“As the historical record shows, the social, economic, and cultural aspects of adolescence have varied substantially across successive birth cohorts over the past 30 years in the United States. Young people born during the recessionary years of the early 1980s experienced a booming economy at high school graduation, unlike the experiences of those who were born several years before or later. The scarcity of job opportunities for high school and college graduates today will most likely be replaced by more abundant job opportunities for young people entering young adulthood in the coming decade. These socioeconomic variations tend to leave their mark on the life course as well as on the psyche of young people. The challenge for studies of adolescents in the future will be to incorporate such historical conditions into theoretical and empirical models rather than merely referring to them as contextual background. In other words, we need to directly query how changing circumstances have altered the development of young people.” (Johnson, Crosnoe, & Elder, 2011, p. 279)

I found it really interesting to read how adolescents have developed and are continuing to develop differently in comparison to the generations before them. The New York Times article (Cohen, 2010) highlighted many statistics that really brought to light how cultural and historical circumstances have impacted how quickly and in which way adolescents transition into adulthood. It was interesting to read and compare what adolescents of my generation supposedly think and how they behave to what my trajectory has been thus far in terms of social and academic life. This quote particularly stuck out to me because it explains the importance of studying the development of adolescents and how circumstances impact this, and it made me think about how this information can be used productively in a classroom environment. For example, Johnson, Crosnoe, & Elder (2011) write that “The scarcity of job opportunities for high school and college graduates today will most likely be replaced by more abundant job opportunities for young people entering young adulthood in the coming decade. These socioeconomic variations tend to leave their mark on the life course as well as on the psyche of young people.” This information directly affects us as educators, and it made me wonder what we can do and how we can use this information, about the changing circumstances surrounding youths and how they develop, in terms of their education? Are there ways to modify our instruction and incorporate different methods to better accommodate our students’ changing life trajectories? How can we use this information to our advantage in terms of reaching them better?