When Childhood Disappears
Adolescence, belonging and the lost rituals of growing up by Selina Wallis
Photo by Jana Shnipelson on Unsplash
Adolescence is one of the most dramatic transitions in human development. Yet modern societies offer fewer and fewer structures to help young people cross the threshold between childhood and adulthood. Drawing on anthropology, behavioural ecology and contemporary youth research, this essay explores why adolescence can feel so volatile today and what might help rebuild the social scaffolding that young people need.
1. The shock of adolescence
Every so often I look at photographs of my son taken only three or four years apart and experience a strange sense of disorientation. In one image he is unmistakably a child: round faced, bright eyed, playful. In the next he is already becoming a young man. His shoulders have broadened, his voice deepened, and his face has sharpened into something unfamiliar.
The speed of the transformation can feel almost surreal. One year you are raising a child. The next you are living with someone who is unmistakably crossing into adulthood.
Anyone who has lived with a teenager recognises the moment. It is funny when it happens in films like Kevin and Perry Go Large. In real life it can feel far more unsettling. The person in front of you still carries traces of childhood, yet something fundamental has shifted.
Yet from the perspective of biology this transformation is entirely expected.
Puberty marks one of the most dramatic transitions in human development. Hormonal changes reshape the body and brain in ways that prepare young people for adult social roles. Developmental neuroscience shows that adolescence is characterised by heightened sensitivity to reward, intensified emotional responses and a growing sensitivity to peer recognition as the brain’s motivational systems reorganise (Steinberg, 2014; Dahl et al., 2018).
Seen through the lens of behavioural ecology, adolescence is not simply a turbulent stage of childhood. It is a life-history transition in which young humans begin preparing for adult roles within their social environment.
Life history theory suggests that organisms allocate energy between growth, reproduction and survival depending on environmental conditions. Childhood is primarily a period of learning within the protection of the family. Adolescence marks the point at which individuals begin orienting outward toward competition, status and independence.
The adolescent brain becomes acutely sensitive to reputation and belonging. Peer recognition begins to matter intensely. Identity becomes something to test, perform and defend.
What adults often interpret as rebellion may, in many cases, be the biology of independence beginning to assert itself.
2. Adolescence as a social threshold
Adolescence does not only transform the young person. It transforms the entire family system around them.
Parents may still see vulnerability and childhood innocence, while teenagers increasingly experience themselves as capable and autonomous. Developmental psychologists describe adolescence as a period in which the parent–child relationship must be renegotiated rather than simply continued (Laursen & Collins, 2009).
For many families this shift arrives suddenly. A child who once accepted parental authority without question begins to challenge boundaries, experiment with identity and seek belonging beyond the home.
Looking back, it becomes clear that adolescence is not simply a psychological stage but a social threshold.
Across most of human history societies recognised that this transition required guidance beyond the family.
Anthropologists have long documented rites of passage marking the movement from childhood into adulthood. Arnold van Gennep described these rituals as involving separation from childhood, a liminal period of transformation and reintegration into the community with a new social status (van Gennep, 1909).
Examples appear across cultures.
Aboriginal Australian traditions included walkabout journeys through ancestral landscapes where young people learned survival knowledge and cultural responsibilities. Among the Maasai of East Africa initiation ceremonies marked the transition into warriorhood. Indigenous North American traditions such as the vision quest involved solitary reflection intended to help young people discover their place within the community.
These rituals were not merely symbolic. They helped channel the powerful energies of adolescence into socially recognised roles.
Even today one of the most widely studied examples occurs among the Amish. Adolescents experience a period known as Rumspringa, during which they are temporarily permitted greater freedom before deciding whether to commit to adult membership in the church (Kraybill, Johnson-Weiner & Nolt, 2013).
In these communities adolescence is not ignored or pathologised. It is recognised and structured.
Modern societies, by contrast, often offer few equivalent frameworks.
3. The adolescence squeeze
The timing of adolescence itself has also shifted.
Puberty now often arrives earlier than it did historically, while the age of economic independence and stable adulthood has moved steadily later. Developmental psychologist Jeffrey Jensen Arnett describes this widening gap as the emergence of emerging adulthood, a prolonged transitional stage between adolescence and full adult independence (Arnett, 2004).
The result is what some scholars describe as the adolescence squeeze.
Young people become biologically capable of adult behaviour while remaining socially constrained for many years.
From a behavioural ecology perspective this creates a structural tension. Adolescents are biologically primed to seek status, recognition and independence, yet many modern institutions delay or restrict opportunities for meaningful autonomy.
Historically these impulses were channelled into structured roles such as apprenticeships, agricultural labour or community responsibilities. Today those pathways are far less clear.
Young people are surrounded by status hierarchies driven by consumer culture, visibility and online recognition, yet opportunities for meaningful independence are often delayed.
The gap between capability and opportunity can become a source of tension.
4. Fragile adolescent ecologies
For neurodivergent adolescents the transition into adolescence can be especially fragile.
Autism and ADHD shape how children experience social relationships and emotional regulation long before puberty begins. When the biological changes of adolescence arrive these differences can intensify.
At the same time neurodivergent children are significantly more likely to experience disrupted schooling. Exclusions, placement changes and periods of school absence fracture peer networks at precisely the moment when belonging to a peer group becomes developmentally central.
In England these patterns intersect with growing concern about youth exploitation.
