challenges in adolescence essay

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The concerns and challenges of being a u.s. teen: what the data show.

American teens have a lot on their minds. Substantial shares point to anxiety and depression, bullying, and drug and alcohol use (and abuse) as major problems among people their age, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of youth ages 13 to 17.

How common are these and other experiences among U.S. teens? We reviewed the most recent available data from government and academic researchers to find out:

Anxiety and depression

Serious mental stress is a fact of life for many American teens. In the new survey, seven-in-ten teens say anxiety and depression are major problems among their peers – a concern that’s shared by mental health researchers and clinicians .

Alcohol and drugs

Anxiety and depression aren’t the only concerns for U.S. teens. Smaller though still substantial shares of teens in the Pew Research Center survey say drug addiction (51%) and alcohol consumption (45%) are major problems among their peers.

But the Michigan survey also found that, despite some ups and downs, use of marijuana (or its derivative, hashish) among 12th-graders is nearly as high as it was two decades ago. Last year, 22.2% reported using marijuana in the past 30 days, versus 22.8% in 1998. Past-month marijuana use among 10th-graders has declined a bit over that same period, from 18.7% to 16.7%, but is up from 14% in 2016.

Marijuana was by far the most commonly used drug among teens last year, as it has been for decades.  While more than 10% of 12th-graders reported using some illicit drug other than marijuana in the late 1990s and early 2000s, that figure had fallen to 6% by last year.

The Michigan researchers noted that vaping, of both nicotine and marijuana, has jumped in popularity in the past few years. In 2018, 20.9% of 12th-graders and 16.1% of 10th-graders reported vaping nicotine in the past 30 days, about double the 2017 levels. By comparison, only 7.6% of 12th-graders and 4.2% of 10th-graders had smoked a cigarette in that time. And 7.5% of 12-graders and 7% of 10th-graders said they’d vaped marijuana within the past month, up from 4.9% and 4.3%, respectively, in 2017.

Bullying and cyberbullying

Issues of personal safety also are on U.S. teens’ minds. The Center’s survey found that 55% of teens said bullying was a major problem among their peers, while a third called gangs a major problem.

As for gangs, the share of students ages 12 to 18 who said gangs were present at their school fell from 20.1% in 2001 to 10.7% in 2015, according to a report on school safety from the federal departments of Education and Justice. Black and Hispanic students, as well as students in urban schools, were most likely to report the presence of gangs at school, but even for those groups the shares reporting this fell sharply between 2001 and 2015, the most recent year for which data are available.

Four-in-ten teens say poverty is a major problem among their peers, according to the Center’s new report. In 2017, about 2.2 million 15- to 17-year-olds (17.6%) were living in households with incomes below the poverty level – up from 16.3% in 2009, but down from 18.9% in 2014, based on our analysis of Census data. Black teens were more than twice as likely as white teens to live in households below the poverty level (30.4% versus 14%); however, the share of white teens in below-poverty-level households had risen from 2009 (when it was 12.1%), while the share of black teens in below-poverty-level households was almost unchanged.

Teen pregnancy

Far fewer U.S. teens are having to juggle adolescence and parenthood, as teen births continue their long-term decline . Among 15- to 19-year-olds, the overall birthrate has fallen by two-thirds since 1991 – from 61.8 live births per 1,000 women to 20.3 in 2016 , according to the CDC. All racial and ethnic groups have witnessed teen-birthrate declines of varying degrees: Among non-Hispanic blacks, for example, the rate fell from 118.2 live births per 1,000 in 1991 to 29.3 in 2016 .

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Before recent outbreak, vaping was on the rise in u.s., especially among young people, why is the teen birth rate falling, a growing number of american teenagers – particularly girls – are facing depression, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

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Home Essay Samples Psychology Adolescence

My Adolescent Experience and Development: A Reflection

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Adolescent experience in my life, physical development, emotional development.

“Perhaps you looked in the mirror on a daily, or sometimes even hourly, basis as a young teenager to see whether you could detect anything different about your changing body. Preoccupation with one’s body image is strong through adolescence, it is especially acute during puberty, a time when adolescents are more dissatisfied with their bodies than in late adolescence.” (Santrock)

Social changes

• Arnett, J. J. (2015). Adolescence and emerging adulthood : A cultural approach. Pearson Education.
• Erikson, E. H. (1968). Identity: Youth and crisis. WW Norton & Company.
• Gullotta, T. P., & Adams, G. R. (Eds.). (2016). Handbook of adolescent behavioral problems: Evidence-based approaches to prevention and treatment. Springer.
• Steinberg, L. (2014). Age of opportunity: Lessons from the new science of adolescence. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Steinberg, L., & Morris, A. S. (2001). Adolescent development. Annual review of psychology, 52(1), 83-110.
• Suler, J. R. (2018). Adolescent development. In Psychology of Adolescence (pp. 11-38). Springer.
• Rutter, M., & Smith, DJ (1995). Psychosocial disorders in young people: Time trends and their causes. John Wiley & Sons.
• American Psychological Association. (2019). APA handbook of the psychology of adolescence.
• Offer, D., & Schonert-Reichl, K. A. (1992). Debunking the myths of adolescence: Findings from recent research. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 31(6), 1003-1014.

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6.3: Challenges of Adolescence

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• Identify and explain some of the social problems facing contemporary teenagers.
• Analyze the factors that contribute to social problems of teenagers.
• Explain the consequences social problems cause adolescence.

Universal Generalizations

• Adolescence can be confusing and challenging time of life.
• The norms dealing with sexual behavior vary greatly from society to society.
• Early sexual activity can have negative health effects.
• Adolescents are faced for the first time with important decisions which can have serious consequences on their lives

Guiding Questions

• Is it more difficult to be a teenager today than 20 years ago? 40 years ago?
• What type of social issues do teenagers face today?
• What are the causes and consequences of these problems?
• What causes and what are the consequences of suicide?

Challenges of Adolescence

The teen years are a time when adolescents begin developing a separate identity from their parents. It can be an exciting and confusing time for teens as they gain independence and begin preparing for adulthood. Teens in Americans face several common problems that can affect their emotional, social and physical development. America's teens face new problems when it comes to bullying. While past generations might have worried about getting into a fistfight with a bully, many of today's teens face possible violence with weapons. Cyberbullying also is a new problem, and it can lead to rumors and insults being spread in an instant. According to HealthyChildren.org, bullying places teens at risk for many other problems, including low self-esteem, social withdrawal and social anxiety. Truancy and academic problems can also stem from bullying.

http://www.livestrong.com/article/1000831-common-teen-problems-america/

While bullying has been around for ages, the Internet has made bullying easier and more widespread than ever, making it one of the major issues teens face today. It gives people who are normally afraid of confrontation the ability to bully others anonymously and those who would bully anyway a wider selection of “weapons” with which to attack. Facebook, Twitter and other social media networks give bullies the ability to enlist the help of others in their bullying schemes and publicize whatever they want to about their victim. A lot of teens are left stressed out, wondering if something they said or something they did will wind up posted on Facebook for all to see. lifestyle.allwomenstalk.com/issues-teens-face-today

Another issue concerning teens is depression. According to the American Academy of Adolescent and Child Psychiatry, "About 5 percent of children and adolescents in the general population suffer from depression at any given point in time." While adults with depression often appear sad, teens with depression usually report physical health problems, appear irritable and exhibit behavioral problems. Depression can cause teens to isolate themselves and withdraw from activities. Academic problems often arise as depression can lead to increased absences from school, difficulty concentrating and decreased motivation.

Obesity is an issue affecting many American teens. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, "Between 16 and 33 percent of children and adolescents are obese," which means they are more than 10 percent exceed the recommended weight for their height. Obesity can place teenagers at risk of many medical problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and breathing problems. It can also cause social problems for teenagers because they are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem and be less popular with their peers.

Substance Abuse

A major concern for many adolescence in the United States is substance abuse. According to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, adolescent substance use is America's No. 1 public health problem. According to a recent study by the center, "46 percent of all high school students currently use addictive substances; 1 in 3 of them meets the medical criteria for addiction." The use of addictive substances before the age of 18 greatly increases the likelihood of developing an addiction. Many factors contribute to teen substance abuse problems, such as peer pressure and media messages. Alcohol is the substance abused most frequently by adolescents, followed by marijuana and tobacco. In the past month, 39 percent of high school seniors reported drinking some alcohol, almost 23 percent reported using marijuana, and 16 percent reported smoking cigarettes.

More adolescents drink alcohol than smoke cigarettes or use marijuana. Within the past month, almost four out of 10 high school seniors report drinking some alcohol and more than one in five have engaged in “binge drinking” daily in the past two weeks. Drinking endangers adolescents in multiple ways including motor vehicle crashes, the leading cause of death for this age group. Nearly one in four adolescents has ridden in a car with a driver who had been drinking. Genetic factors and life stressors influence adolescents’ alcohol abuse, but parents and guardians can help by monitoring adolescents’ activities and keeping channels of communication open.

Cigarette smoking among adolescents has declined dramatically in the last 15 years. Today, most adolescents do not smoke, but about one in ten has smoked within the past month and the use of smokeless tobacco increased between 2008 and 2010, but has remained fairly steady since 2010. Tobacco use harms nearly every organ in the body, and more than six million children born between 1983 and 2000 will die in adulthood of smoking-related illnesses. Multiple factors influence whether an adolescent becomes a regular smoker, including genetics and having parents or peers who smoke. Many adolescents start trying tobacco products at a young age, so prevention efforts in schools, in communities, and in homes, can help and should begin early.

Illicit drug use—which includes the abuse of illegal drugs and/or the misuse of prescription medications or household substances—is something many adolescents engage in occasionally, and a few do regularly. By the twelfth grade, about half of adolescents have abused an illicit drug at least once. The most commonly used drug is marijuana but adolescents can find many abused substances, such as prescription medications, glues, and aerosols, in the home. Many factors and strategies can help adolescents stay drug free: Strong positive connections with parents, other family members, school, and religion; having parents present in the home at key times of the day; and reduced access in the home to illegal substances.

http://www.hhs.gov/ash/oah/adolescent-health-topics/substance-abuse/home.html

Adolescence and Sexual Behavior

Many young people engage in sexual risk behaviors that can result in unintended health outcomes. For example, among U.S. high school students surveyed in 2013

• 47% had ever had sexual intercourse.
• 41% did not use a condom the last time they had sex.
• 15% had had sex with four or more people during their life.
• Only 22% of sexually experienced students have ever been tested for HIV.

Sexual risk behaviors place adolescents at risk for HIV infection, other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and unintended pregnancy:

• Nearly 10,000 young people (aged 13-24) were diagnosed with HIV infection in the United States in 2013.
• Young gay and bisexual men (aged 13-24) accounted for an estimated 19% (8,800) of all new HIV infections in the United States, and 72% of new HIV infections among youth in 2010.
• Nearly half of the 20 million new STDs each year were among young people, between the ages of 15 to 24.
• Approximately 273,000 babies were born to teen girls aged 15–19 years in 2013.

Among American teenagers, the birthrate is substancially higher than other industrialized countries. The CDC has established national health objectives to address the issue of sexual behavior. One of its major objectives the CDC encouraged abstinence- not engaging in any type of sexual behavior . Surveys have indicated the CDC programs have had some success. Sexual activity among teens has declined and the use of birth control has increased.

To reduce sexual risk behaviors and related health problems among youth, schools and other youth-serving organizations can help young people adopt lifelong attitudes and behaviors that support their health and well-being- including behaviors that reduce their risk for HIV, other STDs and unintended pregnancy.

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/sexualbehaviors/

Influences on Early Sexual Activity

Social scientists have theorized a series of explanations for why teens partake in sexual behavior. Many scientists believe social and economic factors contribute to early sexual activity. Some of these factors are family income level, marital status of parents, and religious participation. Typically teens from higher income two parent families have lower rates of sexual activity than those teens who come from a lower social income and one parent families. Sexual activity is also influenced by the norms concerning sexual behavior among teens. Those teens whose friends engage in sexual behavior are more likely to engage in sexual behavior than those whose friends do not engage in sex.

Teen Sexual Activity and Outcomes

Early sexual activity is associated with a host of negative outcomes that can have lasting physical, emotional, social, and economic impacts on the lives of young people, particularly teenage girls and young women.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that one in four teenage girls has at least one sexually transmitted infection (STI). Teenage girls, especially, are physiologically vulnerable to these infections, and early sexual activity increases the risk of infection. One study found that those who begin sexual activity at age 13 are twice as likely to become infected as peers who remain sexually abstinent throughout their teen years.

Teen Pregnancy and Unwed Childbearing

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy estimates that about one in two Hispanic and black teenage girls and one in five Caucasian teenage girls will become pregnant at least once before turning 20. Overall, nearly one in five adolescent girls will give birth in her teens.

Engaging in early sexual activity elevates the risk of teenage girls becoming pregnant and single mothers. Girls who become sexually active during early adolescence are three times as likely to become single mothers as those who remain abstinent throughout their teenage years. Nearly 40 percent of girls who begin sexual activity at ages 13 or 14 will give birth outside marriage, compared to 9 percent of those who remain abstinent until their early twenties.

