Sex, substance use make teens feel older
Teens who have sex, drink or use drugs feel “older for their age” than their less-experienced peers, a new study shows.
But it’s not clear if feeling older makes teens more likely to engage in sex or try substances or if these experiences themselves make adolescents feel older, the researchers say. “It could be a bidirectional relationship,” Kelly J. Arbeau of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.
Studies have shown that adolescence is the only time in life when people consistently feel older than their actual age, she and her colleagues note in the Journal of Adolescence. During the 20s, the difference between actual age and experienced age shrinks, and by the 30s, people feel younger than their real age, a difference that continues into old age.
Arbeau and her team looked at the concept of “subjective experience of age” in 664 boys and girls between 12 and 19 years old to determine how it compared with their actual age, dating and sexual experience, cigarette smoking, and drug and alcohol use. Study participants were asked to rate how old they felt in relationship to their same-age peers on a scale from 1 to 5, with 1 being “a lot younger” and 5 being “a lot older.”
The older the study participants were, the older they felt for their age, the researchers found. Boys and girls dating someone older tended to feel older, as did those who were having sex. And the earlier a teen started having sex, the older he or she felt.
Teens who used alcohol and drugs also tended to report feeling older than their chronological age. Boys who smoked saw themselves as older, but smoking didn’t affect girls’ subjective experience of age. “It’s entirely possible that the antismoking campaigns are having an effect for girls,” Arbeau said, meaning “they don’t see it as a cool or mature activity anymore.”
The findings, Arbeau said, may help explain why some adolescents engage in risky behaviors. Kids who think of themselves as more mature, she noted, may be more likely to have sex, drink or use drugs because they don’t see these experiences as being dangerous for them.
The results may also be useful for parents of teenagers, she added, because adolescents who feel older than their real age may respond better when their parents talk to them as if they actually were more mature.
SOURCE: Journal of Adolescence, June 2007.
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