The Teen Mental Health Crisis and How Adolescence Shapes Us, with Lucy Foulkes and Pandora Sykes (Part 1)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm Head of Programming, Conor Boyle. Today's episode is part one of our live recording from our recent event in London's Pleasance Theatre with Lucy Foulkes. She's an academic psychologist at the University of Oxford and author of Coming of Age, How Adolescence Shapes Us.

Joining Lucy on stage to discuss it was journalist and broadcaster Pandora Sykes. If you're an Intelligence Squared Plus subscriber, you can get access to the full conversation straight away, including our bonus part three audience Q&A. Now let's join for part one with Lucy Fuchs and Pandora Sykes. Welcome to tonight's Intelligence Squared event. I'm Pandora Sykes and I'm delighted to introduce our guest tonight.

Dr. Lucy Fowkes is an academic psychologist and a Prudence Trust Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, where she leads research into adolescent mental health and social development.

She is the author of two non-fiction books, including Coming of Age, How Adolescence Shapes Us, which we will be discussing tonight. Hello. Hello. Thank you for coming. Lucy, you've been studying adolescent cognition for more than a decade. What drew you to teenagehood as an academic speciality?

Well, honestly, it's partly what jobs were available when I finished my PhD. But it was just a kind of growing field at that time to better recognize that adolescents aren't just mini adults and that there's something really distinctive happening between childhood and adulthood. I just think it's fascinating, as you will have guessed from the second book. I'm just interested in how people understand their own

So once I'd started there, it was kind of slightly random how I got into it. But I didn't want to leave. I just think adolescence is fascinating. The message that comes through your work, not just the book, but your journalism and the book before, is that we don't take teenagers seriously enough. I wanted to read...

This is going to be really unsmooth segue. There's a bit on page 15 that I just thought was so brilliant and really got to the crux of your work when you said...

Teenagers are often derided and stereotyped. The common narrative about teenagers is that they consistently behave in all sorts of stupid, selfish, short-sighted ways. They are rude and sullen because they have no respect for others. They become pregnant because they don't care about consequences or think of the future. They drink too much and take dangerous drugs because they think having fun and impressing their friends is more important than staying alive. And because they don't understand that society's rules might exist for their own benefit.

For teenagers in the last decade or so, two new narratives have been added. They are defined by an epidemic of mental health problems and relatedly, they are all addicted to their phones, with social media enabling a new suite of baffling problematic behaviors.

And then you say all these stereotypes have roots in a version of the truth, but to remain only in the realm of stereotypes and moral panics entirely understands why teenagers behave the way they do. Why do we underestimate teenagers? And why should we take them and their experiences more seriously? I think it's interesting because all those stereotypes, yeah, are sort of true. They do do all those things. But I think what's so interesting is to be more curious about them

why they do it. And I really like the idea that, for example, with risk-taking, they're often considered to be reckless, but often quite, they are behaving in those ways for quite calculated reasons. They have planned to deliberately take a risk because often actually it's socially safer or because they want to, they're interested in experiencing what it feels like. So, I really like that kind of contradiction of risk.

It's not careless. Yeah, exactly. And sometimes it certainly looks careless. But yeah, there's just more going on underneath the hood, which is interesting. And why should we take them seriously?

I guess because they, you know, just because they're younger than us and they're doing things for the first time, it doesn't mean they deserve less respect or deserve to be taken any less seriously. And I think I really like the example of love and romance for that, because I think

you know, they can have extremely powerful, impactful relationships and it gets dismissed and forgotten. And yeah, I really like the idea that I can be a voice to say, yeah, we should respect them a bit more and listen to them, even though that, you know, they're far younger than us and we've got more life experience. Why do you think teenage romance, aside from being agonizing, is, should be given more credit than it has been historically? Yeah.

I think it's really interesting people just

assume that because you're at that age that it isn't love or it's less real. And I don't think that's true. I think these incredibly powerful relationships and actually more powerful for all sorts of reasons. You're not as good at regulating your emotions then. So you feel things so much more deeply. It's the first time these things have happened. So you don't have the life experience to say, you know, actually, I'm going to come out the other side of this.

