For a growing number of adolescents, as Thomas Friedman argued in his best selling book, The World is Flat. This segment of adolescents has greater access to education, to information from around the world through television and the internet, and a growing ability to make well informed choices about their personal and professional lives. 
Sadly, for many other adolescents, the reality is very different. Social and economic deprivation means that they are poorly nourished, poorly educated, and unemployed and underemployed. They are also unable to break out of the chains that bind them down. They do not grow, develop or live to their full potential. 
Sadly, religious intolerance, civil strife and war are hugely important influences on today's adolescents well into the second half of the 21st century.