What is a teenager?

@Jermofoot:

@Cmdr:

But I’ve always been told that the reason our children are maturing earlier and earlier (as in old farts thinking kids are maturing earlier when in reality the time difference between generations is not that significant, perhaps as much as a year or two or as little as only a few weeks) is because we have better access to food and medical care, because we get enough vitamins and minerals because we take a pill for them each day, because we have better oral hygiene, etc that our bodies are growing fast enough to achieve the level of growth needed to stimulate puberty to begin.

While they aren’t sure what exactly is happening (and I threw out the reason for it I’ve heard most), none of the answers I’ve heard have been “good.”

When you think about it, food in America is probably more available, but it’s more adulterated, less nutritious (fast food), and made for convenience.

GG, already got some good info posted, but here’s one from the BBC (albeit, from a few years ago): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4530743.stm

I’ll agree that there is much more sweets, candies, salty foods and fast foods loaded with fats and other stuff out there and that they do make up a significant portion of a child’s diet.

But I think I have a strong case when I say that there is better access to fruits and vegetables (which parents foist on their children routinely) as well as multivitamins (something that we did not have 200 years ago) as well as more scientific knowledge as to what our bodies need to be healthy.

So if we compare the diet of an American adolescent in 2009 vs an American Adolescent in 1809 (200 years ago) and looked at the ages of the adults when they died (of natural causes only, not accidents, or murder, etc) I think there’s a good argument to be made that children have more calories during the day, better vitamin and mineral balances in their diet, better nutrition all around and better access to the food needed to maintain a healthy body.

It can also be said that better medical treatments (dental as well as physical) and better access to physicians and dentists add to the benefit of better access to nutritious food (which includes vitamin pills).  And it is the better diet and medical treatment that allows children to enter puberty earlier and live longer - albeit, in some instances in a manner that is obese or over weight.

In other words, it’s not that children are obese that makes them enter puberty earlier, it’s that they are healthier in general that lets their bodies develop sufficiently enough to trigger puberty.

Just curious, are girls entering puberty at age 9 in Europe?  I think it’s kinda silly to pick an age at random and say “this is too early” or “this is too late” if you want my opinion.  Last time I checked, there was no factory producing little human girls that all entered puberty at the same time.  Some girls are just early bloomers and some late.  I had a friend who didn’t get her breasts to start developing until 14 years old.

Did the studies offset the number of 9 year old girls with breasts by the number of girls age 14 who had not yet developed breasts?  Did the studies take into consideration increased nutrition in food as well as increased medical treatments and easier lifestyles that probably contributed greatly to the amount of young girls who could develop to the point their bodies triggered the start of adolescent development?

We’re talking the human body here.  We cannot just go out and say:  Red Dye number 16 is to blame for all children in the world developing mature sexual organs before the age of 13.  (That’s an exaggeration on purpose, it’s supposed to be silly, but convey a point.  The point is, there’s probably a lot more involved than obesity in children. )

Now, the study did say that they looked at 354 girls from 10 cities.  That’s a bloody awfully small sample set don’t you think?  I mean, we have a population of over 300 million.  If half of those are children and half of those are women, that means 37.5 million of them are girls under the age of 18.  We are looking at girls age 3 to 12 in the study, so of the 37.5 million girls under the age of 18; 19 million of them are in the ages of 3 to 12. (Just a guesstimate, not a fact.)  So the study is attempting to say that these 354 girls are indicative of 19 million girls across the nation?  I’m not saying they are wrong, but I am having a hard time getting it passed the “bull sh*t” detectors, if you catch my meaning.

Also, they cut off the study at age 12.  That means they could not possibly have measured the number of women who do not enter puberty until the age of 14, because they never collected the data!  Perhaps if they had taken 354 girls aged 10-19 (another 9 year span) and attempted to collect data on how many of them did not develop until late in life the girls 3-9 that developed early would be balanced with the girls aged 10-19 who developed late?  (Probably not perfectly balanced, most girls develop breasts between the ages of 11 and 13 at least a couple of decades ago, probably still today, so there is significantly less girls to develop from 13 to 14 than there are from 9 to 11 and that will skew the balance a little.)

GG:

I agree that they are developing earlier.  What I am questioning is the reasons they are developing earlier and the study’s procedures that you referenced.  I am not saying that you or the study are wrong, I am just trying to get the information past the “bull sh*t” detectors and running into issues that I am pointing out so you can either acknowledge them as valid issues, or show me the information I need to quell my unease.

Let me just sum them up (and you can see the previous post of mine to see why they are issues)

First Set of Issues:

1)  The study cut off their ages at 3 Years Old and 12 Years Old.  Since the average age a girl enters puberty, that I was told in “health” class during my tenure as a student at public school, is between 11 and 13 years old, it seems they did not extend the study far enough to determine if the number of girls who are developing later in life counter balance the girls developing earlier in life.

2)  Perhaps ages 13, 14 and 15 are not relevant, but I don’t see anything stating that those ages are not relevant or insignificant.

3)  Why are they including girls aged 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7?  Is not 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 enough?  Were they seriously expecting girls as young as 3 to have breasts?

4)  Are they actually seeing “breasts” or are they seeing fat? (think Man-Boobs.)

Second Set of Issues:

1)  354 girls out of about 19 million girls seems like an insufficient sample set.  (19 million is a guesstimate, see above for how I got to that number.  I am not claiming that number as fact, it’s just a guess as to the estimation of the number of girls aged 3 to 12 in the United States of America.)

2)  Why 354 girls?  Why not 300 or 400?  Did they have to disqualify a lot of their sample set because they did not like the data they got from them?  354 just seems like a very odd number to choose, the human mind prefers “round numbers” like 10’s and 5’s.

3)  They only selected 10 cities around the United States.  Just off the top of my head I can think of more than ten different major metropolitan areas in the United States:  Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington DC, Saint Louis, Lexington (KY), Seattle, San Fransciso, Los Angeles, New York, Philidelphia, Boston, Birmingham (AL), Jacksonville (FL), Tampa, etc, etc, etc.  That’s 15 major metropolitan areas populated by millions of people.  How did they chose 10?

4)  What 10 cities did they chose?  The diet of an average citizen in Chicago is most certainly significantly different than the average diet of a citizen in Bradley, IL (near where the Chicago Bears go to practice football before the football season starts.)  Even more so, the diet of a child in Cairo, IL is no where near the diet of a child in Evanston, IL. (Cairo is near the southern tip of Illinois and is pronounced KAI-roh.  Evanston is north of Chicago.)  The former is going to have much more whole grains in their diet, the later is going to have more chemicals from processed foods in their diet.

Lastly, why did the study seem to not mention anything about improved medical and dental resources in current generations than in previous as well as a significantly improved source of nutrients needed to develop healthy bodies?  I’m not saying that this data is significantly increasing development, but it would be nice if they told us why it was not significant.

I am not saying you are wrong, I am not saying the study is wrong.  I am just attempting to raise valid questions that I need answered in order to understand how valid the study is, or, to maybe convince you that the study is not valid.

Oky-doky.  We’ll just go with “it’s flawed, but we have nothing better to use at this time.” :)