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Adolescence
Adolescence is defined as the stage between the biological changes of puberty and the point at which an individual attains a stable, independent role in society. This is often defined as being between the ages of 11/12 until the mid-twenties.
Adolescents are often described as having stereotypical behaviour: bad moods, impulsive behaviour, and an inability to self-regulate to name a few. This is broadly true for a lot of teenagers. However, there is a reason for it: our brain.
Researchers have spent a long time studying the changes in brain structure and function that happens when we are in the adolescent phase of life. Studying this reveals a lot about why teenagers do what they do. More broadly, this research reveals a lot about how the structure of the brain relates to our behaviour, and how brain development, mixed in with hormones and our social environment, shapes who we become as we emerge into adulthood.
However, it is important to note that we shouldn't demonise adolescence - it is a fundamental part of who we have become.
The adolescent brain is not a dysfunctional or defective adult brain. Adolescence is a formative period of our lives, where neural pathways are changeable, and things like passion and creativity are available to us in massive quantities.
Adolescents are not stupid. However, when trying to steer a teenager on the right path in life, we often choose the wrong tactics.
For example, public health adverts aimed at young people often focus on the long-term health outcomes of risky activities such as smoking. But there is a lot of evidence to suggest that these types of messages are unlikely to work on teenagers.
We know that adolescents have the brain capacity to understand the risks of smoking. However, in the heat of the moment, when offered a cigarette or an Ecstasy tablet, many adolescents care far more about what their peer group thinks of them than about the potential health risks of their choices.
Often, their decisions are driven by a fear of being excluded by their friends, rather than a complete lack of interest in the possible risks of a behaviour.
It's not that they don't care - they just care about other things more.
The brain is changeable. What does this mean?
The brain is changeable. What does this mean?
Our brains are most malleable when we are younger. This is why children find it very easy to learn new languages or pick up new skills. We can still develop new skills or learn new languages as we get older, but the process is a lot easier when our brains still have plasticity (the ability for our brains to grow and be shaped). Plasticity remains as we get older but the younger we are, the more plasticity we have.
As we move through from infancy to childhood to adulthood, our brains are constantly growing and developing in response to the environment that we are in.
During this time, our sense of self is developing, and it is this development of an identity that is the main priority for the adolescent brain.
This is more than simply working out what clothes you like or the posters you'd like on your wall. This is about the sense of who you are as a person - your moral and political beliefs, your music and fashion taste, the social groups that you associate with. All of this goes through profound changes during adolescence.
Our Sense of Self
Human babies are born with a sense of self. They are able to, from a very young age, distinguish between themselves and others. This is an important skill for children to develop.
The sense of self we have as infants is different to the one we have as adults. Infants are aware of their own bodies and the difference between their body and someone else's. As an adult, our sense of self is more about who we are as people and what others think of us.
But the biggest question we need to ask in regards to our sense of self is: how do you become you?
Part of who we become is inherited - our genetics determine who we will be to a certain extent. Things such as: personality, intelligence, our preferences and cognitive strengths are to some degree inherited from our biological parents. However, the environment plays a big role in who we will be too.
All of our experiences from childhood, our upbringing, our education, social interactions with others and our hobbies (to name a few) influence who we will grow up to be - and who we are even as children.
Our sense of self is important to us at all stages of life, but it no more important than when we are going through adolescence. Teenagers are generally much more concerned with their sense of self than any other age group.
Our adolescence years tend to be when we work out what is important to us and what isn't. For example, are we going to be passionate about equality among males and females or will our political views be central to who we are? It is during our teenage years that we figure a lot of this stuff out.
While working out what we feel passionately about is important in adolescence, our social self - the way that others around us view us - is central to our teenage years. This is the reason that when faced with a risky choice, teenagers will often choose the risky option because they want to appear a certain way to their peers. They are overly concerned with their social self.
Our Social Self
Our Social Self
By the late teens, most have developed a sense of who they are and also how they are - or would like to be - seen by other people. This sense of self that stems from thinking about how we are viewed by others is often called the 'looking-glass self'. We imagine how we appear to other people and how they will judge us and this might induce feelings of embarrassment, pride, shame or guilt depending on the situation.
However, this look-glass self is complicated by the fact that we often appear differently to different people - our family (who know us very well) versus our friends (who know the version of us that we choose to portray) for example.
Teenagers are much more likely to compare themselves with others and they are also much more able and likely to understand that others are making comparisons and judgements about them; they also begin to place much higher value on these judgements.
Therefore, during the adolescent years, our 'looking-glass self' plays a much larger role in development and how others perceive us matters more.
Embarrassing Parents?
Embarrassing Parents?
One of the biggest differences between childhood and adolescence/puberty is that teenagers become increasingly embarrassed by their parents/caregivers.
It has been found in research that adolescents are increasingly worried about the prospect of being observed - whether that observation could realistically happen or not. Research shows that adolescents report higher levels of embarrassment around being observed than children or adults do.
As previously mentioned, young people have an increased awareness of the fact that other people have the capacity to judge or evaluate them and because of this, they often overestimate the extent to which this actually occurs in daily life. As a result of this, teenagers can begin to imagine an audience watching them, even if it does not exist. This has a big impact on home life for a lot of families.
As teenagers have a heightened feeling of an 'imaginary audience' watching them, this can impact on the activities they choose to engage in even at home because outside of the home, it may now be considered to be embarrassing e.g. a teenager may think that playing a game with your parents at home could be something that their friends would find embarrassing and therefore, they choose not to do this - even though none of their friends would actually know.
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