Reports by the Children’s Commissioner for England have highlighted the links between school exclusion and criminal exploitation through county lines drug networks.
The UK government’s Serious Violence Strategy similarly recognises that youth violence and exploitation are shaped by broader social environments including school exclusion, poverty and community instability.
Recent investigative reporting has illustrated how adolescents can be drawn into county lines drug networks that rely on the mobility and vulnerability of young people. Many of the teenagers involved have histories of educational disruption, exclusion from mainstream schooling or unmet special educational needs.
Research by Carlene Firmin on contextual safeguarding and studies by Patrick Williams and Susie Hulley on youth justice pathways similarly demonstrate how environmental vulnerabilities shape adolescent risk.
From a developmental perspective these patterns are not surprising. Adolescents are biologically primed to seek belonging, recognition and independence.
When mainstream institutions fail to provide these opportunities, other networks may step in to fill the gap.
5. Adolescence in the digital age
Increasingly that search for belonging takes place online.
Social media platforms have become vast arenas of identity formation where adolescents experiment with recognition, status and affiliation. Algorithms reward emotionally provocative content and amplify conflict, meaning that extreme behaviours and polarised communities can spread rapidly.
As explored in my earlier essay Risk, Belonging and the Digital Trap, many online communities offer adolescents exactly what they are searching for: identity, recognition and belonging.
Yet these environments are structured by attention economies rather than community responsibility.
Concerns about the impact of digital platforms on young people have increasingly entered public debate. Policymakers in the UK, Europe and elsewhere are exploring new regulatory approaches to protect young users from addictive design features, algorithmic amplification of harmful content and exploitative data practices.
These debates reflect a growing recognition that digital environments now function as central arenas of adolescent development.
6. Rebuilding the social scaffolding of adolescence
If adolescence is understood as a developmental transition rather than simply a behavioural problem, the policy implications look different from many current debates.
Public discussion often focuses on restriction or surveillance. Yet research across anthropology, developmental psychology and youth studies suggests that adolescents require structured pathways into autonomy rather than simply tighter control.
Several changes could help rebuild the social scaffolding that once supported adolescence.
Youth employment opportunities are one example. Historically adolescence often coincided with entry into meaningful work. Today younger teenagers have few legitimate ways to earn money or gain responsibility.
Youth infrastructure is another. Research by organisations such as UK Youth and the YMCA shows that youth clubs and community services across England have declined significantly over the past decade, removing important spaces where adolescents can develop independence and belonging.
Educational stability is equally important. Reducing school exclusions and strengthening support for neurodivergent students would help maintain peer networks and reduce vulnerability to exploitation.
Finally, adolescents themselves should be recognised as emerging citizens rather than passive recipients of policy decisions. Programmes such as the European Solidarity Corps demonstrate how young people can contribute meaningfully to civic life and community development.
https://youth.europa.eu/solidarity/opportunity/49425_en
Rebuilding these structures does not mean eliminating risk from adolescence. Risk-taking and experimentation are intrinsic parts of development.
What societies can do is shape the environments in which those experiments occur.
Crossing the threshold
Recently I have begun to see another side of adolescence in my own home.
During Ramadan my son has been waking before dawn, sometimes at four in the morning, to take his medication, eat before the fast begins and spend time meditating quietly before the day starts.
Watching him move through the house at that hour is unexpectedly moving. The child who once struggled to get out of bed for school is now choosing discipline, reflection and ritual.
Anthropologists have long noted that fasting and spiritual practice often function as rites of passage. Even in societies where formal initiation rituals have largely disappeared, the search for meaningful thresholds remains.
Looking again at those photographs of my son, what strikes me most is not simply how much he has grown but how suddenly the change arrived.
One moment he is anchored firmly in childhood. The next he is standing at the threshold of something else entirely.
For thousands of years societies recognised that this crossing required guidance. Rites of passage helped young people move from childhood into adulthood while remaining held within the community.
Modern societies have largely forgotten those structures.
Adolescence itself has not changed.
The search for recognition, belonging and status remains one of the most powerful forces in human development.
Adolescence is not simply a problem to manage.
It is a transformation that every society must learn how to unfold.
References and further reading
Arnett, J. (2004). Emerging Adulthood.
Steinberg, L. (2014). Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence.
Dahl, R. et al. (2018). “The importance of investing in adolescence.” Nature.
van Gennep, A. (1909). The Rites of Passage.
Kraybill, D., Johnson-Weiner, K., & Nolt, S. (2013). The Amish.
Children’s Commissioner (2019) Keeping Kids Safe: Improving Safeguarding Responses to Gang Violence and Criminal Exploitation
https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/report/keeping-kids-safe/
Home Office (2018) Serious Violence Strategy
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/serious-violence-strategy
Ofsted Alternative Provision Market Analysis
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/alternative-provision-market-analysis
Public Health England Child Criminal Exploitation Resources
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/child-criminal-exploitation
Contextual Safeguarding Network (Carlene Firmin)
https://contextualsafeguarding.org.uk
Patrick Williams research on county lines
https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/county-lines-research/
Susie Hulley youth justice research
https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-and-subject-groups/centre-criminology
UK Youth
https://www.ukyouth.org
European Solidarity Corps
https://youth.europa.eu/solidarity
In the next essay, I explore how these shifts are shaping a new culture of spectacle and performance online — where risk, humiliation and violence can become forms of social currency.