Marital Stability and Maternal Poverty

Sexual activity at an early age may also affect marital and economic stability later in life. Among women in their thirties, those who were sexually active during early adolescence are half as likely to be in stable marriages as those who waited until their early twenties to have sex. Early sexual activity is also linked to maternal poverty. At the time of a large national survey in 1995, nearly 30 percent of mothers who began sexual activity at ages 13 or 14 lived in poverty compared to 12 percent of those who waited until their early twenties.

Parental Influence and Teen Sex

Many policymakers, health professionals, and "safe sex" advocates respond to these troubling statistics by demanding more comprehensive sex education and broader access to contraceptives for minors. They assume that teens are unable to delay their sexual behavior and that a combination of information about and access to contraceptives will effectively lead to protected sex, preventing any form of harm to youngsters. Not only are these assumptions faulty, they tend to disregard important factors that have been linked to reduced teen sexual activity. A particularly noticeable omission is parental influence.

Parents, as teens themselves reveal, are the ones who have the most influence on their children's decisions about sex. Indeed, two-thirds of all teens share their parents' values on this topic.

When it comes to talking about teen sex, both teens and parents report high levels of communication. Parents, however, tend to perceive a greater level of communication than do teens. Nearly all parents (90 percent) report having had a helpful conversation about delaying sex and avoiding pregnancy with their teenage children, compared to 71 percent of teens who report having had such a conversation with their parents. Many parents are also unaware of their teens' actual behavior. In a study of 700 teens in Philadelphia, 58 percent of the teens reported being sexually active, while only one-third of their mothers believed they were.

The empirical evidence on the association between parental influences and adolescents' sexual behavior is strong. Parental factors that appear to offer strong protection against the onset of early sexual activity include an intact family structure; parents' disapproval of adolescent sex; teens' sense of belonging to and satisfaction with their families; parental monitoring; and, to a lesser extent, parent-child communication about teen sex and its consequences.

That parents play a role in teen sex points to at least two significant policy implications. First, programs and policies that seek to delay sexual activity or to prevent teen pregnancy or STDs should encourage and strengthen family structure and parental involvement. Doing so may increase these efforts' overall effectiveness. Conversely, programs and policies that implicitly or explicitly discourage parental involvement, such as dispensing contraceptives to adolescents without parental consent or notice, contradict the weight of social science evidence and may prove to be counterproductive and potentially harmful to teens.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2008/10/teen-sex-the-parent-factor

www.heritage.org/~/media/images/reports/2008/bg2194/b2194_chart2.ashx

Youth Suicide

Suicide (i.e., taking one's own life) is a serious public health problem that affects even young people. For youth between the ages of 10 and 24, suicide is the third leading cause of death. It results in approximately 4600 lives lost each year. The top three methods used in suicides of young people include firearm (45%), suffocation (40%), and poisoning (8%).

Deaths from youth suicide are only part of the problem. More young people survive suicide attempts than actually die. A nationwide survey of youth in grades 9–12 in public and private schools in the United States (U.S.) found that 16% of students reported seriously considering suicide, 13% reported creating a plan, and 8% reporting trying to take their own life in the 12 months preceding the survey. Each year, approximately 157,000 youth between the ages of 10 and 24 receive medical care for self-inflicted injuries at Emergency Departments across the U.S.

Suicide affects all youth, but some groups are at higher risk than others. Boys are more likely than girls to die from suicide. Of the reported suicides in the 10 to 24 age group, 81% of the deaths were males and 19% were females. Girls, however, are more likely to report attempting suicide than boys. Cultural variations in suicide rates also exist, with Native American/Alaskan Native youth having the highest rates of suicide-related fatalities. A nationwide survey of youth in grades 9–12 in public and private schools in the U.S. found Hispanic youth were more likely to report attempting suicide than their black and white, non-Hispanic peers.

Several factors can put a young person at risk for suicide. However, having these risk factors does not always mean that suicide will occur.

Sidebar Notes:

If you or someone you know is having thoughts of suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255), or visit the Web .

Suicide has many warning signs. For more information, visit the American Association of Suicidology's Web site .

Risk factors

• History of previous suicide attempts
• Family history of suicide
• History of depression or other mental illness
• Alcohol or drug abuse
• Stressful life event or loss
• Easy access to lethal methods
• Exposure to the suicidal behavior of others
• Incarceration

Most people are uncomfortable with the topic of suicide. Too often, victims are blamed, and their families and friends are left stigmatized. As a result, people do not communicate openly about suicide. Thus an important public health problem is left shrouded in secrecy, which limits the amount of information available to those working to prevent suicide.

The good news is that research over the last several decades has uncovered a wealth of information on the causes of suicide and on prevention strategies. Additionally, CDC is working to monitor the problem and develop programs to prevent youth suicide.

www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pub/youth_suicide.html

The Sociological View of Suicide

Suicide is a major challenge facing American adolescence. Suicide among teens now exceeds the suicide rates of the general population. In order to gain a better understanding of suicide, a sociological view must be taken into account. Social Integration is the degree to which people are connected to their social groups. Let's check your own personal degree of social integration. On a piece of paper right down how many close family members you have. Then add in how many close friends and coworkers you have. Finally add in all others whose name you know and they know yours. This number is one measure of your social integration. But, to really get an idea you might evaluate these relationships. In other words list your top 6 closest relationships in order. Make a short list of the 6 closest relationships you have. Now, rank 1 for the closest, 2 for next closest and so on up to 6th. Durkheim realized from his suicide studies that the closer we are to others, the more socially integrated we are and the less likely we are to commit suicide. The second concept to understand is called anomie.

As a larger social fact, anomie is a byproduct of large complex societies, especially around large cities. It's easier to get lost in the crowd, not be noticed, and to rarely receive praise or criticism for personal actions. Durkheim and others were aware that society impacted the life of the individual even if the individual had very little impact on society. By the way, Durkheim measured suicide rates and so do we in our day. Suicide is the purposeful ending of one's own life for any reason. Suicide Rate is the numbers of suicides per 100,000 people in a population.

Interestingly, the Suicide Prevention Resource Center gives a few suicide prevention strategies that relate to social integration: "Strong connections to family and community support, cultural and religious beliefs that discourage suicide and support self-preservation and various other types of social support are recommended" (retrieved 13 January, 2009 from www.sprc.org the "Risk and Protective Factors for Suicide," National Strategy for Suicide Prevention: Goals and Objectives for Action, 2001).

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Contextualizing the Social and Educational Journeys of Adolescents within the Life Course

What happens during adolescence emerges from early in life and sets the stage for later in life. This linking function of adolescence within the life course is grounded in social, psychological, and biological development and is fundamental to the intergenerational transmission of societal inequalities. This article explores this life course phenomenon by focusing on how the social ups and downs of secondary school shape adolescents’ educational trajectories, translating their backgrounds into their futures through the interplay of their personal agency with the constraints imposed by the stratified institutions they navigate. Illustrative examples include gender differences in risky behavior, racialized experiences of school discipline, immigrant youths’ family relations, LGBTQ students’ school safety, STEM education, adverse childhood experiences, and mindset interventions.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”

These oft-quoted words by novelist Joan Didion (1979) capture for me the reality that we—as humans—are compelled to extricate patterns and distill narratives from what seems like chaos because that is the only way that we can keep going. We do that as people, but we also do that as social and behavioral scientists. In our work, we are driven to explain some developmental phenomenon because that explanation imposes order on a world that is filled with disorder. How exactly do we come to that explanation? We look for the strongest pattern and then tell a story about it. The story should be empirically based, of course, but effective research is often research that compels and convinces with the narrative it builds on the data.

The research that I have conducted on adolescence has several threads that can be woven together into a larger tapestry. From statistical analyses, interviews, ethnographic observations, and experiments focused on adolescents that I have conducted and from the words, writings, and creative expressions of the adolescents I have worked with has emerged a story about the interplay of adolescents’ social development and academic progress with three basic parts:

• Adolescents struggle through a complex and stratified educational system that doubles as a vast social world governed by peer norms that are often opaque, frequently contradictory, and constantly evolving.
• Adolescents strive for success in this educational and social system while dealing with its psychological challenges in ways that can seem rationally self-protective at first but have the potential to eventually lead them astray, turning around on themselves so that academic and social success achieved becomes more difficult to translate into success maintained.
• Such adolescent experiences offer a story to understand adolescence as a critical stage of life and to see the implications of the growing diversity of the adolescent population in ways that might result in more guidance and support for adolescents and the adults trying to support and protect them from such “growing pains”.

Linking adolescents’ social development and academic progress, this story highlights the stormier side of adolescent life, the pressures of schooling, and the widening of inequality. As such, it runs the risk of reifying the darker narrative of adolescence that has long held sway among adults and that, incidentally, I and many other scholars of adolescence have tried to counter. Yet, it is still an important story to consider because it is relevant to many adolescents and their schools and because it offers a valuable window into the ways that adolescence bridges childhood to adulthood. It just needs to be delivered with the reinforcement that positive youth development is generally the norm rather than the exception, resilience is real and achievable, and even some of the riskier and rockier aspects of adolescence often serve a developmental purpose ( National Academies, 2019 ; Lerner, 2017 ; Beale-Spencer et al., 2006 ).

In describing this storyline in the larger discourse about adolescent development, this article—while admittedly not exhaustive and too western-based—draws on a long tradition of multidisciplinary research, including in life course sociology and developmental psychology, that has increasingly documented and interrogated the variability in adolescents’ experiences across diverse settings and groups 1 . Emphasizing the classic and the new, its goal is to explain why this story about the ways that adolescents manage their sometimes competing and sometimes synergistic roles as students and peers matters, where we can take it, and what we can do with it.

ADOLESCENCE IN LIFE COURSE PERSPECTIVE

If theory provides the underlying story structure for research, then life course theory can structure research on the interplay of adolescents’ social and academic lives. Broadly, life course theory focuses on the intersection of individual developmental pathways with larger social structures across time in ways that allow us to ask new questions and then systematically answer them ( Elder, Shanahan, & Jennings, 2015 ; Elder, Johnson, & Crosnoe, 2003 ; for a thorough integration of life course theory with the larger family of relational developmental systems theories, see Lerner, Lewin-Bizan, & Warren, 2010 ).

This perspective has five principles to guide such a process (see Table 1 ), but two of those principles are particularly important for elucidating novel insights into the adolescent experience ( Crosnoe & Johnson, 2011 ; Johnson, Crosnoe, & Elder, 2011 ). First, the principle of lifelong development emphasizes that lives are lived the long way. As such, adolescence should be viewed—and studied—as one brief passage in a much longer journey. Thus, the meaningfulness of adolescence lies at least in part in how it emerges from childhood and sets the stage for adulthood but also how adolescence stands out from what comes before and what comes after. We can make better sense of adolescence, therefore, by embedding it within the full course of life. Second, the principle of agency and constraints is about the ways that people try to make their own lives and take charge of their own fortunes even as they are being acted on by outside forces attempting to bound them in and/or push them in certain directions. This principle is all about the environment, the person, and the complicated dance between two.

Principles of Life Course Theory

See: Elder et al., 2015 ; Elder et al., 2003 .

Putting these two principles of life course theory into conversation with each other can illuminate the uniqueness of adolescence as a critical period of the life course and, more specifically, reveal why the interplay of social and academic journeys across adolescence is important to study, understand, and address. To that end, we can derive a guiding story by iteratively considering adolescence on its own, as flowing out of and into other periods of life, and as the product of the interplay of agency and constraints.

ADOLESCENCE ON ITS OWN

To begin, adolescence warrants attention on its own, regardless of what comes earlier or later. Over the course of my career studying adolescence at the intersection of sociology, psychology, and educational science, I have been motivated by two objectives. The first is exploring the social side of secondary school in a modern world that is both socially connected and socially fractured, and the second is understanding what that social side of secondary school means for educational attainment in a global economy that has maximized the lifelong financial, social, political, and health returns of higher education. The multi-year mixed-methods research I did for my 2011 book Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating the Social Challenges of High School to Get an Education —which combined statistical analyses of population data on U.S. adolescents with ethnographic research in a large, diverse, public U.S. high school—perhaps best encapsulates how these objectives came together.

Like many social and behavioral scientists who set out to study the social side of secondary school, I was influenced by James Coleman’s 1961 book, The Adolescent Society: The Social Life of the Teenager and its Impact on Society. Studying a set of Midwestern high schools in the 1950s, Coleman crafted a story about an almost uniform youth culture in U.S. schools in which adolescents created their own system of norms and values in opposition to conventional adult standards and then enforced conformity to that system. In the ensuing decades, this story has been problematized and complicated in many ways, especially by efforts to better recognize the diverse voices and experiences of young people living in circumstances and traversing schools far removed from the affluent, White, suburban schools that Coleman studied ( Carter, 2006 ; Flores-Gonzalez, 2005 ; Steinberg, Brown, & Dornbusch, 1997 ; Way, 2014 ).

Yet, the vision of secondary school as a highly structured social hierarchy going well beyond academic processes is a clear one that still holds weight. This hierarchy, however, is neither fixed nor uniform, and adolescents have to learn how to “work” that hierarchy to get ahead or, more importantly, not fall behind academically or socially. Depending on which schools adolescents attend, the community and country that shapes the structure of their schooling, and who they are as individuals, this nature of secondary schooling can create seemingly perverse incentives that are sometimes in line with the notion of an oppositional culture but also many times (and in most domains) are not. Of the many developmental domains in which such incentives play out, three are particularly illustrative. They concern risk-taking, sexual activity, and relationships with parents and other adults.