And you've sort of got, I think, maybe more mental space to obsess over people and things

I love that because you're right. After the first relationship you have, you're sort of jaded forever in a way that you're not when it's your first love. So the piece I wrote over the weekend about teenage love, and I had so many interesting responses to it, including someone saying...

you know, in your first relationship as a teenager, you love with your whole self. And like after that, you know, you always keep a bit of yourself back, especially if you have had a difficult experience. And I just thought I was like, oh, that's I love the way you said that's absolutely right. That's almost an example of like risk taking, though, isn't it? Because as an adult, you know, to keep part of yourself out, whereas a teenager is like that risk of, you

I'm all in because I want to be in and I haven't done this before. Yeah, exactly. And you want to experience the intensity of it because that's enjoyable and interesting, but also difficult when it goes wrong. Yeah.

And it's quite hard to have a job around it and have a relationship like that. Can you imagine trying that in your 30s? Okay, yeah. I guess maybe teenage jobs leave a bit more space for, yeah, the extra thinking. But yeah, it's just like you just get more life mess when these things happen when you're older and you have to concentrate on your job. And yeah, so it's...

Yeah, it is less impactful. You start the adolescent age by explaining something called the reminiscence bump, which is fascinating. Can you tell us a little bit about that and how it contributes to the importance of adolescence? So it's interesting you mention it because we were just talking backstage about the messiness of writing about research because often the truth is

kind of boring to read because you have to caveat it and everything. So with the reminiscence bump, I was like, I want to check this is actually a thing and not just like what one researcher has found. But it's pretty robust. And it's the idea that when you ask adults,

to write down the 10 most important memories of your life or the 10 clearest memories that you have or the 10 memories that most define who you are. No matter how old the adult is, writing them down, there's a bump

in memories from the late teens and early 20s. It's called the Reminiscence Bump. It's pretty robust across lots and lots of different studies, but also the kind of things you ask, like what your favorite songs are, and most impactful relationships. I really like the idea that even if you're 30, 40, 50, 90, you get this peak in people's memories of this incredibly salient, self-defining time.

What's happening cognitively for it to be such a sort of potent and memorable period of time? No one has no memory now. I'm like, how can I... How do I get that? Well, there's various different theories, but I mean, one kind of...

I suppose slightly boring explanation is that your brain is working better then. So you're kind of optimized to be able to lay down and remember things. And then the more interesting idea is that, well, firstly, that it's a period of firsts. So that when you do something for the first time, it's more distinctive. But also then the sort of second part of that, which is when you do things for the first time, they have a bigger imprint on your identity and how you understand yourself.

That's so interesting. You also mentioned, and this is something the sleep scientist Russell Foster also told me, that teenagers are chronically sleep deprived because there's a big shift in their circadian rhythm due to hormones and puberty. And that's not taken into account with school time.

If it's such a big public health issue, why do schools not shift everything by one hour? So, there's an interesting story about this. I don't think it was Russell Foster, because he's at Oxford. It was some people at Oxford. They wanted to study exactly this. They said, let's do a trial where we'll recruit lots of studies, we'll randomize them. So, half the schools just keep doing what they're doing.

the other half delay their school day by an hour. And they got a multimillion-pound grant to do it. And then they started recruiting schools. And they couldn't recruit any schools who would be willing to take part. And they went and asked various different people why it wasn't happening. And basically, the schools didn't want to do it because they're like, if this experiment doesn't work,

That year group's GCSEs on the line. The parents didn't want to sign up to it because they were like, this is the difference between me seeing my teenager leave when I go to work versus me leaving them asleep and expecting them to get up. Teachers didn't want to do it because it didn't... Yeah, exactly. And they had their own childcare and things. So basically, it didn't work and they had to give up on it.

I did think it's purely going to be down to logistics. Because, of course, it is like it's not that easy. I knew even if I asked that, it's clearly not easy. Yeah. But it's a shame because especially in the States, their school often starts at eight. So it's literally like teenagers getting up in the middle of the night and they're exhausted. And I remember one boy in particular in England,

English class would just fall asleep every day and he would get told off and I just looking back and I think he was just exhausted I don't know what the answer is I know really sad can they just start one new school for all the teenagers terrible scientists you

You reveal some really interesting insights about popularity as well, that the visibility of popularity can make popular teens more aggressive and that those perceived to be popular tend to actually not be very well liked, which is really giving mean girls, I think, when I read that. Is that the paradox of popularity, that being popular and being liked are often not...

