  3. Adapted from Chapman and Pellicane, 21–22, and Tripp, 155.

  4. Fay and Cline, 73.

  5. Tripp, 155.

  6. Burns, 157.

  7. Eric Stice and Heather Shaw, “Adverse Effects of the Media Portrayed Thin-Ideal on Women and Linkages to Bulimic Symptomatology,” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 13, no. 3 (1994): 288–308, https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/guilford-press/adverse-effects-of-the-media-portrayed-thin-ideal-on-women-and-Zfe0lnCqiO. Accessed March 26, 2015.

  8. Wendy Spettigue and Katherine A. Henderson, “Eating Disorders and the Role of the Media,” Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 13, no. 1 (February 2004): 16–19, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2533817/. Accessed March 26, 2015.

  9. “The Body Project: Facilitator Fact Sheet,” The Body Project, http://www.bodyprojectsupport.org/assets/pdf/materials/facilitator_fact_sheet.pdf. Accessed March 26, 2015.

  10. Allison Field, et al., “Prospective Associations of Concerns about Physique and the Development of Obesity, Binge Drinking, and Drug Use Among Adolescent Boys and Young Adult Men,” The Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics 168, no. 1 (January 2014): 34–39, http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1766495. Accessed March 26, 2015.

  11. Feinstein, 89 and 91.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Zaheer Hussain and Mark Griffiths, “Excessive Use of Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Games: A Pilot Study,” International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction 7, no. 4 (October 2009): 563–71, http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11469–009–9202–8. Accessed March 26, 2015.

  14. The American Academy of Pediatrics, “Policy Statement—Media Education,” http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2010/09/27/peds.2010–1636.full.pdf+html. Accessed March 27, 2015.

  15. Chapman and Pellicane, 76.

  16. Random House Dictionary, s.v. “pop culture” (New York: Random House, 2015).

  17. Walt Mueller, “5 Truths About Pop Culture,” Center for Parent/Youth Understanding, 2004, http://www.cpyu.org/resource/5-truths-about-pop-culture/. Accessed March 27, 2015.

  18. Leaf, Switch On Your Brain, 85.

  19. Francois Fénelon, Fénelon: Talking with God, modern English version, trans. Hal M. Helms (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 1997), 76.

  Chapter 17: How Do I Know That’s True?

  1. Kara E. Powell and Chap Clark, Sticky Faith: Everyday Ideas to Build Lasting Faith in Your Kids (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 15–16.

  2. Dr. Andrew Newberg, quoted in Robert Crosby, “Faith and the Brain: An interview with Dr. Andrew Newberg,” Leadership Journal, Summer 2014, 29, emphasis added.

  3. Ibid., 28.

  4. Ibid., 28.

  5. Ibid., 29.

  6. Fuller Search Institute, Effective Christian Education: A National Study of Protestant Congregations (Minneapolis: Search Institute, 1990), quoted in Powell and Clark, 64.

  7. Powell and Clark, 77.

  8. Ibid., 73.

  9. Ibid., 46.

  10. The thoughts in this paragraph were inspired by Paul David Tripp’s teaching.

  11. Steinberg, 34.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 24.

  Chapter 18 It’s Not My Fault

  1. Francis Collins, Lowell Weiss, and Kathy Hudson, “The Heredity and Humanity: Have No Fear. Genes Aren’t Everything,” The New Republic, June 25, 2001, http://www.arn.org/docs2/news/heredityandhumanity0711.htm. Accessed April 7, 2015.

  2. Tripp, 112.

  3. Fay and Cline, 14.

  Chapter 19 I Can’t Take This!

  1. Lisa Eiland and Russell D. Romeo, “Stress and the Developing Adolescent Brain,” Neuroscience 249 (2013), 162–71.

  2. Jensen, 22.

  3. Research conducted by the American Psychological Association, referenced in Swenson, 160. See also Dr. Caroline Leaf, Who Switched Off My Brain: Controlling Toxic Thoughts and Emotions (Southlake, TX: Switch On Your Brain International, 2007), 9.

  4. Feinstein, 58, and Jensen, 172–73.

  5. John C. Ortberg, “Taking Care of Busyness,” Leadership Journal, Fall 1998, http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/1998/fall/8l4028.html; and Bill Gaultiere, “Ruthlessly Eliminate Hurry,” February 20, 2013, http://www.soulshepherding.org/2013/02/ruthlessly-eliminate-hurry/. Accessed April 9, 2015.

  6. Swenson, 85.

  7. This idea adapted from Richard Swenson’s thoughts. See Swenson, 71.

  8. Thanks to Dr. Daniel Siegel for this fantastic phrase!

  9. Siegel, 291.

  Chapter 20 I’m So Tired

  1. Valerie Strauss, “Checking It Out: Why Teens Stay Up Late—and School Starts Early,” The Washington Post, October 6, 2009, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/sleep/checking-it-out-why-do-teens-g.html. Accessed January 5, 2015.

  2. “Sleep, Learning, and Memory,” Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/learning-memory. Accessed on January 7, 2015.

  3. “Benefits of Sleep,” Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep. Accessed on January 5, 2015.

  4. “Consequences of Insufficient Sleep,” Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences. Accessed on January 7, 2015.

  5. Payne, 110.

  6. Siegel, Brainstorm, 256.

  7. C. Calamaro, T Mason, and S. Ratcliffe, “Adolescents Living the 24/7 Lifestyle: Effects of Caffeine and Technology on Sleep Duration and Daytime Functioning,” Pediatrics 123, no. 6 (June 2009): 100
5–10, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19482732. Accessed January 7, 2015.

  8. Feinstein, 72.

  9. “Teens and Sleep,” National Sleep Foundation, http://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-topics/teens-and-sleep. Accessed January 7, 2015.

  10. See Amy Wolfson and Mary Carskadon, “Understanding Adolescents’ Sleep Patterns and School Performance: A Critical Appraisal,” Sleep Medicine Reviews 7, no. 6 (2003): 491–506; and Scott E. Carrell, Teny Maghakian, and James E. West, “A’s from Zzzz’s? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents,” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 3, no. 3: 62–81, accessed November 5, 2015, at http://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pol.3.3.62.