Risky Behavior as Strategy

Risk-taking is a hallmark of adolescence. In varying degrees, adolescents engage in risky and otherwise problem behaviors that adults wish they would avoid. We, as adults, see such behaviors as bad for adolescents, although they often are developmentally appropriate and help to support the transition into adulthood ( Duell & Steinberg, 2021 ). For their part, adolescents may see such behaviors in terms of social status, or related to their position in peer hierarchies at school—how liked they are, how much they are respected or envied. As such, behaviors become social currency and, therefore, potentially good for them.

For example, Allen and colleagues (2005) conducted a study indicating that popularity in U.S. high schools encouraged low-level delinquency and drug use. Adolescents saw moderate engagement in such potentially dangerous behaviors as a source of status but more serious engagement as a source of stigma. Thus, gaining or maintaining popularity may require being a little bad but not too bad. These findings echoed my own research described in Fitting In, Standing Out, which suggested that academic success need not be the death knell for popularity that is often depicted in movies and television. In fact, popular kids tended to do well in school; they just did not do too well—perhaps A− and B+ grades rather than A+ but not a C or lower. Such an orientation toward risky behavior and academic progress allowed them to avoid disappointing the adults in their lives—as perfectly fine students—but not completely satisfy those adults either, as they occasionally got in worrisome trouble. This behavioral calculation of status is about wanting to be liked but also about avoiding being disliked ( Pál, Stadtfeld, Grow, & Takács, 2016 ), wanting to belong but also wanting power or respect ( Flores-Gonzalez, 2005 ; Gordon, Crosnoe, & Wang, 2013 ), and about the friends who surround an adolescent but also the friends that an adolescents’ friends have and the friends that an adolescent aspires to attract ( Frank et al., 2008 ).

Contrary to common adult views of adolescents, therefore, ample evidence suggests that they are often hyper-rational about their social and academic lives. Through a combination of social processes (e.g., the consequences of individuating from parents) and biological processes (e.g., the development of the brain from back to front, rapid hormone production), they are highly oriented toward peer approval, and peer approval sometimes promotes risky behavior ( Eckert, 1989 ; Monahan, Steinberg, & Cauffman, 2009 ; Steinberg, 2008 ). Yet, adolescents engage in such behavior in more thoughtful and planful ways than they are generally given credit for by adults. This tendency toward confounding but explainable behavioral decision-making is on display in the growing literature on bullying and peer victimization, which suggests that bullying is less a psychopathology and more an adaptive and goal-directed behavior. For example, research by Faris and Felmlee (2011) showed that adolescent bullying was most often perpetrated in the middle of a school’s social hierarchy (as an adolescent enacted strategies to climb the social ladder) than at the top (as an adolescent had nowhere else to climb) or at the bottom (as an adolescent saw no viable way to climb). Ellis, Volk, Gonzalez, and Embry (2016) used this refined understanding of bullying to redirect interventions targeting peer victimization in schools. Instead of changing the goal of bullying (i.e., gaining status and resources), the intervention offered alternative mechanisms for achieving that goal (e.g., jobs), with demonstration results pointing to a reduction in key outcomes such as school fights.

This body of research suggests that adults can identify paths of action to reduce risky behavior by getting inside the minds of adolescents and seeing a problem from their perspective.

Sexual Activity and Social Status

This delicate interplay between risky behavior and social status in secondary school does not work for all adolescents. That variability is evident in the growing literature on adolescent sexual behavior that pays special attention to the complexities of gender and race/ethnicity.

Ample quantitative and qualitative evidence suggests that sexual activity in adolescence is generally associated with popularity, which is a key marker of status in a social context like the school. As one example, an article by Helms et al. (2014) reported the interesting finding that, although adolescents in popular peer crowds did not necessarily engage in more sexual activity than other adolescents, their fellow students thought that they did. Yet, other evidence demonstrates that that the status of sexual activity in adolescence is not straightforward for girls. As research by Kreager and colleagues has shown (2009 , Kreager, Staff, Gauthier, Lefkowitz, & Feinberg, 2016 ), the sexual double standard is alive and well in U.S. secondary schools, with girls not gaining a status boost and instead generally receiving a status penalty as they increased their sexual activity.

With such costs of sexual activity in the social context of school, what are adolescent girls’ reasons for engaging in sex? There is of course girls’ sexual desire, a subject too infrequently studied by adolescent scholars to the detriment of theoretical understanding ( Harden, 2014 ; Tolman & McClelland, 2011 ). There is also the role of associations with older peers, both male and female. Such peer associations, in turn, reflect both biological and social mechanisms related to early puberty, which remains a popular topic for scholars of adolescence ( Harden, 2014 ). Expanding on the role of peers and social influence, there is also the broader conceptualization of social context captured by sexualization, which refers to cultural and media-driven messages encouraging adolescent girls to assess their own social and personal worth in terms of their sexual attractiveness ( McKenney & Bigler, 2016 ).

Research by Brown has helped to underscore the significance of sexualization in the social lives of adolescent girls. It has shown how sexualization and associated behaviors (such as sexual harassment and peer victimization) can organize high school networks in the United States but also more broadly how it is ingrained in social media. Notably, this social media component does not just involve sexualization directed from outside in but also how girls actively curate their own social media presence through self-sexualization. This social and self-sexualization then has implications not only for adolescent girls’ sexual behavior but also for their academic progress. Indeed, it appears to discourages girls’ academic investment and their academic self-presentation; again, achieving academically but striving to appear to others that she is not or that it is not intentional ( Brown, 2021 ; Jewell, Brown, & Perry, 2015 ; Salomon & Brown, 2019 ). The complicating wrinkle to this gender story, though, is that Black girls tend to be sexualized more intensely, sexualized at younger ages, and subjected to more sexual harassment ( Epstein, Blake, & González, 2017 ). This adultification is a developmental component of systematic racial/ethnic and gender stratification; how such inequality is lived in daily life.

Thus, adolescent girls often follow seemingly rational decision-making processes about their sexual behavior—whether said behavior is risky or not—to position themselves in a status hierarchy in key social contexts. They do so, however, on an uneven playing field that privileges some and marginalizes others through an overlay of interpersonal judgment that can change how they see themselves and their futures.

Family Bonds that Give and Take

The ecological perspective encourages the study of the adolescent world of secondary school as connected to the larger adult world, including how it is shaped by adult actors like parents and teachers. A clear through-line of developmental research is that strong bonds with adults are hallmarks of adjustment and positive functioning and that this developmental support in part reflects the ability of adults to guide adolescents into more positive peer environments and then protect against the deleterious effects of negative peer environments. This pattern is particularly evident in studies of communities of color and especially immigrant cultures, which tend to show adolescents as more family oriented, more connected to their extended families and community networks, more respectful of adult authority, and readier to believe that adults have their best interests at heart ( Zeiders, Updegraff, Umaña-Taylor, McHale, & Padilla, 2016 ). In such communities, strong family connections and extended family networks are both cultural and functional, valued traditions that provide personal meaning but also help family members survive and thrive in a stratified society that imposes social and economic barriers on them. Adolescents growing up in such communities internalize these norms and values, which shapes how they move through the world, including their peer worlds and the educational system.

One population that I have studied—Mexican-origin youth—illustrates this pattern. For example, a study in the special issue of this journal on developmental neuroscience showed that close family bonds weakened the pathway from hostile peer environments at school to increased neural reactivity reflecting social susceptibility and social pain and onto the problem behavior of Mexican-origin adolescents ( Figure 1 ). This finding indicates that adolescents do not experience schools’ social dynamics in a vacuum beyond the protection of their families ( Schriber et al., 2018 ). Other studies complicate this pattern. As an example, quantitative findings revealed that feelings of obligation that arose from family bonds narrowed the scope of options Mexican-origin adolescents considered in planning their futures, including higher education ( Desmond & López Turley, 2009 ). As another example, qualitative research revealed that the influence of well-meaning teachers on Mexican-origin adolescents could be socioemotionally protective but educationally restrictive. In counterfeit social capital, teachers simultaneously held positive views of Mexican-origin youth as “good” adolescents and biased views of them as “poor” students, which encouraged the teachers to provide social support and care to students but discouraged them from adequately scaffolding students’ ambitions and aspirations ( Ream, 2003 ).

Neural pathways linking peer environments to behavior. Adapted from: Schriber et al., 2018

In sum, Mexican-origin adolescents and other youth from communities of color—particularly immigrant communities—often enjoy a true source of adult-provided protection as they traverse the unique nature of adolescence unfolding within the social worlds of their schools, but there may be costs to that protection that counters at least some of its benefits. Youth from more historically advantaged segments of the population may face fewer risks and barriers as they traverse adolescence, diluting the potential value of the immediate protections of family but also clearing their paths overall. In this way, this literature on a specific population reveals the larger phenomenon by which adults both give and take in the lives of adolescents.

Lessons about Adolescent Society

With this picture of adolescent social life and educational disparities in mind, we cannot argue that adolescent society is monolithically oppositional. Instead, it is internally contradictory and context-specific, an individually tailored maze. Adolescents chart their own path through that society in ways that serve their own interests, sometimes with help from others, sometimes with extra challenges, and sometimes with a mixture of the two. For many, this journey is in line with positive youth development. For others, it more closely resembles the common—if exaggerated—storm and stress view of adolescence. Adolescents’ navigation of the inevitable perils they face on this journey is clearly a factor in which direction they go. The effort and thought that such navigation requires should inspire respect. Future research in this area needs to bridge social network techniques with more biopsychosocial approaches in longitudinal designs that allow for more densely repeated data collections that track the ups and downs of going to school and how these ups and downs are experienced internally and externally.

ADOLESCENCE THE LONG WAY

Having first considered adolescence on its own, we can approach adolescence within the larger life course. The driving idea of “the long way” is that adolescence is either a pit stop on the highway of life or, more likely, the major connector on this highway.

Adolescence Emerging from Childhood

Adolescence can play out the long way by flowing out of childhood. There are many aspects of childhood that affect how young people transition into and through adolescence. To choose one example, adverse childhood experiences (ACES) refer to potentially traumatic events or circumstances early in the life course—such as family disruption, maltreatment, or community violence—that have downstream consequences for development. Multiple studies link an array of ACES to such short- and long-term outcomes as maladjustment, behavioral and academic challenges, and poor health. They usually focus on stress as the focal mechanism; for instance, frequent exposure to parent’s verbal abuse can over-activate stress response in ways that eventually deteriorate physical health. Notably, the rigid stratification of many societies means that youth of color tend to be exposed to more ACES—including experiences of discrimination—and have fewer resources that can buffer against their developmental impact ( Duke, Pettingell, McMorris, & Borowsky, 2010 ; Felitti et al., 1998 ; Flaherty et al., 2013 ).

Focusing on adolescents, McLaughlin and Sheridan (2016) formulated an alternative learning perspective. In this conceptualization ( Figure 2 ), some ACES are threats (e.g., witnessing violence, physical abuse). Sustained exposure to threats can facilitate a fear learning process in which youth see nearly every experience as potentially dangerous, whether it is actually threatening or relatively safe. For example, children who suffer frequent discrimination may become hypervigilant adolescents who encounter even trustworthy adults with suspicion. Other ACES are deprivation (e.g., poverty, parental neglect). Sustained exposure to deprivation can trigger a rewards learning process in which young people cannot distinguish between high- and low-reward situations. For example, children who do not have their basic needs met may become adolescents who cannot discern when the benefits of a new experience likely outweigh its risks. Young people with ACES then move through the educational system employing these two forms of learning, which can undermine academic progress socioemotionally (e.g., reducing challenge-seeking behavior) and cognitively (e.g., disrupting executive functioning). Their resulting academic disadvantage relative to peers without ACES can grow as they enter the more complex curricula of secondary school.

Two learning pathways linking adverse childhood experiences to educational outcomes. Adapted from: McLaughlin & Sheridan, 2016

This unfolding developmental role of ACES underscores that some experience can happen early in life and then, even when time-limited, set in motion a pathway with cascading effects for education. In this way, childhood sets the stage for a rockier start to adolescence. That rockier start is not predetermined and can be overcome, but young people face higher odds of educational problems in adolescence based on something that was done to them or taken away from them in childhood. This cascade is likely especially important for studying racial/ethnic disparities in educational attainment, although the role of ACES in learning gets talked about more in public health than educational research. Perhaps that is because ACES are considered outside the formal purview of the educational system and educational policy. In other words, educational policymakers and school leaders may be less likely to view changing family or community dynamics as part of their mandate than changing school structures or practices.

Adolescence Setting Up Adulthood

Adolescence can also play out the long way by flowing into adulthood. Maintaining the focus on ACES, we know that ACES predicts lower educational attainment into adulthood ( Houtepen et al., 2020 ), but the role of the aforementioned learning pathways in this lifelong process is less clear because of the dearth of long-term longitudinal data.

