By Kim Painter | Special for USA TODAY
Today’s teens are on a slow road to adulthood, putting off risky behaviors from drinking to sex, but also delaying jobs, driving, dating and other steps towards independence, according to a new study based on 40 years of survey data.
Compared to teens from the 70s, 80s and 90s, today’s teens “are taking longer to engage in both the pleasures and the responsibilities of adulthood,” said Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University and the lead author on the study published Tuesday in the journal Child Development.
“The whole developmental pathway has slowed down,” she said, with today’s 18-year-olds living more like 15-year-olds once did.
The study relies on seven nationally representative surveys repeated with 8 million teens, ages 13-19, over several decades. It documents and combines several trends often explained as separate phenomena.
