The world doesn’t need another Justin Bieber article.

How­ever, I hope to go down a dif­fer­ent path and maybe a few of you will go down with me.

My feel­ings about Justin Bieber are neu­tral. I don’t know much about his music, the videos, the tours or any­thing else. This has allowed me to be objec­tive to the point of being dis­pas­sion­ate. From this dis­tance, he seems okay, just a reg­u­lar 16 year old from Scran­ton deal­ing with overnight fame and wealth as best he can.

Bieber is dif­fer­ent, though. For one thing, although there have been many teen idols before him, he is the first solo male teen idol to emerge in a long time. For another, as it’s prob­a­bly been noted, he is entirely the cre­ation of You Tube. There was no Justin Bieber before this 14 year old posted a video per­for­mance on You Tube. No albums, no shows, no arti­cles, no TV appear­ances. He didn’t exist. The You Tube video was dis­cov­ered by girls, who told other girls, who…made him into a teen idol.

If I were a man­ager of a young hope­ful, I’d treat You Tube with respect, a valu­able medium, and encour­age the new tal­ent to post on You Tube, think­ing that, if it can hap­pen to Justin Bieber.…

Therein lies the music industry’s and the media’s cyn­i­cism. At six­teen, he’s made three albums, pub­lished a mem­oir, been offered TV and film roles, approached to cohost a res­ur­rected Punk’d and, as every­body must have him, made a slew of guest appearances.

This is to sug­gest that Justin Bieber is hap­pen­ing now. He must be exploited now. This is fur­ther to sug­gest that Bieber doesn’t have a future. That just as quickly as he came out of nowhere, he can go back, replaced by the next Justin. Con­ceiv­ably, he could be washed up by the time he’s 18.

It’s a real fear. When he is 18, Justin Bieber will be enter­ing the cor­ri­dor of the iden­tity cri­sis. He’ll be ask­ing the ques­tions, who am I? What do I want to do? What do I want or expect from life? The iden­tity cri­sis can strike as late as the early to mid 20s and man­i­fest itself at the extreme by men­tal break­down or, even worse, schiz­o­phre­nia. A cel­e­brated exam­ple is Brian Wil­son. While he was being hailed in 1966 as a genius, the 22 year old com­poser and pro­ducer for the Beach Boys was falling apart.

There was a tug of war between want­ing to progress and resis­tance from the other Beach Boys. His frag­ile tem­pera­ment led him to back away and, as Wil­son grew more eccen­tric, the uncom­pre­hend­ing sim­ply dis­missed such behav­iour as “Brian being Brian.”

More recently, Ala­nis Mor­risette came through the cor­ri­dor in a way that showed up the media for being unimag­i­na­tive. At 16, Mor­risette had made two frothy, fluffy, utterly incon­se­quen­tial pop albums that branded her. Then, she dropped out of sight but when she came back into view some six years later with the con­fronta­tional, angry and hugely suc­cess­ful Jagged Lit­tle Pill album, there were many voices that could not believe this was the same Morrisette.

Between 16 and 22 you do a lot of grow­ing, reap a lot of expe­ri­ence. Mor­risette han­dled her iden­tity cri­sis in pri­vate, and then fun­neled her expe­ri­ence into Jagged Lit­tle Pill. Did the media really think that the Mor­risette of 16 would be the same Mor­risette of 22? Did they really think Jagged Lit­tle Pill was a sus­pi­cious career move?

Mor­risette, though, is intel­li­gent. Not as smart is Brit­ney Spears. Spears’ idol sta­tus made her one of the most suc­cess­ful teenagers in his­tory, but, being not very bright, she didn’t have the intel­lec­tual capac­ity to deal with her pop­u­lar­ity. After mak­ing an album that declared her adult­hood (that is, she no longer was a vir­gin), Spears went on to have what appeared a men­tal break­down, as embar­rass­ing escapade pro­ceeded to pile up one after another.

Then, a strange thing hap­pened. She embarked on a come­back, and the pub­lic, hav­ing seen her pathetic for so long, cheered her on as she strug­gled to her feet. The come­back is not nearly com­plete, and she hasn’t been gra­cious about her return, but maybe there is a les­son in this.

For instance, Hillary Duff has han­dled her career with unex­pected matu­rity, going so far as to title her last album Dig­nity. You can spec­u­late that Dig­nity is her response to Spears. Not for her, pub­lic exhi­bi­tions of a frag­ile men­tal state. Not for her, any­thing that can be made into gos­sip fod­der. The irony of going Duff’s route is that she’s judged bor­ing and sum­mar­ily dis­missed. Where once she was a media dar­ling, it’s hard to find any news on her now.

Duff was sup­planted by Miley Cyrus, who is now strug­gling to come to terms with adult­hood. She’s done the pre­dictable by dirty­ing her clean image. Didn’t Spears, Christina Aguil­era, or Janet Jack­son already do that to theirs? Sul­try videos, steamy sin­gles aren’t really a pas­sage into matu­rity. They just say, “I’ve fucked.” They alien­ate the fans who want Cyrus to stay the same, and force the remain­ing sup­port­ers to choose to grow with her or find some­body else. Why not just read a book? Tell the pub­lic what you have learned. Yes, these are exam­ples of girls try­ing to be women, but that might be why watch­ing Justin Bieber going from boy to man will be revealing.