Dictionary Definition
adolescent adj
1 relating to or peculiar to or suggestive of an
adolescent; "adolescent problems"
2 being of the age 13 through 19; "teenage
mothers"; "the teen years" [syn: teen, teenage, teenaged]
3 displaying or suggesting a lack of maturity;
"adolescent insecurity"; "jejune responses to our problems"; "their
behavior was juvenile"; "puerile jokes" [syn: jejune, juvenile, puerile]
4 in the state of development between puberty and
maturity; "adolescent boys and girls" n : a juvenile between the
onset of puberty and maturity [syn: stripling, teenager]
User Contributed Dictionary
English
Etymology
First attested 1482, from adolescent, from adolescentem, accusative form of adolescens, present participle of adolescere, "become adult", "grow up", from ad-, to, + alescere, grow or "become nourished". The adjective first appeared in 1785.Pronunciation
- , /ˌædəˈlɛsənt/, /%
Extensive Definition
- "Teen(s)" and "teenager(s)" redirect here, for other uses see Teen (disambiguation)
The home is an important
aspect of adolescent psychology: home environment and family have a
substantial impact on the developing minds of teenagers, and these
developments may reach a climax during adolescence. For example,
abusive parents may lead a child to "poke fun" at other classmates
when he/she is seven years old or so, but during adolescence, it
may become progressively worse, for example, the child may now be
using drugs or becoming intolerably violent among other classmates.
If the concepts and theory behind of right or wrong were not
established early on in a child's life, the lack of this knowledge
may impair a teenager's ability to make beneficial decisions as
well as allowing his/her impulses to control his/her
decisions.
In the search for a unique
social identity
for themselves, adolescents are frequently confused about what is
'right' and what is 'wrong.' G. Stanley
Hall denoted this period as one of "Storm and Stress" and,
according to him, conflict at this developmental
stage is normal and not unusual. Margaret
Mead, on the other hand, attributed the behavior of adolescents
to their culture and upbringing. However, Piaget,
attributed this stage in development with greatly increased
cognitive abilities; at this stage of life the individual's
thoughts start taking more of an abstract form and the egocentric
thoughts decrease, hence the individual is able to think and reason
in a wider perspective.
Positive
psychology is sometimes brought up when addressing adolescent
psychology as well. This approach towards adolescents refers to
providing them with motivation to become socially acceptable and
notable individuals, since many adolescents find themselves bored,
indecisive and/or unmotivated.
Adolescents may be subject to
peer pressure within their adolescent time span, consisting of the
need to have sex, consume alcoholic beverages, use drugs, defy
their parental figures, or commit any activity in which the person
who is subjected to may not deem appropriate, among other things.
Peer pressure is a common experience between adolescents and may
result briefly or on a larger scale.
It should also be noted that
adolescence is the stage of a psychological breakthrough in a
person's life when the cognitive
development is rapid and the thoughts, ideas and concepts
developed at this period of life greatly influence the individual's
future life, playing a major role in character and personality
formation.
Struggles with adolescent
identity and depression usually set in when an adolescent
experiences a loss. The most important loss in their lives is the
changing relationship between the adolescent and their parents.
Adolescents may also experience strife in their relationships with
friends. This may be because of things their friends do, such as
smoking, that they feel if they don't do, they'll lose their
friendship. Teen depression can be extremely intense at times
because of physical and hormonal changes but emotional instability
is part of being a teenager. Their changing mind, body and
relationships often present themselves as stressful and that
change, they assume, is something to be feared.
Views of family relationships
during adolescence are changing. The old view of family
relationships during adolescence put an emphasis on conflict and
disengagement and thought storm and stress was normal and even
inevitable. However, the new view puts emphasis on transformation
or relationships and maintenance of connectedness.
Sexuality
Adolescent sexuality refers to
sexual feelings, behavior
and development in adolescents and is a stage
of human sexuality. Sexuality and sexual desire usually begins to
appear along with the onset of puberty. The expression of
sexual desire among adolescents (or anyone, for that matter), might
be influenced by family values and influences, the culture and
religion they have grown up in social
engineering, social
control, taboos, and
other kinds of social
mores. The risks of adolescent sexual activity is sometimes
associated with: emotional distress (fear of abuse or
exploitation),
sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV/AIDS) and pregnancy
through failure or non-use of contraceptives. In terms of sexual
identity, sexual
orientation among adolescents may vary greatly across the
spectrum from heterosexuality and
LGBT
orientations to pansexuality and sexual
fetishism.
