How We Can Have Better Conversations About Growing Up

‘The End of Adolescence’ debunks the stereotype that young people today are slow to grow up.

It sounds like a movie plot: Researchers stumble upon a forgotten archive of research, featuring interviews with then-college students, stashed in the attic of a Harvard University building for 50 years. And that research might change everything we thought we knew about what it means to grow up.

The initial researchers had abandoned 10 years of work — focused on illustrating generational differences — because they found the exact opposite: there are, they found, remarkable similarities and continuities between generations, meaning that the experience of time, exploration, and coming of age isn’t a uniquely kids-these-days one. It’s a developmental experience that stems beyond a single generation.

Those similarities between generations, abandoned by the original researchers who took up the project decades ago, are exactly what captured the attention of Dr. Nancy E. Hill, the Charles Bigelow Professor of Education at Harvard University and expert in adolescent development, and Dr. Alexis Redding, the Faculty Co-Chair of Higher Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and expert in the college experience.