Some insight into this process can be gleaned from non-educational research from the Three City Study, which has a predominantly low-income Black and Latinx sample ( Cherlin, Hurt, Burton, & Purvin, 2004 ). This research shows that adult women who suffered sexual abuse early in life, including adolescence, had more unstable patterns of union formation in adulthood. Unlike women who had experienced physical abuse in adolescence and earlier, such women did not avoid relationships with men when they entered adulthood. Instead, they sought out such relationships but did not stay in them. The explanation is that the adult survivors of sexual abuse learned to think they needed such a relationship for protection, status, and/or validation without learning the positive relationship dynamics. Coupled with their own socially and economically disadvantages circumstances, this imbalance between two forms of learning left them vulnerable to relationships with less-than-ideal partners and/or to trouble engaging in whatever relationships they did form. A lingering effect of early life—acknowledged, understood, or not—continued to shape how they viewed themselves and interacted with the larger world even years later.

This focus on the enduring risks of early adversity illustrates how adolescence sets the stage for adulthood, but there are more asset-based dimensions of this life course process that can dilute the potential conclusion that early life determines later life in overly negative ways. Indeed, a substantial minority of young people who face adverse experiences in adolescence and earlier are eventually categorized as “resilient” adults using a variety of definitions, often because they develop strong social and psychological assets in adolescence and are connected to networks of support and opportunities for growth and achievement ( Klika & Herrenkohl, 2013 ). As one example, a meta-analysis of studies from multiple countries suggested a process of “self-righting” that reduced the lingering effects of adversity. In this process, strong social and interpersonal support systems counteracted negative learning processes commonly associated with adverse experiences like maltreatment and allowed young people to more consistently and positively chart their futures and manage challenges ( Leung, Chan, & Ho, 2020 ).

High School Social Life as an Illustration of Adolescence as a Connecting Point

My own research on adolescents has lower stakes than ACES research. Rather than studying abuse and violence, I have focused on the pressures of navigating high school peer cultures in the United States—not necessarily social victimization (e.g., bullying) or mixing with the “wrong” crowd but more often simply the work adolescents have to do to stay afloat. The mixed-methods research in Fitting In, Standing Out (2011) elucidated how these ups and downs of high school social life were rooted in childhood experiences and then had long-term effects on adulthood because the academic distractions they engendered at any one point accumulated to reduce college-going. This life course process crossed socioeconomic and racial/ethnic lines but was more acute for young people with personal circumstances that left them quite vulnerable in the social systems of their high schools (e.g., adolescents who were overweight and/or LGBTQ). Fortunately, as with ACES, there was also potential for resilience in this process. As examples, adolescents who gained a sense of connection and accomplishment through extracurricular activities and who developed a more forwardlooking orientation with support from adults in their lives were less affected in the long term by social challenges in high school.

In an offshoot of this research, my monograph with Gordon and Yang (2013) implicated physical attractiveness in the long-term interplay of social and academic experiences anchored in adolescence ( Figure 3a , ​ ,b). b ). This mixed-methods research revealed that U.S. adolescents viewed by a demographically diverse array of others as attractive had an academic advantage in high school because they received the benefit of the doubt in academic matters, were more confident, and had more support. This academic advantage, however, was chipped away by the many academic distractions that went along with being viewed as attractive (e.g., devoting more time to appearance, dating, maintaining a cool posture). The end result was a truly unearned academic boost in the long-term socioeconomic attainment process through adulthood, including in adult educational and occupational attainment. Interestingly, there was a legacy of earlier attractiveness even if attractiveness ultimately faded. For example, if children were considered cute according to prevailing norms (which, of course, are often unfair, culturally contested, and power-laden), that could start a path-dependent process as they moved into high school that gave them status and associated benefits even if they were not considered attractive adolescents. Having been labeled attractive in a specific social system, they carried that label as long as they were in the same system. Furthermore, attractiveness in adolescence was more important than attractiveness in adulthood in predicting adult outcomes. So, there was an adolescent legacy at work, either because an early advantage cumulatively shaped the path to adulthood or because an early experience of status shaped selfviews that carried across life course stages.

(a) Pathways linking social and academic outcomes across the early life course. Adapted from: Crosnoe, 2011 . (b) The longitudinal dynamics of adolescent appearance. Adapted from: Gordon et al., 2013

This legacy of social experience taps into popular interest in adolescence, particularly the idea that high school is hard to escape ( Senior, 2013 ). Life course-structured studies—which cross multiple stages of schooling tailoring data collection to each stage—will help to construct life pathways through the educational system that reveal this legacy and how it can be blocked.

ADOLESCENCE EMERGING FROM AGENCY AND CONSTRAINTS

The research and theory discussed up to this point reveals an adolescent experience—in which interactions with the peer worlds of secondary school filter into the academic domain—that is important in its own right but takes on added importance when viewed within the full life course. Most obviously, this phenomenon captures life course theory’s articulation of living lives the long way. Understanding how adolescents’ lives are lived the long way is facilitated through engagement with the second life course principle mentioned above, which is about the interplay of personal agency and environmental constraints ( Figure 4 ).

The Interplay of personal agency and environmental constraints

Adolescents are highly agentic, meaning they have power—or believe they have power—to purposely engage in behaviors and take actions in the pursuit of goals that they want to achieve. In attempting to forge their own way through life, however, they often get boxed in by external forces that block their paths, obscure the future consequences of their actions, and/or provide perverse incentives for their current actions. Pressures to conform to the prevailing peer norms of a school, or in social media more broadly, are examples of interpersonal forces that may hem in adolescents. On the flipside of constraints are environmental affordances, which open opportunities and facilitate forward progress. School programs that build mentoring relationships or provide academic enrichment are organizational forces that may capitalize on adolescents’ own actions and efforts. Of course, such environmental constraints on adolescents’ agency may be amplified by systemic structural barriers that stratify many societies (e.g., institutional racism, sexualization), but, at the same time, such affordances may be amplified by cultural assets and supports that vary across social and cultural groups (e.g., racial/ethnic identity, immigrant networks of support) ( Nico & Caetano, 2021 ; Schoon & Lyons-Amos, 2017 ).

The bottom line is that, within a set of environmental constraints and affordances, adolescents try to enact their own agency to help themselves, but what works in the short term may not in the long term. This interplay between person and environment is more pronounced when adolescents come from more disadvantaged or marginalized backgrounds that increase the barriers leading to path dependence as well as the importance of assets and resources in breaking that path dependence. Socioeconomic, racial/ethnic, and sexuality-related differences in schooling offer insight into both the negatives and positives of agency and constraints.

Agency and Constraints in STEM Education

Consider STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education. Extensive research has documented that how adolescents do in the math/science pipeline in secondary school is a critical factor in their college-going and the adult trajectories that college-going predicts. This research also shows that how adolescents do in this pipeline is a direct function of their preparation and skill development from early childhood through early adolescence.

Personal agency is certainly important to young people’s progress in math and science, as ample evidence documents that their own expectancies and aspirations are significant driving forces ( Eccles & Wigfield, 2020 ). Yet, that agency can be acted upon by a variety of environmental constraints that push some students forward and hold others back. These constraints could be interpersonal in nature, such as when peer influences discourage the appearance of “nerdiness” through overt interest in science or when teachers’ engrained biases about gender create “chilly” math classroom for girls ( Buontempo, Riegle-Crumb, Patrick, & Peng, 2017 ; McKellar, Marchand, Diemer, Malanchuk, & Eccles, 2019 ; Workman & Heyder, 2020 ).

Notably, however, many environmental constraints are more structural, such as the constraints imposed by the broader socioeconomic and racial/ethnic stratification of the educational system ( Morgan, 2005 ). For example, seats in advanced math and science courses are a finite commodity. In the intense competition for that commodity, students from more privileged socioeconomic strata have advantages in the form of money to buy assistance, institutional biases that work in their favor, and the disproportionate power of their parents. Such dynamics explain precisely why my own research has reported that, holding preparation constant, adolescents with higher-income college-educated parents had greater access to math and science coursework when they attended more socioeconomically diverse schools than students from other kinds of backgrounds attending more middle-class schools. In the former case, the curriculum and teaching tended to be lower quality, but there were greater odds the student in question gained the curricular credentials that colleges valued. In the latter, the curriculum and teaching tended to be higher quality, but the student in question was more likely to be frozen out of the opportunity to learn and advance. In other words, the interplay between student SES and school SES created a tradeoff between access and enrichment ( Crosnoe, 2009 ).

Such dynamics are also why my research has shown that students from more socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds were best positioned to actualize their math and science opportunities in constrained circumstances when their performance and aptitude were so far above the bar that their promise could not be denied. They had to be exceptional, to stand out. The flipside was that students from more socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds often gained heightened access to math and science opportunities that their weaker preparation and lower ability suggested that they did not deserve ( Crosnoe & Schneider, 2010 ).

This phenomenon, in which structural/interpersonal dynamics block agency on the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum and make it less consequential on the high end, likely factors into a striking inequality in higher education described in Tough’s 2019 book The Years that Matter Most. This inequality is centered on the privileged position of academically mediocre but socioeconomically advantaged high school students in admissions to elite—but not the most elite—private universities. Because such students lack “better” options but can pay full tuition, they may be more attractive to some colleges than even more accomplished students from less affluent backgrounds regardless of such factors as motivation and effort.

Agency and Constraints in School Discipline

Research on the school-to-prison pipeline also demonstrates how micro-level decisions to discipline students could have macro-level consequences by accumulating to gradually push out “bad apples” from the educational system during adolescence and push them into the criminal justice system in adulthood. This process can occur through practical mechanisms (e.g., absences from school reduce the academic preparation needed to persist in school) and more complicated ones (e.g., schools writing off disciplined students as academic lost causes who warrant less attention and opportunity) ( Arum, 2003 ; Mallett, 2016 ).

Yes, this process is related (sometimes loosely) to the actions and motivations of individual adolescents, many of whom engage in behaviors that put themselves and others at risk and need to be addressed. Still, the school-to-prison pipeline cannot happen without environmental constraints. Those environmental constraints could be educational policies, such as zero tolerance, that translate minor infractions and even misunderstandings into major consequences. They also could take the form of systemic racism and classism, which can optically transform some behavior or event from harmless into harmful depending on the social location of the actor, such as default labeling of African American boys as trouble or dangerous ( Bell, 2015 ; Marsh & Noguera, 2018 ). Notably, there are also affordances at work in some schools that protect young people from diverse backgrounds and recognize their assets, such as trauma-informed approaches to schooling, restorative justice programs, and social emotional learning curricula ( Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011 ; Thomas, Crosby, & Vanderhaar, 2019 ).

Importantly, such varied dimensions of environmental constraints (and affordances) in the school-to-prison pipeline can be influenced by the socioeconomic and racial/ethnic composition of the school, community, and population in which individual adolescents live. For example, a study by my own student shows that that the academic consequences of school suspension for African American boys were more pronounced when they attended schools in which their same-race peers were overrepresented in discipline cases, perhaps because they “looked the part” and had their opportunities constrained as a result. There is also an affordance side to this phenomenon, however, as evidenced by another study conducted by my students. It showed that Latinx boys were disciplined less in school when they lived in “gateway destination” counties where Latinx immigration was a long-established phenomenon, perhaps because their greater “familiarity” afforded them more equitable treatment ( Snidal, 2021 ; Snidal & Ackert, 2021 ). Both cases suggest how adolescents’ behavior—real or imagined—can be interpreted through an environmentally refracted lens.

Agency and Constraints in the Lives of LGBTQ Adolescents

Over the last decade, research has effectively documented the hostile peer environments that LGBTQ youth face in school, often centered on gender nonconformity and not just sexuality. Illustrating minority stress theory, they can suffer psychologically in these schools. Those social and psychological challenges of navigating school pose academic risks, regardless of preparation or ability ( Crosnoe, 2011 ; Pascoe, 2011 ; Toomey, McGuire, & Russell, 2012 ).

As documented in an article in this journal, this frequently worrisome link between the social and academic lives of LGBTQ adolescents in secondary school is not invariant across the growing LGBTQ population ( Watson & Russell, 2016 ). Although some LGBTQ adolescents in the study did academically disengage from school to stay out of harm’s way, others actively engaged in school as way of associating themselves with spaces of achievement. This variation is a window into personal agency, tapping into the ways that some adolescents are able to survey a threatening landscape and figure out how to cope in that moment.

Again, however, that personal agency is enacted within a system of environmental constraints and affordances. For example, growing evidence suggests that some schools create better academic contexts for LGBTQ adolescents through the constructions of clubs and programs that promote inclusivity. Such institutional supports can change peer dynamics or buffer adolescents from the harm of peer dynamics that remain unchanged. In either case, some LGBTQ adolescents enter an educational environment that obviates the need for personal agency or facilitates more positive enactments of agency ( Griffin, Lee, Waugh, & Beyer, 2004 ; Kosciw, Palmer, Kull, & Greytak, 2013 ).

Another example of the interplay of personal agency and environmental constraints comes from research conducted by another former student ( Martin-Storey, Cheadle, Skalamera, & Crosnoe, 2015 ). This network analysis showed that the social penalties of LGBTQ status were weaker in a predominantly African American school and heightened in a predominantly White school. Perhaps the former allowed students to be treated according to a range of characteristics, rather than one alone, and also presented less conformity pressure overall. Such a pattern reinforces the idea that where adolescents go to school (whether by choice or not) matters—socially, academically, and for the connection between the two.