According to anthropologist
Margaret
Mead and psychologist Albert
Bandura, the turmoil found in adolescence in Western society
has a cultural rather than a physical cause; they reported that
societies where young women engaged in free sexual activity had no
such adolescent turmoil, (that is until more recently, when
information about the most dangerous STDs was made publicly
accessible.)
The age of
consent to sexual activity varies widely between international
jurisdictions, ranging from 12 to 21 years, although some
governments, such as Canada's, are planning to raise the age to at
least 16 in an effort to reduce the incidence of the most serious
STD's, pregnancy among teenage girls, and the sexual abuse and
exploitation of younger teens.
Culture
- Activism
- Adolescent medicine
- Education
- Fear of youth
- Images of young people
- Precocious puberty
- Delayed puberty
- Rite of passage
- Sex education
- Student voice
- Teen idol
- Teen magazine
- Youth
- Youth culture
- Youth rights
- Youth voice
- Young worker safety and health
- Ephebophilia - a sexual preference in which an adult is primarily or exclusively sexually attracted to postpubescent adolescents
Human development and psychology
- Adolescent psychology
- Educational psychology
- Developmental psychology
- Human development
- Erikson's stages of psychosocial development particularly stages 5 & 6
- Kohlberg's stages of moral development particularly stage 3
Compare with
Literature
- Tennessee Williams: a description of the emotional impact of puberty and adolescence is to be found in The Resemblance Between a Violin and a Coffin
- Jon Savage: a (pre)history of the development of the teenager is to be found in Teenage (Chatto and Windus, 2007)
References
External links
- The 6th Las Vegas Conference on Adolescents - USJT.com A maximum of 24 Contact Hours are available for the Adolescents Conference in Las Vegas. 6 Hours Pre-Conference Ethics Workshop on April 23, and 18 Hours Full Time Conference April 24-26.
- Past Notes Passed notes and other cringe-worthy high school epherma, circa mid to late 1990s
adolescent in Arabic:
مراهقة
adolescent in Aymara:
Yuqalla
adolescent in Bulgarian:
Юношество
adolescent in Catalan:
Adolescència
adolescent in Czech:
Teenager
adolescent in German:
Adoleszenz
adolescent in Spanish:
Adolescencia
adolescent in Esperanto:
Adolesko
adolescent in French:
Adolescence
adolescent in Gan Chinese:
後生
adolescent in Galician:
Adolescencia
adolescent in Indonesian:
Remaja
adolescent in Italian:
Adolescenza
adolescent in Hebrew:
התבגרות
adolescent in Marathi:
पौगंडावस्था
adolescent in Malay
(macrolanguage): Remaja
adolescent in Dutch:
Adolescentie
adolescent in Japanese:
青年期
adolescent in Polish:
Dojrzewanie
adolescent in Portuguese:
Adolescência
adolescent in Romanian:
Adolescenţă
adolescent in Russian:
Подросток
adolescent in Simple English:
Adolescence
adolescent in Slovak:
Adolescencia
adolescent in Slovenian:
Mladostništvo
adolescent in Serbian:
Адолесценција
adolescent in Finnish:
Teini
adolescent in Swedish:
Adolescens
adolescent in Tamil: விடலைப்
பருவம்
adolescent in Thai:
วัยรุ่น
adolescent in Turkish:
Adolesan
adolescent in Contenese:
後生
adolescent in Chinese:
青少年時期
Synonyms, Antonyms and Related Words
at half cock, baby, callow, fledgling, green, half-baked, half-cocked,
half-grown, hopeful,
ill-digested, immature,
impubic, infant, junior, juvenal, juvenile, maturescent, minor, nubile, pubescent, raw, sapling, slip, sprig, stripling, teenager, teener, teenybopper, underripe, unfledged, ungrown, unmellowed, unripe, unseasoned, young hopeful,
young person, younger,
youngest, youngling, youngster, youth