Yeah, so I think this is one of those things that when I realized there was research on it, it was so satisfying. It was like, everyone knows it's true, but I really love that someone's actually done research into this. So yeah, there's the idea that the word popular means two different things. So it could mean that people actually really like you.

Or it can mean that you have social status. So, you're visible, people know who you are and they know what you're doing. But actually, those two groups of students can be quite distinct, and often actually the ones who are

the mean girls version of popular are actually actively disliked. And you can do all these cool studies where you ask whole schools of teenagers to anonymously rate how much they like other people and how popular they think they are, and you can kind of map it out in a network. And yeah, they're reasonably distinct groups of kids. That's the kind of thing that I wish teenagers knew more, because one of the most thrilling things I remember when I became an adult is

discovering that as an adult to be popular, you have to be nice. Like it's not, that those things are not distinct. Exactly. And I think, yeah, so the like actual nice being liked popular starts to matter. And I think it's, yeah, that really interesting trope, which is partly true, which is the people who kind of peak in high school. And then the currency that works for being popular in high school doesn't necessarily. Is there any science to that? Yeah, some. So it's often because the things that make you popular

Mean girls popular in school often actually kind of actively work against you in the adult world like for example that you're a high risk taker or you're aggressive, you know people it doesn't Wash so well in the workplace. It's to make a very good guardian piece You

No, that actually doesn't mend into... It's not something you wrote at the Guardian. You have written those things at the Guardian, which I will ask you about in a bit, but not this. Image for teenagers has always been fraught. It was never fun at the best of times. Crippling insecurity for most of us. But now, of course...

a teenager's image is refracted and reflected and mediated by a screen. How do you think this has affected teenage body image and eating disorders, I suppose, by extension? So, eating disorders have increased. Symptoms of eating disorders have increased. No one really knows why that is, but it's possible that it's the increase in use of social media. I think it's

Interesting. Because, yeah, it was never easy to be a teenager in terms of body image. And I think it's sort of worse, but it's sort of better now. So, I think on social media you have all the kind of stereotypical worries about being able to see people that you think are more attractive than you and see them getting more likes and that kind of thing. But I also think it's much better representation of different bodies.

And much more celebration of body positivity. I sort of feel like it's gone both ways. There is more body positivity, I agree. You can find your tribe now online, but there's also a lot of...

so that you're comparing yourself to an impossible ideal. So it's almost like there's like... Yeah, exactly. So I think that's why it's a little bit messy to figure out what social media has done because it's sort of probably improved things in some respects and made things worse in others. But I think it's very plausible that people who are already self-conscious, not happy about their body could become obsessive about it in a problematic way if they don't find the right...

Well, you can also find so much content on social media now, you know, all the pro-Anna groups that they get blocked, but I'm constantly reading stuff about how easy it is for all that to get through the filter. So I suppose you can very easily see vast amounts of image. It's kind of the amount, the volume of...

Yeah, exactly. And it's an interesting thing about social media relative to real life social interactions that you just the volume of social interactions and the people that you get exposed to, the number of people that you get exposed to is totally different to what would happen organically in real life.

You mentioned that teenagers take more risks and it being due to perceived invulnerability, sensation seeking and peer influence. But, and I found this fascinating, you say it's not generally due to peer pressure. You write that peer pressure is sometimes something of a myth. Can you tell us more? So this is really interesting because I knew I had to talk about peer pressure, but the more in the book, but the more I kind of

dug into it, the more I found that most of the researchers hadn't used that term. Actually,

I think it is a bit of a misunderstanding. The kind of cliche is that there's a group of people and some of them are pushing an unwilling person into smoking or drinking or taking drugs, whatever. But actually, most of the research suggests it's rarely like that. Certainly, peers influence each other all the time in adolescence, as in adulthood. But this idea that it's

someone is being coerced unwillingly is actually generally not what is happening. If peers influence each other, the influencer often kind of wants to be, the influenced wants to be influenced. Yeah, sure thing.