The Importance of Integrative Perspectives

Reflecting on the balance between personal agency and environmental constraints (and affordances) in adolescents’ lives lived the long way, therefore, there are advantages and disadvantages within interpersonal, institutional, and structural systems that create a space—sometimes small, sometimes larger—for adolescents to operate, and adolescents try very hard to make that agentic operation work. Experiencing this drive to personal agency with still-developing brains that reduce long-term analysis, however, they may make poor decisions (which adults often see clearly) but for good reasons (which adults may not always recognize). Here is where mixed-methods approaches that allow for a quantitative assessment of the environment with qualitative exploration of the individualized experiences of students from different groups within that environment would likely have great impact.

THE CHALLENGES OF DYNAMIC AND CONTEXTUALIZED RESEARCH ON ADOLESCENCE

These insights into adolescence as a dance between personal agency and environmental constraints (and affordances) connecting childhood to adulthood are ultimately why social and behavioral research is important. In my two decades of conducting such research, however, I have accepted that we have the burden of demonstrating that importance to others, especially its practical importance.

The Policy Dilemma

Policy dilemma is a term I use for the reality that, sometimes, the things that most powerfully influence adolescent development are also the most difficult to manipulate through large-scale policy intervention. The social worlds of secondary school fall into that category. After all, we can agree that the peer dynamics of U.S. schools are a developmental ecology, good or bad, but we will have a harder time agreeing on how those dynamics can be changed from the outside. A common argument from sociologists has been that those important but hard-to-manipulate interpersonal ecologies of adolescence can be indirectly changed by linking them to less influential but more policy amenable aspects of schools, like structure, composition, and curriculum ( Coleman, 1990 ). This argument runs through Fitting In, Standing Out.

An argument from developmental scientists may be that the cumulative insights of developmental research offer powerful tools for changing the world that adolescents grow up in, as this scientific literature shapes the ways that adults perceive, treat, and serve adolescents and build the environments in which they emerge from childhood and prepare for adulthood in more positive and healthier ways ( National Academies, 2019 ). The cumulative knowledge about attachment that psychologists have constructed over many decades, for example, has had a profound impact on modern parenting and teaching in developed societies, above and beyond the effectiveness of any specific policy or intervention ( Berlin, Zeanah, & Lieberman, 2008 ; Sears & Sears, 2001 ).

There is also the argument that we can try harder to locate aspects of the developmental ecology of adolescence that are both meaningfully impactful in everyday life and feasibly policy amenable on a large scale. We need to find the right angle.

A National Intervention for Adolescents

My participation in a large-scale team science project facilitated my learning of this lesson about the policy dilemma. Specifically, the National Study of Learning Mindsets (NSLM) was built on the growth mindset concept that thinking of intelligence as malleable through trial and error—and seeing the brain as a muscle that needs to be worked out—is a factor in academic achievement as well as demographic disparities in achievement.

My colleagues in the sociology of education and I had long criticized this growth mindset research as psychologizing inequality, telling those at the bottom of a highly stratified educational system that they just needed to try harder and believe more in themselves. In working with developmental, social, and cognitive psychologists who were more convinced by the power of growth mindsets, we began to see that we had unfairly simplified this approach to educational inequality. Consequently, we joined forces to study the sociological contextualization of a psychological intervention—how the effectiveness of a growth mindset intervention could be constrained or amplified by environmental differences across schools.

Led by David Yeager, this team launched one of the largest-ever national studies of the variable impact of a psychological intervention. The NLSM was a randomized control trial of an online school-based intervention to help U.S. adolescents develop growth mindsets at the start of high school ( Figure 5 ) that followed the nationally representative sample of over 12,000 ninth graders in more than 60 high schools over time to track their subsequent academic achievement.

Excerpt of intervention in National Study of Learning Mindsets. See: Yeager et al., 2019

As reported in a 2019 article in Nature and in other publications ( Yeager et al., 2019 , 2021 ), the growth mindset intervention had an average treatment effect on academic outcomes across ninth grade in this national sample. This effect was positive and significant (e.g., higher grades overall and in math, more academic challenge-seeking, higher enrollment in advanced math coursework). The average, however, was moderate in magnitude because the intervention worked in some schools but not others. For example, it had less value in the academically weakest high schools where opportunities to get ahead were constrained and in the academically strongest schools where pervasive privilege diluted the value of the mindset. The intervention mainly worked between these two ends, in schools that were not too little or too much. Digging deeper revealed that, even when the intervention developed growth mindsets, those mindsets did not translate into academic benefits in math classrooms headed by teachers who did not share their mindsets. Such teachers were not giving adolescents the affordances they needed to act on their mindsets (e.g., by offering opportunities to revise, by using mistakes to teach), especially when adolescents came from groups with long histories of marginalization within schools.

Thus, some schools and classrooms were structured to allow the growth mindset to “turn on” academic consequences, but others blocked—or constrained—that from happening. Which adolescent was exposed to which environment mapped onto the entrenched stratification of the educational system. The takeaway is that an intervention that changes the adolescent likely needs the system to be open to that changed adolescent in order to realize its full effect. At the same time, policies that change the system will likely have variable effects on individual students who engage with the system in different ways. If so, individualized interventions and large-scale policy reforms are not either/or propositions but instead partners that should be packaged together. Designs that marry the national assessment of schools and education from the National Center for Education Statistics with the intensive psychological and cognitive assessment of young people in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study would be an ideal venue for that packaging.

THE STORY OF ADOLESCENCE

Metaphorically, the scientific enterprise is also about the art of story. Legions of scientists work independently and collaboratively across time and place to carefully sift through evidence and arguments as a means of gradually constructing a plausible story about some phenomenon. By necessity, that story will downplay some details and exceptions and gloss over variabilities, but that granular loss is countered by the value of developing a more general and abstract narrative that facilitates collective understanding and action.

Here, the story is about adolescent development; in particular, about the intersection between the social and academic components of adolescents’ developmental journey and how this journey connects their pasts to their futures. It focuses on the under-appreciated role of adolescents as agentic learners—moving through an exceedingly complex social landscape and attempting to make sense of where things stand and how they fit in by looking inward at themselves and outward at the world around them. That social learning, in turn, can support or undermine their academic learning. Whether the synergy between the two forms of learning leans toward the positive or negative or somewhere in between can change from the short term to the long term. Complicating this story is the larger social structure that adolescents grow up in and cannot be separated from, which directly shapes their social learning and their adolescent learning while also affecting the connection between the two.

Adults often dismiss the social ups and downs of adolescence as simply part of growing up, as something adolescents fixate on now but will get over as they age, as a time-limited experience without lasting residue. That common reaction ignores the stakes. The social lives of adolescents are important in their own right because they strike at the heart of the concept of well-being, a concept that is just as likely to connect stages of the life course than differentiate them. They also are important because they factor into other domains of life, such as the educational trajectories that are now widely seen as a key illustration of the highly cumulative nature of the life course in the modern global era. In both cases, what matters to the individual also offers profound insights into the state of society, how it creates opportunities for some and forecloses opportunities for others but also how it can change in the future.

Goal-directed or seemingly random, consumed by the immediate or cognizant of the future, aware of disadvantage and privilege or lacking insight into environmental constraints on personal thought and action, adolescents make their way from childhood into adulthood with an array of strategies along an array of paths. They search for meaning amidst the complexities of their lives along the way, and the researchers who use science to construct a story about adolescence are in effect searching for meaning too.

Acknowledgments

This article is based on the presidential address prepared by the author for the canceled 2020 Biennial Meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence. The author acknowledges the support of grants from the National Science Foundation (SES-1424111, PI: Robert Crosnoe; 1519686, PIs: Elizabeth Gershoff and Robert Crosnoe; 1760481, PIs: Tama Leventhal and Robert Crosnoe), the National Institutes of Health (NICHD 1R01HD081022-01A1, PIs: Rachel Gordon and Robert Crosnoe; NICHD P2CHD042849, PI: Debra Umberson; NIDA 1R03DA046046-01A1, PI: Robert Crosnoe), and the National Institute of Justice (2014-IJ-CX-0025, PI: Robert Crosnoe) to the Population Research Center (PRC) at the University of Texas at Austin as well as a number of grants to the PRC supporting the development, management, and dissemination of the National Study of Learning Mindsets (e.g., National Science Foundation HRD 1761179, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation OPP 1197627 and INV-004519, Raikes Foundation 17-01177, William T. Grant Foundation 189706, and Optimus Foundation 47515; PIs: David Yeager, Chandra Muller, and Robert Crosnoe). The presidential address would have included sincere thanks to a large number of people, including former and current mentors, colleagues, and students. Acknowledgements for this article will be limited to those colleagues in the Society for Research on Adolescence who graciously reviewed this manuscript and provided helpful advice (Aprile Benner, Bo Cleveland, Rashmita Mistry, Velma McBride Murry, John Schulenberg, and Tama Leventhal), key early career mentors (formal advisors Glen Elder and the late Sandy Dornbusch as well as Aletha Huston and Barbara Schneider, who guided the William T. Grant project from which so much of the research featured here emerged), and the family members who were the most important supports and inspirations of all (Shannon Cavanagh and Caven, Sue, Joseph, and Caroline Crosnoe).

1 For diverse perspectives on the socializing role of peers in secondary school and their future implications, see: Kao, Joyner, & Balistreri, 2019 ; Graham & Echols, 2018 ; Camacho et al., 2018 ; Delgado et al., 2016 ; Way, 2015; Toomey, McGuire, & Russell, 2012 ; Hughes et al., 2011 ; Carter, 2006 ; Milner, 2004

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Psychology Discussion

Essay on adolescence: top 5 essays | psychology.

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Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Adolescence’ for class 11 and 12. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Adolescence’ especially written for school and college students.

Essay on Adolescence

Essay Contents:

• Essay on the Meaning of Adolescence
• Essay on the Historical Perspectives of Adolescence
• Essay on the Developmental Model in Adolescence
• Essay on the Factors Influencing Development During Adolescence
• Essay on Developmental Psychopathology during the Period of Adolescence

Essay # 1. Meaning of Adolescence :

Adolescence is a time of rapid physiological and psychological change of intensive readjustment to the family, school, work and social life and of preparation for adult roles.

It starts with puberty and ends with the achievement of an adult work role. It usually begins between 11 and 16 years in boys and between 9 and 16 years in girls. Websters’ dictionary (1977) defines adolescence the ‘process of growing up’ or the ‘period of life from puberty to maturity’. Adolescence has been associated with an age span, varying from 10-13 as the starting age and 19-21 as the concluding age, depending on whose definition is being applied.

Essay # 2. Historical Perspectives of Adolescence :

The concept of adolescence was formally inducted in psychology from 1880. The definitive description of adolescence was given in the two volume work of Stanley Hall in 1904. Hall described adolescence as a period both of upheaval, suffering, passion and rebellion against adult authority and of physical, intellectual and social change.

Anna Freud, Mohr and Despres and Bios have independently affirmed adolescent regression, psychological upheaval, and turbulence as intrinsic to normal adolescence development. Margaret Mead believed adolescence as a ‘cultural invention’.

Albert Bandura said that children and adolescents imitate the behaviour of others especially influential adults ‘entertainment’ heroes and peers. Erikson elaborated the classic psychoanalytic views shifting the emphasis from biological imperatives of the entry into adolescence to focus on psychological challenges in making the transition from adolescence to adulthood (developmental model discussed below).

Piaget proposed a theory of cognitive development describing four major stages in intellectual development. Puberty is a universal process involving dramatic changes in size, shape and appearance. Tanner has described bodily changes of puberty into five stages. The enumeration of Tanner stages is given in Table 28.1.

The relationships between pubertal maturation and psychological development can be considered in two broad models,

(a) The ‘Direct Effect Model’ in which certain psychological effects are directly result of physiological sources,

(b) ‘Mediated Effects Model’ which proposes that the psychological effects of puberty are mediated by complex relations of intervening variables (such as the level of ego development) or are moderated by contexual factors (such as the socio-cultural and socialization practices). In recent days, this model is more favoured.

Essay # 3. Developmental Model in Adolescence :

Developmental theories of adolescence are:

(a) Cognitive development:

Jean Piaget described four distinct stages in the cognitive development from birth to adolescence.

(i) Sensory-motor stage:

Sensory-motor stage (from birth to 18 months) wherein the child acquires numerous basic skills with limited intellectual capacity and is primitive.

(ii) Preoperational or intuitive stage:

Preoperational or intuitive stage roughly starting at about 18 months and ending at 7 years, wherein the child learns to communicate and uses reason in an efficient way. However, he is still inclined to intuition rather than thinking out systematically.

(iii) Concrete-operations stage:

Concrete-operations stage (from 7 to 12 years) where the child becomes capable of appreciating the constancies and develops the concept of volume but thinking is still limited in some respects.

(iv) Formal operations stage:

Formal operations stage, (from 12 years through adulthood) in which the child develops the ability to ponder and deliberate on various alternatives, and begins to approach the problem situation in a truly systematic manner.

(b) Psychosocial development:

‘Identity’ and its precedents in development are the backbone of Erikson’s psychological developmental theory. Erikson’s theory is basically an amplification of Freud’s classical psychoanalytic theory of human development. However, Erikson lays more stress on the social than the biological features in the process of development. This theory is more humanistic and optimistic, and emphasizes the importance of ‘ego’ rather than ‘id’.

