Talk:Adolescence

Awkward wording

This excerpt "...females of high school age and boys who identify themselves as gay.", among others, feels very awkward and unequal. It can say boys, but it finds saying girls as inappropriate, and resorts to saying females of high school age, which leaves me wondering why it doesn't say males of high school age instead. It also looks at the orientation of the boys in question in a skeptical and questioning tone, enough to spark heated debates about homosexuality that are the last of our needs. It needs to be fixed. 95.14.155.213 (talk) 12:24, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Where is that line located in the article, IP? I gave the article a quick look-over and didn't see it; I'll have to look more closely later. I'm not quite sure that I understand your objection to it, however, aside from it using "females" instead of "girls" when it uses "boys" instead of "males." If the source or sources point out that the boys are gay, so should we. Otherwise, we'd be speaking of boys in general. But what wording do you propose to take the place of the current wording? Flyer22 (talk) 01:07, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

"Every year, approximately 13% of adolescents are sexually solicited online, and about 4% of the solicitations are also followed with solicitation for contact not through a computer medium.[213][214] Most of the adolescents at risk for solicitation are females of high school age and boys who identify themselves as gay."

Perhaps the objection is a feminist one i.e. the sexes should be referenced on equal terms. i.e. women shouldn't be called "girls" while men are "guys" etc. I saw an objecion somewhere to the use of "female", seeing it as similar to referring livestock. Maybe the objection is along those lines. Could you say "girls of high school age? MathewTownsend (talk) 01:06, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I have no problem with using "girls," Matthew, and will change it now. Thanks for giving me an idea of where this material is in the article. Flyer22 (talk) 01:12, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Editing initiative

An advanced seminar in adolescent development is undertaking a major editing of this article. The last major editing of this piece was done under my supervision last Spring. We will continue that work and expand on the piece here to bring up the quality and add additional information. One major focus will be to expand the focus outside the US. We should finish this in late October 2012. Nancydarling (talk) 13:21, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Welcome back, Nancy. Will you all be reformatting most of the article? Or is this more about adding more on to it? Either way, I need to delete some of the present subheadings, considering that the article looks long enough as it is. I'm sure that you remember that excessive subheadings were one of my few complaints about your class editing the article the previous round. Also, do you plan to have a class edit this article every few months or a year later? I ask because I want to know if I should expect this article not to be stable for longer than those times. Also, it would be ideal if you could point your class to the Welcome template -- specifically its links -- that are on your talk page so that they have a better idea of how to edit Wikipedia. That is, if you haven't already. But just in case you don't/haven't, and because they might need a reminder, I'll add Welcome templates to their talk pages when I see them. And I'll of course help out with formatting. Flyer22 (talk) 23:51, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

By the way, do you know if Dblanchard1234 is one of your students? He apparently made WP:Test edits.[1][2] Acat2169 and Scarlett811, both new users, might be yours as well. Flyer22 (talk) 23:59, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Hi Flyer22. I think this article will have less and less editing to be done as it improves. This still has a B rating and we want to bring it up to top quality. It still has a ways to go. After next week, we will not work on it systematically until at least next year. We have also been working on the related article on Emerging Adulthood. All the students should have gone through the welcome materials and editing training. Nancydarling (talk) 18:56, 4 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the response, Nancydarling. There have been heading formatting issues again, mostly capitalizing issues -- your class capitalizing each word in a heading, which is against WP:Manual of Style except for when it is the official formatting for a name of something -- but I can tell that they have had some training on Wikipedia formatting...and it's good to know that I don't have to tag their talk pages with the Welcome template. Flyer22 (talk) 07:21, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

And as for elevating this article from its B-level status, see WP:GA and WP:FA if you haven't already. Flyer22 (talk) 17:36, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Sexual identity

This text is in the article:
"In terms of sexual identity, while all sexual orientations found in adults are also represented among adolescents, statistically the suicide rate amongst LGBT adolescents is up to four times higher than that of their heterosexual peers."
This sentence is more about risk factors associated with one specific sexual identity than about sexual identity in adolescents. There must be so much more that can be said about sexual identity in adolescents. For instance, it is not at all uncommon for adolescents to be much more unsure about sexual identity compared to adults, and I wonder if there is more experimenting (or do adolescents try more to fit into a common pattern and is it young adults who experiment most??). Anyway, as you see, much more can be said about sexual identity during adolescence and a text about this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you! Lova Falk talk 19:05, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Since we already seem to have a section on sexuality, I edited the title of the section to LGBT sexual identity to better reflect the content, and also expanded it to add more statistics. Kporterf (talk) 22:15, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Good job! Lova Falk talk 09:23, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Update: That heading was changed by an editor (no doubt from the same class) with this addition, and then I slightly altered it and moved the section up higher for the reasons stated in this edit summary. Flyer22 (talk) 11:51, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Images

I started this discussion to note that the images that Tobby72 added On October 16, 2012 were removed last year per the Further changes after merge discussion. But I'm okay with these images having been added back. If others aren't, this section allows you state your objection(s) to any image of those images or others...their image captions...or your preference for other images. Flyer22 (talk) 00:05, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Body image section

I've started this section to work out a current content dispute. I disagreed with this edit that an IP made, for the reasons stated in this edit summary -- that "instead of removing the information, tweak it with respect to the existing source and yours. We don't need to be ambiguous about what it is the sources state/the researchers are saying." The IP is an editor I've discussed matters with on this talk page before (Avalongod). He added back the ambiguous wording, and I still disagree with it. This wording tells us nothing about exactly what is being debated, and it suppresses information about research. It does not matter if I or anyone else disagrees with this research; Wikipedia goes by WP:Verifiability, WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE on matters like these. This research is verifiable and is not at all undue weight or fringe. While Wikipedia also goes by WP:Neutral, WP:Neutral does not mean "suppressing a study," especially if that study is reporting a general consensus among scholars; not that the information in question is definitively general consensus, but I have seen a variety of reliable sources report the same thing over the years. It usually takes more than one study to trump research that has been consistently duplicated. What should be done in this case, per the way that Wikipedia is supposed to work, is to mention these findings and to also mention any opposing research beside it. I have discussed that type of formatting with Avalongod before. That said, if research leans significantly more to the former side, the latter side should not be given as much weight. Flyer22 (talk) 05:55, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanx Flyer. Yes Flyer and I sometimes (respectfully) disagree on matters. At play here is, however, not that any single study is disagreeing with a *consensus* but that, in fact, the consensus is illusory. Although it's certainly not uncommon to hear people (including some scholars) make conclusive statements about media effects, a thorough examination of the research reveals there is no consistency at all. IF we're going to go by "veryfiability" than this is something easily verifiable and I am happy to provide a number of citations if we wish to include a back and forth "research in support of belief X" and "research inconsistent with researc X" expansion. But I don't think we can make conclusive "factual" statements, and simply ignore research with conflicts with that statement. In science that is called "citation bias" and is bad practice in science and should not be reified here. I am happy either keeping it to a quick "scholars disagree" statement, or to something which is longer and more detailed about both sides...but not something which is simply factually incorrect. Respectfully Avalongod (talk) 06:36, 22 November 2012 (UTC)