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Why do you think the narrative of peer pressure has endured? Is it because we want to believe that there are bad kids and good kids, rather than just loads of in-between kids? Yeah. And I think maybe from a parental perspective, it's quite comforting, this idea that – Relentless, straight. Yeah, exactly. Rather than their teenager being a willing participant.

Possibly, yeah. I think when two risk-prone teenagers get together, they can kind of feed off each other. And it's probably easier from the outside to blame one of them, but it doesn't work like that.

You also said that teenagers are more socially conservative than we give them credit for. And again, that's so interesting. What were your findings there? So I became really interested in the book about this idea that adolescence is all about rules and following rules. And this totally, often quite arduous,

I was talking to someone else about the book recently, and we were talking about the weird rules within our own school. I remember, obviously, ties have to be a certain length. The skirts have to be a certain length. Top button can't be done up. The shirt has to be untucked.

brands of shoes are acceptable, not acceptable. But there were only two shops that were acceptable to have carrier bags from V.O.P. Kid. What? What were the shops? And then I was talking to a top shop and a skater shop in Maidenhead. But I was recounting this to someone else recently. And she said that one thing she really remembers was that there were brands of tampons that weren't cool.

So you couldn't have the kind of... I feel like I missed out on this. What was the cool... Lilith must have been uncle, right? I think it probably helped that it was branded. I reckon Boots' own brand would have been...

Yeah, I wouldn't trust that. I'm not getting too far down this path, but I'm not sure I'd believe that they would get stuck to the task. So maybe that was legitimate, but it was the idea that people create, so popular people create rules and then other people have to follow them. Does that happen in adulthood? I mean, I know obviously there are trends and micro trends, particularly in consumer habits. Yeah. I'm trying to think if there's sort of

I think there's one specific example I remember that at school you couldn't tie your trainer laces in a bow. That wasn't on. You had to kind of tuck them into the side. I think that's still considered cool. Is it? Okay, well, I was just going to say... I feel like a real nerd with your trainers. Yeah, but I really remember there was a point in adulthood when I was like...

I'm just going to tighten a bow. It's more comfortable. I actually don't care anymore. So I think there are probably still rules out there, but you become a little bit more self-assured. Parenting has never been more densely populated with tropes and theories and movements and trends.

And as someone raising children, I would say there are times that can feel overwhelming. What is the irony of overprotective parenting, which you might say a little bit about? Yeah, so, I mean, I was incredibly lucky with all the interviewees who contacted me with their stories for the book. But this person in particular told me about her...

mom who was extremely worried about harm coming to her, but particularly that she had become pregnant. And that sort of pervaded her decisions for everything that she did. And she essentially wasn't allowed to see her friends except for outside of school. And

It's still with her now, the kind of anger and resentment she feels towards her mom for doing that. Teenagers are desperately trying to establish independence and experiment with autonomy and do things that their parents aren't there for and don't know about.

And it's this difficult, obviously massively difficult challenge as a parent. So how do you continue to keep them safe and continue your role in doing that while also gradually allowing them to, you know, experience the world and become independent? But the trouble is, if you restrain that too much, you know, the whole sort of purpose of adolescence is that you

get out there in the world and you start experimenting so you can become an independent adult. So if that gets blocked, that can be very frustrating for the young person.

It's something slightly off topic, but it really reminded me when you were saying that is I host a podcast about long-term missing people. And every time there is a teenager that has gone missing, the parents say the same thing, which is often the teenager has been struggling with various things. And the parent always says like, I didn't know how much to step in or step out. Like it's so hard, isn't it? To get that. When are you projecting your fears?

And when are you actually just putting in the necessary guardrails? Yeah, there's not an easy answer, but it's an incredibly difficult task. And it's the same with the mental health conversation in that parents are trying to figure out the line at which this is normal adolescent stress versus at what point is this something that I need to be worried about. And obviously all the messaging that parents are receiving now is that they should be worried. And so, yeah, it's incredibly difficult for them.

