What was the injustice?

Teenagers' emotions are intense, but their world is not all hormones and feelings. Their brains are waking up. They think. A lot. (It may not look like it to the adults around them, but that's because they're not thinking about what the adults want them to think about.) And the thoughts and the feelings are not separate things - for one thing, our feelings tell us what to think about, tell us what's important.

Surely those intense emotions, the racing thoughts of our adolescence affect who we become.

Teenagers have a keen sense of fairness, and are outraged by injustice. Children have a sense of fairness of course, but it seems like when we are children, it's personal. We're upset when we're punished for something we didn't do, or when we tell the truth and are not believed. In adolescence we become intensely, emotionally aware that the world is not fair.

It would be interesting to ask people, "What unfairness upset you most, what injustice were you angriest about, when you were a teenager?" [published on 12/27/11