Erikson postulated eight stages of development, placing more importance on adolescence (Table 28.2).

His concept of identity crises has been recog­nised in all the countries faced with racial, national, personal and professional problems.

Psychodynamic Model :

Recent psychodynamic model focuses on adolescent development under various dimensions

Learning Model :

Learning theory has long played an important role in understanding of human behaviour. Three major learning paradigms are: classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and observational learning. The concepts of generalization and discrimination illustrate how learning theory can account for individuality of response styles and behaviour.

Phenomenological Model :

There are different schools of approach, including the phenomenological one.

Developmental Phases of Adolescence :

I. Early Adolescence :

Early adolescence is probably the most stressful of all developmental transitions. It is generally acknowledged that within the years of age from 11 to 15, a period of rapid and drastic biological change will be experienced.

The dominant themes of early adolescence are related to the endocrine changes of puberty. There are biological changes in virtually every system of the body, including height, facial contours, fat distribution, muscular development, mood changes, and energy levels.

Early adolescence is a time of sharpest possible discontinuity with the past.

There are two major psychosocial challenges that confront early adolescents:

(1) the transition from elementary to junior high school and

(2) the shift in role status from child to adolescent.

A useful distinction has been made between “hot” and “cold” cognitions. Hot cognitions are those that are highly charged with emotion and are involved in matters of perceived threat or in situations in which cherished goals or values are in conflict or jeopardy.

There is preoccupation with body image, with deep concerns about the normality, attractiveness, and vulnerability of the changing body. Superimposed are the challenges of entry into the new social world of the high school that pose new academic and personal challenges, especially regarding friendships. The early adolescents begin to search for new behaviours, values, and reference persons and to renegotiate relationships with parents. At this time they are particularly receptive to new ideas and risk taking.

II. Middle Adolescence :

It generally encompasses the ages 15 to 17.

The middle adolescents are capable of generalizations, abstract thinking and useful introspections that can be linked to experience. As a result there is less response simply to the novel, exotic, or contradictory aspects of the environment.

The anxious bodily preoccupations of early adolescence have greatly diminished. The power of peer pressure is lessened and more differentiated judgments can now be exercised in seeking and establishing close friendship ties.

The provocative rebelliousness of the early adolescent is no longer prominent. The middle adolescent is beginning to orient more to the larger society and to learn about and to question the workings of society, politics, and government.

III. Late Adolescence :

The ages represented are 17 years through the early 20s. It represents a definitive working through of the recurrent themes of body image, autonomy, achievement, intimacy, and sense of self that, when integrated, come to embody the sense of identity.

Although there may not be a work commitment, it is a time of thoughtful educational and vocational choices that will lead to eventual economic viability. The challenge of intimacy and the establishment of a stable, mature, committed intimate relationship is perceived as critical challenge.

Essay # 4. Factors Influencing Development during Adolescence:

I. Genetic Factors :

Leaving aside major diseases clearly transmitted by genes, such as Huntington’s chorea.

Genetic influences in psychiatry are characterised by:

(a) the inheritance of traits or tendencies rather than specific abnormalities,

(b) polygenic inheritance, that is to say more than one gene being influential,

(c) the concept of threshold effects (i.e., the presence of particular genes does not mean that the characteristic they represent will be exhibited).

II. Neurological Factors :

Brain Damage:

Various degrees of injury to the brain.

Mental Retardation:

Various degrees of intellectual deficit and general mental handicap.

This may or may not be associated with brain damage, mental handicap and psychiatric problems.

Neurological disorder:

Brain disorder, including neurodegenerative disorders.

III. Constitutional and Temperamental Factors :

If by personality, it is meant that more or less characteristic, coherent and enduring set of ways of thinking and behaving that develop through childhood and adolescence, then by constitution it means those inherited (genetic) and acquired physiological qualities that underlie personality.

IV. Family and Social Influences:

(a) Attachment, separation and loss:

Early experience of disrupted or discordant family relationships, or lack of parental affection, increases the incidence of emotional and personality problems later.

(b) Parental care and control:

It is the extremes of parental behaviour, e.g. excessive permissiveness, negligence, over-protectiveness and rigid discipline which tend to be associated with many of the problems in child and adolescent development.

The parental behaviours often associated with adolescent disturbance, and which when modified can help put things right include:

1. Lack of confidence about being adult and weakness at limit-setting;

2. Parental and marital distress;

3. Inability to provide the model of a reasonably competent adult who enjoys life;

4. Difficulty in maintaining appropriate roles and boundaries;

5. Difficulty in getting the balance right between being too protective and intrusive on the one hand or negligent and uninterested on the other;

6. Giving in too readily to adolescent demands, on the one hand, or not listening to the adolescent’s point of view on the other;

7. Becoming so upset by adolescent demands that the parent becomes childishly angry and vulnerable.

(c) Parental mental disorder:

In clinical practice, parental mental illness can have impact in three main ways:

(1) When it has been a feature of family life and interacting with the child’s problems for several years past;

(2) When it interferes with the developmental tasks of adolescence, for example when a depressed parent is thereby too vulnerable to the adolescent’s challenges; and

(3) When it interferes with treatment.

(d) Parental criminal behaviour

There is a strong association between delinquency in the child and criminality in the parent, and where both parents are criminal, the association is even stronger.

Again, poor parenting skills and family discord may be important linking factors. Modelling may be another factor.

(e) Family size and structure:

Children from large families (more than 5 children) tend to show a greater incidence of conduct problems, delinquency, lower verbal intelligence and lower reading attainment.

(f) Family patterns of behaviour:

Confused or conflicting communication in families, problems in resolving arguments or making decisions, and the generation of high levels of tension do seem to be associated with child disturbance in general.

(g) Adoption, fostering and institutional care:

There is an increased rate of psychiatric disorder among adopted children, with conduct disorder among adopted boys being most prominent.

Institutional care, the placement of children and adolescents in children’s homes, is associated with a higher rate of disturbance than in the general population.

(h) The effects of schools:

Wolkind and Rutter have listed features of schools which have a positive effect on their pupils: high expectations for work and behaviour; good models of behaviour from teachers; respect for the children, with opportunities for them to take responsibilities in the school; good discipline, with appropriate praise and encouragement and sparing use of punishment; a pleasant working environment with good teacher-pupil relationships; and a good organizational structure that enables staff to work together with agreed academic and other goals.

(i) Social and transcultural influences:

Life in inner city areas seems in general to increase the rate of behaviour problems compared with small towns and rural areas. Similar influences, plus and effects on the family of immigration and unemployment and prejudice affect adolescents. Unemployment among adolescents is associated with an increase in psychiatric problems.

The effects of film and television violence have now being widely studied. There seems to be a modelling and imitative effect, particularly in younger children and among adolescents who already show conduct problems and delinquency.

Assessment:

Assessment in adolescent psychiatry requires a far wider appraisal of who is concerned about what, and who is in a position to help, than the traditional clinical diagnosis can possibly provide. See Table 28.3.

Prevalence of Disorders in the Community :

The prevalence of adolescent disorder in the community varies from place to place and with age, and depends on the criteria used. The figures given vary between around 10 and 25%. The lower end of the range is associated with younger adolescents with recognised (i.e., known to adults) psychiatric problem in more rural or sub-urban areas, and the upper figures are associated with older adolescents, with industrial and inner-city areas and with the inclusion of problems not so evident to parents and teachers.

Disorders seen in clinical practice :

Table 28.4 is a composite picture of the types of disorder likely to be seen in general psychiatric service for adolescents, and is based on data drawn from several accounts.

(a) Clinical diagnostic categories (in approximate order of frequency) :

Mood disorders:

Emotional or mixed emotional/ contact disorders, or adult-type anxiety or depressive disorders, including obsessive compulsive phobic state.

Conduct Disorders:

Hysterical disorders e.g., with paralysis and serious self-neglect.

Problems of personality development with mood and/or conduct problems, including ‘borderline’ and schizoid personality disorders, and problems of sexual identity.

Schizophrenic, Schizoaffective and affective (manic-depressive) psychoses.

Brain disorder, including epilepsy, and neurodegenerative disorder.

Anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, enuresis, encopresis, and tics

(b) Changes in prevalence with age and sex:

The overall pattern seems to be a gradually increasing prevalence of psychiatric disorder from around 10% in children through 10 to 15% in mid- adolescence to around 20% in adulthood although some studies report a peak of about 20% being reached in adolescence.

In adolescence, enuresis and encopresis are less common than in earlier childhood. Hyperactivity presents less often, but children who have been hyperactive in earlier childhood sometimes present in adolescence with behavioural and other social problems.

In earlier childhood, equal numbers of girls and boys are affected by emotional disorders. In adolescence, however, as in adult life, more girls than boys are affected.

Delinquency increases markedly in adolescence and declines from early adulthood onwards.

Essay # 5. Developmental Psychopathology during the Period of Adolescence :

(a) Mood Fluctuations and Misery :

The general observation that adolescents experience a greater fluctuation of mood that adults has been demonstrated rather consistently. The feelings of transient misery and sadness reported by adolescents can be explained by several bases.

The Offer Self-image Questionnaire, administered to thousands of adolescents from 1962-1980, showed a significant upward shift of scores of depressive mood from the 1960’s to the 1970’s for both boys and girls.

Although relationships with parents may remain intact, the security experienced by identifying with the idealized parental image is sacrificed as the youth moves toward development of a separate identity.

Eventually, with the synthesis of these different value systems, the adolescent’s behaviour takes on an increasingly external and internal consistency. The wide array of conflicting societal values in regard to a youth’s engaging in sex becoming pregnant, having an abortion, bearing a child, or participating in homosexual behaviour provides numerous opportunities for remorse.

An additional factor that may draw the adolescent to a sexual relationship inspite of conflicting values is the relative emotional void produced as some distance is gained from the parent.

Among the adolescents these kinds of temporary setbacks may lead to an array of behaviours that erroneously have been termed clinical depression. These include a hypersensitivity and irritability, with a proneness to overreact to criticism. At times the adolescent may “tune out” temporarily and withdraw into a position of apathy and indifference.

At times there is a propensity to move from a passive to an active position in response to feelings of helplessness, and the adolescent may take provocative positions that elicit a punitive response from his environment. This punishment may provide a welcome relief from an immature harsh superego. For many clinicians such behaviour is summarised as adolescent turmoil.

However, the steeply rising suicide rates and the high prevalence of true adolescent depression is particularly poignant and of deep concern. It is estimated that there are 100 suicide attempts for every completed suicide. Surveys reveal that 8% to 10% of all adolescents report suicidal feelings.

(b) Sexual and Adolescent Pregnancy:

The recent significant rise in level of sexual activity among adolescents and the trend toward increasingly younger ages of initiation is well documented.

Clear documentation exists as to the biological and psychosocial risk to both mother and child in adolescent pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. The obstetrics complications, high rates of infant mortality, and perinatal morbidity have been well described. Similarly, there is excellent documen­tation for the social isolation, inadequate parenting skills, school drop-outs, repeat pregnancy, and chronic poverty that characterises these mothers.

(c) Developmental Issues in Drug Abuse:

If the drugs are used as a way to avoid tension and if this is done chronically, the youth’s capacity to tolerate tension and to gain in ego strength by working through stressful situations will be under developed. Drugs may thus have long term effects on important areas of ego functioning that are ordinarily developed during adolescence.

The problem behaviours of youth that are highly interrelated with regular drug use include delinquency, alcoholism, decreased school motivation and achievement, drug abuse and teenage pregnancy.

The factors associated with drug abuse can be divided into three categories:

(1) Personality factors;

(2) Social or interpersonal factors; and

(3) Sociocultural or Environmental factors.

Personal factors include an emphasis on unconventionality, rebelliousness, high risk taking, low value on achievement, and high value on autonomy. Social or interpersonal factors include alienation from parents, high influence from peers involved in problem behaviours, and little involvement in religious activities. Sociocultural factors include low social controls, disorganized environment and permissive values.

(d) Impact of Chronic Illness on Development:

During puberty, chronic illness of childhood is re-experienced as a distinct and significant adolescent phenomenon. With the major bodily changes of early adolescence and the concomitant free occupation with body image a long term illness is repraised and becomes a threat to body integrity and self-concept.

During a period typically characterized by developmental urges toward independence, the stress of illness can led to exaggerated wishes for dependence, security and nurturance on the one hand or led to denial and hyper independent, rebellious and non-compliant risk taking behaviour on the other hand. Overprotectiveness of concerned parents can aggravate any or all of these conflicts. Chronic illness may actually delay the onset of puberty.

(e) Parent-adolescent estrangement and social alienation:

Hostility and conflict with parents or substitute caregivers is a frequent presenting feature of adolescent disturbance. Parents may complain about the adolescent’s expressions of anger and defiance of unmanageable behaviour. Angry outbursts and temper tantrums occur frequently in young adolescents coping for the first time with biological changes and increasing academic and family responsibilities.

Psychiatrically disturbed adolescents, however, are likely to be involved in chronic conflict with parents who, in turn, may display psychopathology in relationships with their children, marital discord or personal psychiatric disorder.

Conflict and defiance may extend to such a serious level that there is a complete breakdown of trust and communication with parents.

