Posts Tagged ‘Teenagers’

What my teenage friends think about the church

Thursday, November 10th, 2022
teenage friends

Growing secularism among younger people is no secret. A 2019 Pew Research Center Survey of Americans aged 13 to 17 found that only 50 per cent believed religion was an important part of their lives, as opposed to 73 percent of their parents. This trend has caught the attention of the United States Conference of Read more

Australian teens have complex views on religion and spirituality

Monday, September 24th, 2018

The 2016 Census suggested about a third of Australian teens had no religion. But ask a teenager themselves about religion, rather than the parent or guardian filling in the census form, and the picture is slightly different. According to our new national survey, at least half of teens say they are “religious nones” – those Read more

I put my teenagers on a digital detox — results were shocking

Thursday, November 23rd, 2017

I never realised just how damaging our obsession with smartphones and our switched-on lifestyle was, nor how addictive screen time was, until I put my teenagers on an extended digital detox. The results were swift and shocking, raising the question of just what is happening to the selfie generation and whether we have more to fear Read more

Oppressed teenage boys unlikely to show respect to others

Thursday, March 30th, 2017

I went for a run in the Domain – well a schlep, really. Yes, I know, exercise is vile but turns out to be less vile than taking antidepressants. Anyway on this particular day I found myself in the midst of hundreds of teenage boys in matching kit being made to run around, disconsolately. It Read more

The spiritual life of American teenagers

Tuesday, August 16th, 2016
The spirituality of a teenager

When I think of my teen years, I mostly remember a dark road. When I turned 15 I got my license and, with a small sum of money my dad gave me after he sold my childhood home, I bought myself a real beater of a car that you could hear coming from blocks away. Read more

The teenage brain on social media

Friday, June 10th, 2016

The same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are activated when teenagers see large numbers of “likes” on their own photos or the photos of peers in a social network, according to a first-of-its-kind UCLA study that scanned teens’ brains while using social media. The 32 teenagers, ages 13-18, were Read more

God is the answer: the scientific evidence

Friday, April 10th, 2015

Eighteen years ago, Lisa Miller, now the director of clinical psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College, had an epiphany on a New York subway car. She had been poring over the mountains of data generated by a three-generation study of depressed women and their children and grandchildren. The biological trend was clear: Women with severe—and Read more

Being parents to teenagers

Friday, March 27th, 2015

The more speaking engagements I do, the more convinced I am of the important role parents play in their teenagers sexual education…in fact, every part of their lives. As a parent of teenagers myself, I feel ‘in the thick’ of it every day; the emotions of their stage of life, the joy and pain, the Read more

State rejects sex education recommendations

Tuesday, November 18th, 2014

New guidelines for sex education will be released in a few weeks, but the Government will shy away from ordering schools to teach more than basic biology. The Ministry of Education is due to release the new blueprint in December, nine months after an advisory panel recommended teens be taught respectful attitudes as a core Read more

Cognitive change in the brain and teenagers’ behaviour

Friday, September 12th, 2014

Teenagers can do the craziest things. They drive at high speeds. They stand around outside loud parties and smoke weed in front of the cops. They guzzle liquor. They insult their parents – or lie to them – and feel no remorse, because, of course, their parents are idiots. It is easy to blame peer Read more