Which brings us neatly to...

Earlier this year, I interviewed Jonathan Haidt about his book, The Anxious Age, which I'm sure some people here know it's been a bestseller, both sides of the Atlantic. And I spoke to you before that. You were very generous on email as you are critical of the book's message. Why do you think that Haidt's argument, which proposes a smartphone ban and a minimum age for social media, amongst other things, is not telling the full story?

So, I think it's really difficult to figure out exactly what impact social media and smartphones are having on mental health. And there is a fear that Jonathan Haidt has harnessed, which means, and a sort of gut instinct, which people feel like it must be doing damage. And there is some evidence that supports him. So, he has written a

an extremely popular book which describes that research and tells a neat story that this is causing this massive wave of mental health problems. It's not true. He hasn't accurately represented the research. There's been a massive pushback among psychologists

who want to make the point that it's basically not as bad as he says it is. It's really messy. We don't really know the answer, but it's not as bad as he says it is. So, there's this really interesting debate going on within academia about exactly what is social media doing. Whilst Jonathan Haidt's message has been incredibly popular, really struck a nerve,

And all the while, parents are kind of stuck in the middle. Because I often read stuff about the academic debate. And I think this is interesting from an academic perspective, but it's not actually helpful for parents who are trying to figure out. There's definitely an element of...

the kind of practical nature of it versus the kind of theorizing. You're right. Sometimes those are going into different... There's two different interests. Yeah, exactly. And parents who have teenagers right now need to figure out what to do and how worried they should be. But I think what bothers me is that he might have unnecessarily worried people. I had an email from a parent saying... So I wrote something about this. And...

she was grateful that I said it wasn't as bad as she thought it might be because she felt incredibly guilty because lots and lots of parents having this battle about whether they give their teenager a phone and then hearing all this message that you're damaging your child by letting them have a phone. So I think...

I think they are bad sometimes for some people, but also a lot of the time they don't cause a problem and a lot of the time they're helpful or positive. So I really, I don't want to dismiss how bad they can be, but it's not as bad as his message suggests it is, I think. Do you think...

not being available before a certain age. Is there anything that you think is like supported by the science in that? Because obviously the number that's going around I think is 14. Yeah. 14 to have a smartphone and 16 to have social media and then...

to have them banned in schools or, you know, you put them in little pockets, which doesn't sound like a bad, like that's relatively straightforward. So this, because for a while my stance was like, you can't ban them in general, but it kind of makes sense to ban them in schools. And then I started reading into it. I was like, oh God, even that's a massive mess. So basically, because lots of parents understandably want their child to have a smartphone to and from school.

Yeah. So they have to turn up to school with the phone. So then that means you've got 1,000 or 1,500 young people whose phone needs to be then taken off them. Can't they all put it in a pocket? I don't know.

I don't know about a wall of pockets, but someone's solution is, you can buy a pouch that gets locked by a tool. They do that at some screenings. But the young people have figured out you can buy those unlockers on the black market.

Two clever teenagers. Exactly. I mean, this is part of what's really interesting is that... Logistics again. Exactly. Because even if it might sort of make sense, how do you actually literally do it? And I saw someone discussing on Reddit the other day about a teenage daughter who had been discovered. So she wasn't allowed a smartphone, but she had a shared Google Doc between her and her friends. So they'd figured out a way to communicate digitally online.

Anyway, so there's this really interesting, this massive desire at that age to communicate with your peers. And I think at primary school, it's probably harder for a child to do something that their parent doesn't know about. But in secondary school, they can get a second phone, they can do it in secret, and then you get the problem where when something goes wrong, they can't tell you, or you haven't given them the tools to be able to navigate it.

So, there's nothing to support specific ages about when it kind of magically becomes easy. So, I think it's so messy and so difficult. But my sense is that it, yeah, obviously at some point it's too young and at some point it becomes more reasonable. And there has to be a transition point where you can gradually introduce your child to having a phone. But I think that maybe, I don't know if it makes sense for that to be government-based.

mandated at a specific age. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by myself, Conor Boyle, with production and editing by Mark Roberts.