What do teenagers lie about?

Abstract

The lie has been studied in the field of social sciences for several years and from different perspectives. Children and adults have been the most investigated and adolescents the most forgotten. The investigation of psychology and education reveals, independently of the sociocultural aspects, how recourse to lying by adolescents tends to be associated with risk behaviours. Thus, understanding the contexts that trigger its use in adolescence is actively contributing to the prevention of these behaviours. In the present study, we seek to identify what adolescents are lying about; perceive if there are differences between boys and girls regarding the contents of the lie; study the causes and consequences of this behaviour in the adolescent, the next educational community and, finally, reflect on the importance for the educator of looking more deeply at this question. In this work a scale of contents of lies was applied to a sample of 871 Portuguese adolescents between 12 and 18 years of age (mean=13.8, SD=1.6). The results show that the lies of Portuguese teenagers are associated with affection, money and health. The results also suggest that the fear of punishment and the shame of admitting publicly their problems, doubts and longings end up throwing them into a whirlwind of feelings of guilt, where they condemn and reprimand themselves, ending up opting for lies, something they recognize as immoral, improper and reprehensible from the social point of view, to the detriment of the truth. The complexity and the consequences sometimes end up not justifying the lie. This work showed a reality that we live in Portugal on a cross-cutting issue for all countries and easily associated with antisocial behaviours that can be prevented with teachable and assertive educational responses.