Adolescents Are More Speciesist Than Adults
Adults love to say they “care about animals”, then order their corpses for dinner. That contradiction doesn’t appear overnight. It starts in adolescence, when young people begin absorbing the culture’s excuses and rehearsing them as if they mean something.
A UK study compared 89 adolescents aged 10–17 with 113 adults. The findings are blunt:
▫️Adolescents scored higher in speciesism.
▫️Adolescents were less likely than adults to say pigs should be treated well.
▫️Both groups judged eating animals as equally “acceptable.”
▫️Adolescents were less likely than adults to say society sees farmed animals as food rather than pets.
What that shows is adolescence is when the gap opens. Children see animals more fairly. Adults have normalised their use. Teenagers are in between, beginning to downgrade animals’ moral worth, but not yet fully convinced by the meat culture’s script.
What shifts in adolescence
Children typically judge across species with more consistency. They’ll rescue the pig alongside the dog. They condemn harming farmed animals. By adolescence, that moral clarity is being trained out of them.
Why? Because they’re learning where meat comes from, and instead of rejecting the violence, they’re handed excuses. Not good excuses. Not even rational ones. Just the four pillars of human supremacy, recycled endlessly:
▫️Natural. “It’s natural to eat meat.” As if nature were a moral guide. By that logic, infanticide and cannibalism are fine too.
▫️Necessary. “We need it for protein.” A lie refuted by every dietetics association on Earth, but repeated until it sounds plausible.
▫️Normal. “Everyone does it.” Peer pressure dressed up as morality. If everyone else jumped off a cliff, would you?
▫️Humane slaughter. The most grotesque contradiction of all, turning a kill into a kindness.
None of these arguments would survive in isolation. A single vegan could dismantle them in seconds. The only reason they persist is because they’re echoed at family tables, in adverts, and in classrooms until they become “common sense.” Adolescents repeat them not because they stand up to scrutiny, but because the crowd does the heavy lifting.
The meat culture training ground
Adolescence is when culture does its hardest work. It tells you:
▫️Be independent, but don’t question dinner.
▫️Think for yourself, but never about where your food came from.
▫️Be brave, but not brave enough to reject the group.
This is how a society that mourns dogs and wants to protect wildlife still trains its young to laugh at the idea that pigs or chickens deserve the same protection. Supremacy disguised as maturity. Conformity disguised as autonomy.
The study shows this clearly. Adolescents are harsher than adults when judging pigs. Yet they’re also less certain that society categorises animals as food. The training is underway, but not complete. By adulthood, the script is ingrained.
Why adolescents harden into speciesism
Two things matter.
First, social survival. Teenagers are hyper-attuned to belonging. Step too far outside the group, and you risk ridicule or exclusion. Saying “meat is wrong” in that context feels like social suicide. So many default to parroting whatever line the majority uses.
Second, polarisation. Adolescents often swing harder in their views before levelling out. If the message they hear is “humans above all,” it can stick fiercely, especially when rewarded with acceptance.
That’s not moral reasoning. That’s conformity in action.
The implications for advocacy
If adolescence is when the scaffolding of speciesism is bolted into place, that’s when it must be challenged most directly. Not with soft “be nicer to animals” appeals, but with abolitionist clarity: stop using them.
Practical points:
1. Expose the absurdity. Show how “natural, necessary, normal, humane” are circular nonsense. Alone they’re laughable. Together they’re just louder nonsense.
2. Arm with facts. Protein, iron, omega-3, all in plants. Quick, clear counters strip the “necessary” myth bare.
3. Undermine normality. Normal does not equal moral. Tradition once defended slavery, homophobia, and monarchy too.
4. Refuse euphemisms. Don’t let “humane slaughter” slip by. It’s killing. A stun gun is not mercy.
5. Highlight consistency. If supremacy is wrong between human groups, it’s wrong across species. Teenagers are quick to spot hypocrisy, if shown.
6. Build new norms. Create peer groups, canteens, clubs where rejecting animal use is the default. Make courage visible.
The research shows adolescence is the battleground where children’s fairness collides with society’s supremacy training. Left unchecked, teenagers adopt higher speciesism, lower concern for farmed animals, and rehearse ridiculous excuses that feel like solid arguments only because a crowd repeats them.
This is not the age for compromise. It’s the age for clarity. Teach that every animal is someone, not something. That owning somebody is wrong, full stop. That cuteness doesn’t decide freedom, principle does.
Adolescents need the truth.