(f) Anti-authority and antisocial behaviour:

Antisocial behaviour in adolescents may have arisen initially in this age-period or have continued from childhood.

Shoplifting, vandalizing public property, or spraying graffiti may occur transiently in groups of discontended teenagers who are not established delinquents.

(g) Problems in School:

The most common manifestations of adolescent disturbance in school are: disenchantment with conventional education often leading to truancy and showing other evidence of antisocial activity and conduct disorder. School refusal, usually associated with other signs of emotional disorder. Academic problems including examination anxiety, difficulties with study and academic under achievement; and disruptive behaviour, with negative attitudes towards the staff, conformity problems, bullying and association with delinquent peers.

Therapeutic Approach to Adolescent Disturbance:

Although there may be little scope or necessity for active psychiatric treatment, systematic management of interpersonal, social, educational, legal and ethical problems may be necessary and can be challenging and time consuming. These aspects of management call for full multi-disciplinary teamwork, consultation with other professionals and carefully integrated planning.

Hospitalisation and Residential Care:

Great care needs to be exercised in using residential resources, in view of the implications for adolescents of separation from home and the limited nature of residential provisions.

Psychiatric in-patient hospital treatment:

Steinberg et al have distinguished six needs to related to requests for admission, comprising the need for further work to be done with adults already involved for detailed educational reappraisal, for proper care and control, for physical containment, for an emergency safe place, for psychiatric assessment and treatment.

The role of the multidisciplinary staff and their deployment in treatment should be directed towards vigorous, short-term intervention minimizing the problems of institutionalization.

Non-psychiatric residential care of adolescents:

Disturbed adolescents may be placed in a miscellany of settings in addition to facilities administered by the National Health Service, including: schools and units for maladjusted children; independent boarding schools; children’s homes run by social service and voluntary agencies; observation and assessment centers; community homes with education, remand homes, detention centers, and borstals.

Therapeutic Work with Adolescents:

Apart from the use of antidepressant drugs in carefully selected cases of depressive disorder, the occasional use of lithium in affective psychoses and major tranquillizers in psychotic states, most adolescent disturbances can be managed without psychotropic medication.

Acute disturbance as part of personality disorder or other nonpsychotic states may warrant the use of major tranquillizers at the time of crisis, but they should not be relied upon for long term behavioural control. Hypnotics and minor tranquillizers of the Benzodiazepine group are rarely indicated and particular caution should be exercised in their prescription, in view of the scale of self- poisoning in adolescents.

The most frequent forms of individual interven­tion are psychotherapeutic, including behavioural techniques.

Supportive counselling, with an explicit educa­tional component, may be indicated in the treatment.

Parental and family work:

Some form of specific work with the parents or families of disturbed adolescents is usually required and it may be an advantage to allocate a therapist to work chiefly with them.

Most adolescents are likely to accept that family sessions are an appropriate medium for dealing with issues that are public in the sense, that they impinge on all family members.

School liaison:

Information from the school or school psycholo­gical service may be essential in assessment and planned liaison about aspects of management may be useful therapeutically, as well as providing a way of monitoring progress.

Legal Aspects of Care and Community Services :

The adolescent psychiatrist needs to be familiar with all the legislation that affects adolescent patient care. In particular, it is important to be aware of the various forms of disposal for young offenders.

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Adolescents and the new challenges of the 21st century

Adolescence is known as a turbulent period in a person's life, in which they develop from a child into an adult. It is important for the mental health of adolescents that they establish and maintain social relations. Global trends and developments in the 21st century are making this increasingly difficult. The Educating 21st Century Children report , by, among others, Utrecht University Professor of Youth Studies Catrin Finkenauer, describes some of the associated challenges. The researchers show how global trends in the 21st century, such as climate change, forced displacement, increasing individualism and digitalisation, can influence the development of adolescents, their relations and their mental health.

Climate change

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. Its effects range from agricultural downturns and decreasing biodiversity to rising sea levels and increasingly severe heat waves. In addition to these effects, climate change also makes it more difficult to establish and maintain social relations. For example, a limited harvest or supply of water due to climate change can heat up social tensions as a result of mutual competition. Moreover, extreme weather conditions cause fear, stress and insecurity, which can lead to reduced empathy and a greater chance of conflict.

These examples demonstrate that climate change creates social challenges, but it also creates social opportunities, including increased social connectivity in relation to climate change concerns, at both the national and international level. Swedish pupil Greta Thunberg, who held a solo climate protest in 2018 in the form of her school strike, is an example of this. Her actions were soon echoed by over 20,000 adolescents worldwide, who participated in school strikes of their own.

Forced displacement

Following a historical increase in violence and conflict and the effects of climate change, more and more people have no choice but to leave their homes. Young people are the most vulnerable group in this context. Many of them have dealt with traumatic experiences either before or during migration. Such traumas can impede the establishment of social relations, even though these relations are incredibly important in recovering from traumas. Additionally, most people forced to leave their homeland are faced with complex legal systems and persistent insecurity regarding residence rights in their host country. This persistent insecurity can affect their capacity for trust, which forms an obstacle to establishing and maintaining social relations.

Adolescents could have the conviction that asking for help is a sign of weakness

Increasing individualism

The increase in prosperity, education, urbanisation and technology has resulted in another global trend: individualism. Increasing individualism is not without benefits, as it contributes to free speech, self-expression and the fight for equal opportunities. However, the global increase in individualism also presents challenges, by disturbing adolescent development of the balance between independence and mutual dependence, for example. Among other things, this may result in the conviction that asking for help is a sign of weakness, even while dealing with personal hardships or mental health problems.

Increasing individualism can also undermine young people's motivation to continue helping their relations, for example, when these relations are dealing with hardships (such as disease) or when maintaining the relation is demanding or difficult (making sacrifices or showing forgiveness). Young people can experience this as infringing on their personal freedom. New technologies that simplify the process of establishing alternative relations exacerbate this problem by making it easier for young people to find and establish new relations.

New technologies

New technologies, particularly information and communication technologies and social media, are developing at a rapid pace and are increasingly omnipresent. On the one hand, these new technologies have a positive effect on social relations, as they make it possible to contact others from anywhere and at all times. On the other hand, digital communication has proved to present challenges of its own. Research has shown that digital communication is less comforting than face-to-face communication. This is in part because there is no physical contact, such as hugging someone or holding their hand. Even if you send someone a hug emoticon, this does not have the same impact as an actual hug. Enjoying the benefits of new technologies while reducing the associated difficulties can be a challenge for young people.

As the examples above demonstrate, global challenges such as climate change, forced displacement, increasing individualism and new technologies can influence and shape the social development of young people. The Educating 21st Century Children report has made a start on this analysis, but future research will be necessary to more accurately chart these influences and improve young people's resilience.

Research theme Dynamics of Youth

If you want to tackle social problems, it would be best to start with children. The Utrecht-based research theme Dynamics of Youth invests in a resilient youth. Academics from all fields collaborate in order to learn to better understand child development. How can we help children and youngsters to grow and flourish in our rapidly changing society.

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Utrecht University Heidelberglaan 8 3584 CS Utrecht The Netherlands Tel. +31 (0)30 253 35 50

Being a teen comes with exciting milestones that double as challenges – like becoming independent, navigating high school and forming new relationships. For all the highs that come with getting a driver’s license or acing that difficult test, there are lows that come with growing up in a rapidly changing world being shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, social media and distance learning.

Teens’ brains are growing and developing, and the ways they process their experiences and spend their time are crucial to their development. Each great experience and every embarrassing moment can impact their mental health.

Sometimes a mood is about more than just being lonely or angry or frustrated.

Mental health challenges are different than situational sadness or fatigue. They’re more severe and longer-lasting, and they can have a large impact on daily life. Some common mental health challenges are anxiety, depression, eating disorders, substance use, and experiencing trauma. They can affect a teen’s usual way of thinking, feeling or acting, and interfere with daily life.

Adding to the urgency: Mental health challenges among teens are not uncommon. Up to 75% of mental health challenges emerge during adolescence, and according to the Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) curriculum, one in five teens has had a serious mental health disorder at some point in their life.

Not every mental health challenge will be diagnosed as a mental disorder, but every challenge should be taken seriously.

A mental health challenge left unchecked can become a more serious problem that also impacts physical health — think of how substance use, and changes in sleep patterns and eating habits affect the body as well as the mind. Signs of fatigue, withdrawing socially or changes in mood may point to an emerging mental health challenge like a depressive or substance use disorder.

As teens mature, they begin spending more time with their friends, gain a sense of identity and purpose, and become more independent. All of these experiences are crucial for their development, and a mental health challenge can disrupt or complicate that development. Depending on the severity of the mental health challenge, the effects can last long into adulthood if left unaddressed.

How do we address teens’ mental health?

Teens need tools to talk about what’s going on with them, and they need tools for when their friends reach out to them. Research shows that teens are more likely to talk to their friends than an adult about troubles they’re facing.

That’s why it’s important to talk to teens about the challenges they may deal with as they grow up and navigate young adulthood. They need to know it’s OK to sometimes feel sad, angry, alone, and frustrated. But persistent problems may be pointing to something else, and it is crucial to be able to recognize early warning signs so teens can get appropriate help in a timely manner. teen Mental Health First Aid teaches high school students in grades 10-12 how to identify, understand and respond to signs of a mental health problem or crisis among their friends — and how to bring in a trusted adult when it’s appropriate and necessary. With proper care and treatment, many teens with mental health or substance use challenges can recover. The first step is getting help.

Learn more about teen Mental Health First Aid by watching this video and checking out our blog . Your school or youth-serving organization can also apply to bring this training to your community.

teen Mental Health First Aid is run by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing and supported by Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation.

Resource Guide:

• Mental Health First Aid USA. (2020). teen Mental Health First Aid USA: A manual for young people in 10 th -12 th grade helping their friends. Washington, DC: National Council for Mental Wellbeing.

National Institute of Mental Health. (2020). The Teen Brain: 7 Things to Know. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know/index.shtml.

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Adolescence and Human Development Challenges

There are various questions about how puberty affects adolescents because not all people are impacted in the same way. The fundamental answer is associated with the environment of a certain adolescent, experiencing cognitive, biological, and social changes. The three mentioned changes and the very context shape an adolescent’s perception of the world. As stated by Urie Bronfenbrenner, the main proponent of the ecological approach regarding human development, context and factors surrounding it are the key elements that help people to understand the process of development. It should be stressed that context can be regarded as settings that occur in one or another case.

It is possible to compare two 14-year-old girls from neighboring communities, one of which, Diane, was restricted in her social life. At the same time, the other one, Maria, had discussions about sexual contacts, contraceptives, and pregnancy. If Diane was going to school with the fifth grade being the eighth grade, and Maria was learning with high school students. Even though the girls were contemporaries, they went through puberty differently due to the contextual factors and distinct adolescent development features. The fact that these girls grew in different families, studied in different schools, and had the dissimilar adolescent experience, they went through puberty to adulthood.

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135 Adolescence Essay Topics & Examples

Completing a psychology course, studying child development, or simply analyzing social influence on teenagers? You might need to write an adolescence essay, and we are ready to help with that.

✨ Top Adolescent Psychology Topics

🏆 best adolescence topic ideas & essay examples, 📑 good research topics about adolescence, 🎓 interesting adolescent research topics, 👍 good essay topics on adolescence, ❓ research questions about adolescence.

Our Ivypanda team has collected a list of great ideas for different assignments related to the subject. So, check our adolescent research topics and essay titles to nail your academic paper.

