Posts: General / 20-somethings

http://www.nytimes.com/20...?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage

This 20-something NY Times article has been popping up everywhere, so I read it. It is 10 pages and touches different topics. I'm wondering what the people of idiotechnica think.

Should this be a new developmental stage?

Are you an economics freak and think that nurture outweighs nature?

What is your general reaction? The damn thing was 10 pages, say something about it!

Two interesting response articles:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/08/whats-really-the-matter-with-20-somethings/61938/

http://www.lemondrop.com/...is-it-about-20-somethings

Isn't there something like your body physically and mentally goes through stages every 7 years?

I'm pretty sure I will not think the way I do 2 years from now and at 30 might even be a born again.. who the fuck knows.

m1nr:
Isn't there something like your body physically and mentally goes through stages every 7 years?

I'm pretty sure I will not think the way I do 2 years from now and at 30 might even be a born again.. who the fuck knows.

I've never heard that 7 year thing before.

I'm familiar with Erik Erickson's 8 developmental stages (9 if you count the one his wife published after his death) that are psychological, emotional and physical tasks.

The basic idea is that you if you don't learn the task at each stage, you won't be able to get to the next one. Or at least get there successfully/without difficulty. Similar to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you have to satisfy the "lower" needs before we are concerned with the "higher order".

The ages aren't arbitrary, but they're definitely not 7 year increments.

Infant (Trust vs Mistrust)
Toddler (Autonomy vs Shame and Doubt)
Preschooler (Initiative vs Guilt)
School-Age Child (Industry vs Inferiority)
Adolescent (Identity vs Role Confusion)
Young Adult (Intimacy vs Isolation)
Middle-Age Adult (Generativity vs Stagnation)
Older Adult (Integrity vs Despair)

This so-called Emerging Adulthood would fit between adolescence and young adulthood. I'd say adolescence is 13-19 and young adulthood is 20-40. I'm pretty sure Erikson defined Middle-Age Adult as 40-60. Anyway, 20-40 is such a large gap to clump a bunch of people together. As you said, you'll probably change twice before 30.

It almost seems like common sense, but so many theories and systems of therapy have been based around these stages.

Great article I ended up using it for class. 

As for the stages I think that whether a trait develops continuously (i.e., quantitative change) vs. discontinuously (i.e., qualitative change) is specific to the type of change. 

While Erikson and Malsow stages are interesting and may be helpful to an extent, to boil down development to trust vs. mistrust for infants, for instance, undermines the complexities of development. Not to mention that Erikson is way to psychoanalytical for it to be useful in many types of research. 

Most stage distinctions many times are focused on neurological changes rather than on specific attachment issues. Hence the new emerging adulthood terminology is rooted in apparent brain differences between this group and adults. 

Since no system is an island the use of stage terms that focus on only a small part of the process fails to tell us things about other processes such as language development or social reasoning. 

Interesting side note. This new stage in development suggests that there are key differences between groups. Since most University level research done in the social sciences uses college students as subjects then you would expect that the generalizing of findings of college students toward figuring out adult behavior is severely failed. 

Coincidentally enough my friend sent out a random email about this: http://www.nytimes.com/20...-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4 and http://www.nytimes.com/20...rc=twt&twt=nytimesscience

Now the first one sends me in to a log-in, but then when I click the 2nd link and then click the first again it lets me in [/hax]... or you could just have a membership to the site. It's rather interesting though.

m1nr:
Coincidentally enough my friend sent out a random email about this: http://www.nytimes.com/20...-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4 and http://www.nytimes.com/20...rc=twt&twt=nytimesscience

Now the first one sends me in to a log-in, but then when I click the 2nd link and then click the first again it lets me in [/hax]... or you could just have a membership to the site. It's rather interesting though.

Are you serious? The first article you posted is the original one that I posted; it is literally the very first thing written in this thread.

And the second one about language... I posted that a few days ago: http://idiotechnica.com/n...ape-How-You-Think%3F.html

Jes:

Are you serious? The first article you posted is the original one that I posted; it is literally the very first thing written in this thread.

And the second one about language... I posted that a few days ago: http://idiotechnica.com/n...Shape-How-You-Think?.html

Rofl my bad. I only skimmed your article the first time and forgot about it and then subconsciously connected it to the email my friend sent. Good find my bad.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/what-hell-wrong-with-twenty-somethings/ lol