ADOLESCENCE
There is an important line of thought in philosophy, sociology, and history arguing that “adolescence” is not simply a natural biological stage, but a historically recent social construction, shaped by institutions like school, labor laws, psychology, and later by capitalism and consumer culture. Several thinkers help explain this: 1. Philippe Ariès — adolescence as a historical invention The historian Philippe Ariès argued in Centuries of Childhood that childhood and adolescence as we know them did not exist in the medieval world. His idea was: In premodern societies, children moved relatively quickly into adult roles. There was no prolonged “teenage” stage with its own identity. Modern societies gradually separated life into age categories: child, adolescent, adult. This means that “adolescence” is partly produced by modern institutions, especially: schools, compulsory education, delayed entry into work, dependence on parents. In this view, adolescence emerges when capitalism no lon...