Why Is My Teenager So Grumpy, Moody, and Self-Absorbed?

Teen arguing with parent

Source: deepai.org

For many parents, the transition to parenting teenagers is an abrupt and surprising one. Their once cute and cuddly child has turned into a sullen, angry, and self-absorbed teenager who seems happiest when they have nothing to do with their family. It's only natural for parents to think- have I done something wrong? What happened to my little angel?

A History Of Teen Angst

Some post-modern theories argue that teen angst is a relatively new phenomenon. There is indeed some evidence that teen angst is exacerbated in modern society as teens are given more room to express their emotions and fewer challenges to occupy them.

In the past, for both hunter-gatherer and historical teens, there would be added responsibilities during adolescence. In particular, teens would be learning about how to be adults in their society as they would be expected to be married/paired and starting a family by their late teens or early twenties.

But even among those historical cultures, teens would often be engaging in a lot of behavior we'd consider familiar today. They engaged in riskier behavior (e.g., more fighting; hunting more dangerous prey), they would travel longer distances to visit new friends and places, and they engaged in sexual exploration as well (other than some of the more sheltered youth). While patterns varied across time and cultures, adolescence was a period very similar to what we'd see today.

In a quote attributed to Aristotle in 350 BCE he said, "They have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things -- and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning -- all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything -- they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else."

In the late medieval period, Peter the Hermit said in a 1274 C.E. sermon, "The world is passing through troublous times. The young people of today think of nothing but themselves. They have no reverence for parents or old age. They are impatient of all restraint. They talk as if they knew everything, and what passes for wisdom with us is foolishness with them. As for the girls, they are forward, immodest and unladylike in speech, behavior and dress."

Sound familiar? Teen angst is nothing new. But if it has persisted across time and cultures, the question becomes why? Is this cosmic karma repaying parents for their own angst? Or could there be an adaptive, evolved reason for it?

Studying the Development of Teenage Personality

To answer this question, my team conducted longitudinal research on hundreds of teenagers over a period of several years. Using the HEXACO personality measure (the best modern measure of personality), we found that teenagers did, in fact, become grumpier, more-risk taking, withdrawn, and self-absorbed over time. Similar cross-sectional data have been observed in samples of thousands of English- and Korean-speaking online participants. Those cross-sectional data also show an important point- young adults quickly lose the angst and become much more cooperative and stable. So why are teenagers singled out for angst?

It's important to recognize that, as with any complex behavior, there are many factors contributing to it- parenting, culture, hormones, and peer influences. But my colleagues and I think that there is something else. We think that teens evolved to be surly and self-absorbed for a reason. That reason goes back to our past, because evolution solves today's problems tomorrow. Thus, teens today have minds adapted to solving the problems they faced yesterday. And one of the biggest commonalities across adolescence is that teens transition from being a dependent child to being an independent adult.

Doing that requires moving on from one's family and parents. The people who have provided food, security, and love. Done properly, that makes a bond that's very hard to ignore, let alone move away from. As decades of tearful Fall campus move-ins have shown us, it's not easy to leave the security and comfort of home to start up your own family. What traits might make that easier?

A Rationale for Teen's Toughest Behaviors

First, start thinking of your own needs rather than the family's. So there's the self-absorbed piece. Second, stop wanting to hang around your parents. There's the withdrawn lack of sentimentality piece. Third, be willing to take risks now rather than think about the long-run. There's the lazy, impulsive piece. Finally, potentially far away from your family's support, be ready to defend yourself. There's the surly piece. Put them all together and you get a set of personality traits that's well-suited for allowing teens to break away from the nest and start living on their own. On the other side, it may also make parents less keen about guilting their teens to stay home!

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Thus, teenagers personality changes may have evolved to serve an important, if temporary, role in human life history. Promoting their own new independent family ahead of their birth family. The changes we see in their personality appear to be an adaptive, temporary, shift to promote that. That's not to say every teen goes through these changes and recent data shows that today's teens are taking fewer risks than they did in the past- perhaps because parents aren't quite so keen on letting their teens leave. But even if teens are taking fewer risks now than before, if we are right, teens will always have a degree of natural impetus to be surly, withdrawn, and self-absorbed.

The good news is that data suggests that to be a very short phase of human life history. So be patient, be supportive, and be ready to enjoy the return of your adult son or daughter who, in personality at least, may end up resembling the child they were before biology brought on the storm of being a teen.