• Ethical Issues of Social Media.
• Reaction to Physical Changes.
• Depression Among Adolescents.
• Parental vs. Social Influence.
• Must-See Youth Documentaries.
• Preventing Teenage Pregnancy.
• Dating & First Relationships.
• Reproductive Health Stigma.
• Impact of Peer Pressure on Development.
• Connection Between Mental Health & Social Media.
• Vygotsky’s Approach to the Analysis of Adolescence In Vygotsky’s view, the change in the motives of adolescence come about due to the growth of sexual desires and needs which are as a result of their ability to think logically.
• Psychology of Adolescence Development The strategy allows the examination of the significance of adolescence as a standard stage of development. However, she admits that she experienced a period of anxiety and distress upon the death of her mother when […]
• HIV and AIDS in Adolescents The teenagers in America and the world are a group that is constantly at risk of infection with the Human-Immunodeficiency-Virus and developing the Acquired-Immune-Deficiency-Syndrome, the disease condition that eventually results; this is stemming mainly from […]
• Adolescence as a Social Construct As a social construct of society, adolescence is viewed as the object of fear and anxiety by the rest of society’s members.
• Influence of Heavy Metal Music on Adolescence (Behavior, Identity, Mood, Regulation, Psychology) Accepting the potent impact of music on adolescents’ behavior, identity, and psychology leads to a deeper analysis of the influences of heavy metal music on teenagers’ development.
• Adolescence as a Stage of the Person Development Adolescents struggle with so many things, start with, because of their physical changes that occur in their bodies and their exploration of sexual identity, most of them are not able to control their bodies and […]
• Development: Infancy Through Adolescence The evaluation of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development in different age groups of childhood can be made due to the observation of specific subjects and conversations with them.
• Adolescence and Emotion Relations He attributes the occurrence of emotional problems to the overwhelming nature of the changes and demands that occur during puberty. The reaction of parents to their child’s emotional outbursts correlates to the cultivation of healthy […]
• Middle Childhood and Adolescence Periods Observation The first participant is a boy of 7, and the following series of questions will be offered to him: Do you like watching the outside world and nature changes?
• Childhood, Adolescence, Young Adulthood Psychology Any intervention that can be used in the prevention of child abuse should focus on the causes of the same and the needs of children who are more prone to abuse.
• Inter-Psychic Theories Adlerian Theory (In Adolescence) In his theory, social interest is identified as the need for individuals to adapt to their social environment as it is expressed subjectively in an individual’s consciousness, hence, the need to be part of society […]
• Socioemotional Development in Adolescence Adolescence is a period that begins with the puberty, approximately at the age of 12, and ends with the early adulthood, in the 18th.
• Adolescence as a Period of Social Development Adolescents transition from the restricted responsibilities of childhood to the more expansive roles of adulthood through the social development process, expanding their social networks and experiencing peer influence.
• Circumstances Causing Stress in Adolescence Hold one’s breath for many seconds and gently exhale via the mouth to evacuate the lungs, hence easing the body of stress. The more one is stressed, the more difficult and nervous it is to […]
• The Impact of Technology Development on the Adolescence Psychology The stability of the psyche in teenage society is on the minimum bar, and with few exceptions, teenagers are resistant to any criticism.
• Social Development and Adolescence: Human Services Ethics and Interventions The small circle of peer friends and the loss of a close relative provoke the feeling of loneliness and further progression of depression. A wide range of human service agencies can help Susie and her […]
• The Impact of Social Issues on the Development of Adolescence For example, boys have high esteem when they experience changes in their voices, while girls may feel shy due to the growth of their chest region.
• Depression in Adolescence and Treatment Approaches The age of adolescence, commonly referred to as children aged 10-19, is characterized by a variety of changes to one’s physical and mental health, as the child undergoes several stages of adjustment to the environment […]
• Different Stages of Adolescence Due to the rapid development, the body experiences difficulties in the work of the heart, lungs, and blood supply to the brain.
• Adolescence: Behavioral Issues and Communication Strategies Despite the fact that these issues occur naturally and are frequent for the majority of the representatives of this age group, the traumas and incapability to cope with the challenges might result in adverse outcomes […]
• Review of “The Legal Construction of Adolescence” Article However, as explained by Scott in The Legal Construction of Adolescence, there are several complications connected to clearly defining the end of childhood and the overall period of adolescence.
• Risk-Taking Behaviors and Situations During Adolescence Risk-taking behavior in adolescents is a significant bother for the US healthcare system, as it negatively affects the health and well-being of the population.
• Adolescence and Young Adulthood in Educational Psychology For Freud, it is inclusion in society, the beginning of social education, communication with peers, removing barriers in interpersonal contacts, and expanding the field of fixation of the object of attraction.
• Childhood and Adolescence Psychology One of the examples given about the effects of cultural differences in the definition of intelligence is between the Taiwanese and the Americans.
• Dating, Sex, and Romance: Adolescence and Digital Media Sexual education is significant for adolescents because, for them, the topic of sexual relations, dating, and romance is one of the most attractive ones.
• Family Issues and Adolescence in Crazy/Beautiful The film Crazy/Beautiful is a vivid example of relationships between teenage children and their parents: The problems and situations shown in the film are typical and timeless.
• Adolescence: Biological and Psychosocial Perspectives Adolescence as a social construction is more complex as a concept and entails definitional vagueness regarding the beginning and the ending of adolescence, for example, social-role passages into new reference groups, perceptions of the body, […]
• Adolescence Sexuality: Breaking Down the Myths In her work, Coming of Age in Samoa, she gave a vivid description on the variations in human behavior patterns among the adolescent girls in Samoa.
• Brain Development in Adolescence and Childhood I am going to describe the relation of moral reasoning, moral evaluations and moral behaviors in terms of worldviews approach to moral development according to Jensen. The next issue I am going to discuss is […]
• Syllabus for Life Among Adolescence This is a matter of pressure to the teenagers and this creates stress in them.”Early adulthood is the settling down period and most reproductive age.
• Adolescence and Risk Taking Analysis Studies show that children and adolescents around the world spend their maximum time watching television than they do in any other activity with an exception in the time of sleeping. The objective of this paper […]
• Adolescence Psychology: Development Early Through Late This number is approximate, because a lot of people with the disease are not aware of the symptoms and do not want to be tested on chlamydia.
• Depression and Psychotherapy in Adolescence Society needs to acknowledge that depression is a major medical problem among adolescents in the United States and measures need to be taken to address it.
• Middle Childhood and Adolescence Development Children and adolescents need to be accepted by the peers, and the positive relations in groups contribute to increasing the children’s self-esteem and self-confidence.
• Psychology: Adolescence as a Developmental Stage Erik Erickson is referred to as the father of an identity crisis in that he originated with the idea of child upbringing practices and their influence on the personality of the child in later life.
• Human Development Theories: Adolescence and Adulthood In the growth and development stage of a human being, the adolescent period has been considered to be a natural stage found between childhood and adulthood.
• Addiction Occurrence and Reduction in Adolescence This implies that the earlier the start of the use of drugs, the higher the chances of the risk of becoming addicted.
• Loneliness in Adolescence as a Psychological Issue In the course of this, it will outline the background, state the hypothesis, speculate on the methods, and reflect on the conclusion which the author has arrived at.
• Adolescence: Risk, Identity and Transition There is a downside to this perspective is that it ignores the diversity in culture and differences among peers. The main problem however is that most of these youth have no experience with the real […]
• The Peculiarities of Adolescence and Puberty It is necessary to pay attention to the needs of students at risk, to the peculiarities of their interactions with other people and to the features of their awareness of themselves as personalities.
• Sexuality and Masculinity in Adolescents This is the misunderstanding which makes many teenagers behave in the way they are not to behave, to act in the way they are not to act and to act as in the result the […]
• Adolescence and Adulthood Developmental Stages – Psychology The onset of adolescence marks the refinement of most individuals’ thinking abilities because at this stage the majority of individuals would have attained control in their thinking process.
• Alcohol Consumption in Adolescence The hypotheses developed in this paper are of immense importance in guiding a study aimed at identifying credible evidence on how alcohol consumption during adolescence is associated with mental health challenges and increased STI risk […]
• Relationship Between Sleep and Depression in Adolescence Using SPSS for data analysis, the results indicate the presence of a correlation between elements of depression and sleep duration and quality.
• Attachment Dimensions and Adolescence Drug Addiction in Relation to School Counseling A meta-analysis of numerous studies relating to attachment and parental rearing behaviors have revealed that the quality of rapport between children and their caregivers is of intrinsic importance to the children’s development, and some studies, […]
• Development of Ethnic Identity During Adolescence From a study of adolescents of different racial groups in the United States, it was found out that self esteem of the groups was observed to rise among the groups of early and mid adolescents.
• The Three D’s of Adolescence Depression There are three major types depression in teenagers: bipolar depression, major depression, and chronic depression. Parents can help their depressed adolescents by identifying the type of depression and seeking proper treatment.
• The Problem of Adolescence Pressures in Society Early adolescence start at the age of 10 to 14 while the late adolescence is from 15 to 21years in boys but girls are said to attain early maturity at the age of 19 years.
• Human Development: Adolescence as the Most Important Age Range The stage is therefore very important in understanding the behavior of an individual. This is a stage when the life of an individual is either made or destroyed.
• Critical Issues in Adolescence: The Problem of Psychological Disorders It is the purpose of this paper to critically analyze how psychological disorders affect the physical, cognitive and emotional development of adolescents in contemporary times.
• A Critical Evaluation of the Behavioural Outcomes of Failure of Mylination of the Prefrontal Lobe During Adolescence It is, therefore, the purpose of this paper to evaluate the behavioural outcome of failure or impairment of mylination of the prefrontal lobe during adolescence.
• Why Do So Many Guys Seem Stuck Between Adolescence And Adulthood?
• Mental Health around Pregnancy and Child Development from Early Childhood to Adolescence
• Adolescence: Developmental Psychology and Social Work Practice
• Adolescence Sexuality Defining Sexual Self The Other Issue
• The Main Problems That Comes with Adolescence
• Working and Studying in Rural Latin America: Critical Decisions of Adolescence
• The Sense of Self in Adolescence: Teenager Movies
• The Ups and Downs of Adolescence in The Perks of Being a Wallflower Directed by Stephen Chbosky
• Understanding the Adolescence and Behaviorism in Psychology
• The Influence of Parent and Peer Attachments on Life Satisfaction in Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence
• What Are Some Of The Most Common Mental Disorders In Adolescence
• The Rite of Passage from Adolescence to Adulthood in Teen Films
• Gender Roles And Socialization In Adolescence
• The Middle Adolescence Stage Of Development
• Adolescence Is A Critical Time For A Human
• Adolescence In The Bell Jar And Catcher In The Rye
• The Reduction in Criminal Offences After Adolescence
• Weight and Blood Pressure Management in Adolescence Population
• The Relationship Between Divorce And Adolescence
• Relationship Between Adolescence and Horror Films
• Narratives of Adolescence Explored Through the Harry Potter
• Prenatal Adolescence And Early Adulthood Period
• The Pros and Cons of Internet as the Primary Source of Globalization of Adolescence
• Adolescence Is The Most Difficult Stage Of Our Lives
• The Theme of Adolescence in Melanie Rae Thon’s Iona Moon
• The Importance of Adolescence in Creating Successful Adults
• The Physiological Changes of Boys and Girls During Adolescence
• Sports Participation and Social Capital Formation During Adolescence
• The Physical and Psychological Changes that Occur During Adolescence
• Value Driven Attentional Capture Of Adolescence
• Treating Non-Malignant Pain in Adolescence with Medical Marijuana
• The Psychological And Physical Aspects Of Drug Abuse In Today’s Adolescence
• The Woman’s Natural Journey From Adolescence To Menopause
• Sexism and Aggression in Adolescence—How Do They Relate to Perceived Academic Achievement
• Understanding Sexuality During the Adolescence Stage of Our Lives
• Theories Of Child Development As They Pertain To Middle Childhood And Adolescence
• Peer Affiliation, Social Behavior, And Callous Unemotional Traits In Adolescence
• The Major Hormonal Changes That Occur During Adolescence
• Personality and Optimal Experience in Adolescence: Implications for Well-Being and Development
• An Analysis of the Concept of Adolescence and the Juvenile Delinquency
• Adolescence Is A Period Of Storm And Stress
• Child Sexual Development: Infancy, Early Childhood, Adolescence
• Mass Media and Adolescence: How Mass Media Influence Teens in Their Sexual Behavior
• The Role Of Nature And Nurture : Adolescence Eating Disorders
• Does Fruit and Vegetable Consumption During Adolescence Predict Adult Depression?
• How Does Frayn Show Stephen’s Mental Progression From Childhood to Adolescence?
• Does Periodontal Inflammation Affect Type 1 Diabetes in Childhood and Adolescence?
• What Leads Subjective Well-Being to Change Throughout Adolescence?
• Is Abortion Beneficial or Harmful to a Teenager?
• How to Recognize the Signs of Depression in Young People?
• Which Role Models Do Teenagers Follow Today?
• Who Is Responsible for Sexual Education: School or Family?
• What Changes Happen During Adolescence?
• How Do Teenagers Leave Their Homes and Why They Never Come Back? Which Social Groups Have Higher Rates of Such Cases?
• Appearance as a Tool of Self-Expression. Which Elements of Style Are Used by Teenagers Today?
• How Did Communication With Parents Change Over the Past Ten Years?
• Do Technological Advances Facilitate Better Studying Among Young People or Distract From It?
• Have the Youth Become More Involved Socially, or Are They Becoming More Individualist?
• What Influences the Youth of Today?
• How Does an Adolescent Develop Intellectually?
• Are Teenagers More Religious as Compared to the Recent Past?
• What Are the Major Challenges That Adolescence Facing?
• How Does Society Affect Adolescent Development?
• What Is the Most Important Thing We Need to Know During Adolescence?
• Why Adolescent Stage Is the Most Crucial Stage?
• What Are Emotional Changes in Adolescence?
• Can Adolescent Development Change According to Culture and Upbringing?
• What Social Changes Happen in Adolescence?
• Why Is Knowledge About Changes During Adolescence Important?
• How Do Physical Changes Affect Adolescents?
• Why Is Adolescent Development Especially Challenging?
• What Are the Problems With Defining the Start and End of Adolescence? Why Do These Problems Exist?
• How Does Family Affect Adolescent Development?
• Why Is Healthy Behavior During Adolescence Important?
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IvyPanda . "135 Adolescence Essay Topics & Examples." February 29, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/adolescence-essay-topics/.

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Home / Essay Samples / Life / Challenges / Adolescence Challenges: Navigating Mental Health Issues

Adolescence Challenges: Navigating Mental Health Issues

• Category: Psychology , Life
• Topic: Adolescence , Challenges , Overcoming Challenges

Pages: 2 (885 words)

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Suicide and Depression in Adolescence

Anxiety in adolescence, bullying and peer victimization in adolescence, adolescent psychopathology and emotion dysregulation, conclusion .

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