Review of Friendship Development Across the Life Span

Psychosocial Development

Adolescents continue to refine their sense of self equally they relate to others. Erikson referred to the task of the adolescent as 1 of identity versus role confusion. Thus, in Erikson'due south view, an adolescent's main questions are "Who am I?" and "Who practice I desire to exist?" Some adolescents adopt the values and roles that their parents wait for them. Other teens develop identities that are in opposition to their parents but align with a peer group. This is mutual every bit peer relationships become a cardinal focus in adolescents' lives.

As adolescents work to class their identities, they pull away from their parents, and the peer grouping becomes very of import (Shanahan, McHale, Osgood, & Crouter, 2007). Despite spending less fourth dimension with their parents, most teens report positive feelings toward them (Moore, Guzman, Pilus, Lippman, & Garrett, 2004). Warm and salubrious parent-kid relationships accept been associated with positive kid outcomes, such as amend grades and fewer school behavior bug, in the Usa likewise as in other countries (Hair et al., 2005).

It appears that near teens don't feel boyish storm and stress to the degree in one case famously suggested by Chiliad. Stanley Hall, a pioneer in the study of adolescent evolution. Only small numbers of teens have major conflicts with their parents (Steinberg & Morris, 2001), and virtually disagreements are minor. For case, in a written report of over 1,800 parents of adolescents from various cultural and ethnic groups, Barber (1994) found that conflicts occurred over day-to-day issues such as homework, money, curfews, article of clothing, chores, and friends. These types of arguments tend to decrease as teens develop (Galambos & Almeida, 1992).

Parents. Although peers take on greater importance during adolescence, family unit relationships remain important too. One of the key changes during boyhood involves a renegotiation of parent–child relationships. Equally adolescents strive for more than independence and autonomy during this time, dissimilar aspects of parenting become more than salient. For example, parents' distal supervision and monitoring become more important as adolescents spend more time away from parents and in the presence of peers. Parental monitoring encompasses a wide range of behaviors such as parents' attempts to gear up rules and know their adolescents' friends, activities, and whereabouts, in improver to adolescents' willingness to disclose data to their parents (Stattin & Kerr, 2000^[1]).Psychological control, which involves manipulation and intrusion into adolescents' emotional and cerebral world through invalidating adolescents' feelings and pressuring them to call back in particular means (Barber, 1996^[two]), is another attribute of parenting that becomes more salient during adolescence and is related to more problematic adolescent adjustment.

Peers

As children become adolescents, they usually begin spending more than fourth dimension with their peers and less time with their families, and these peer interactions are increasingly unsupervised by adults. Children's notions of friendship often focus on shared activities, whereas adolescents' notions of friendship increasingly focus on intimate exchanges of thoughts and feelings. During adolescence, peer groups evolve from primarily unmarried-sex to mixed-sex. Adolescents inside a peer group tend to be similar to one some other in behavior and attitudes, which has been explained as beingness a function of homophily (adolescents who are similar to 1 another choose to spend time together in a "birds of a feather flock together" way) and influence (adolescents who spend time together shape each other's behavior and attitudes). One of the most widely studied aspects of adolescent peer influence is known every bit deviant peer contagion (Dishion & Tipsord, 2011^[iii]), which is the process past which peers reinforce problem behavior by laughing or showing other signs of blessing that then increment the likelihood of future trouble behavior.

Peers can serve both positive and negative functions during adolescence. Negative peer pressure level can lead adolescents to make riskier decisions or engage in more problematic behavior than they would lone or in the presence of their family. For case, adolescents are much more than likely to drink alcohol, utilize drugs, and commit crimes when they are with their friends than when they are alone or with their family. However, peers besides serve as an important source of social support and companionship during adolescence, and adolescents with positive peer relationships are happier and better adjusted than those who are socially isolated or take conflictual peer relationships.

Crowds refer to different collections of people, like the "theater kids" or the "environmentalists." In a way, they are kind of similar article of clothing brands that characterization the people associated with that crowd. [Image: Garry Knight]

Crowds are an emerging level of peer relationships in adolescence. In contrast to friendships (which are reciprocal dyadic relationships) and cliques (which refer to groups of individuals who interact frequently), crowds are characterized more by shared reputations or images than actual interactions (Brown & Larson, 2009^[iv]). These crowds reflect different prototypic identities (such as jocks or brains) and are ofttimes linked with adolescents' social status and peers' perceptions of their values or behaviors.

Romantic relationships

Boyhood is the developmental period during which romantic relationships typically first sally. Initially, same-sex peer groups that were mutual during childhood expand into mixed-sex peer groups that are more than characteristic of adolescence. Romantic relationships often form in the context of these mixed-sex peer groups (Connolly, Furman, & Konarski, 2000^[5]). Although romantic relationships during adolescence are ofttimes short-lived rather than long-term committed partnerships, their importance should non exist minimized. Adolescents spend a dandy deal of fourth dimension focused on romantic relationships, and their positive and negative emotions are more tied to romantic relationships (or lack thereof) than to friendships, family relationships, or schoolhouse (Furman & Shaffer, 2003^[six]). Romantic relationships contribute to adolescents' identity germination, changes in family and peer relationships, and adolescents' emotional and behavioral adjustment.

Furthermore, romantic relationships are centrally connected to adolescents' emerging sexuality. Parents, policymakers, and researchers have devoted a great bargain of attention to adolescents' sexuality, in large role because of concerns related to sexual intercourse, contraception, and preventing teen pregnancies. However, sexuality involves more than this narrow focus. For example, adolescence is often when individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender come to perceive themselves as such (Russell, Clarke, & Clary, 2009^[7]). Thus, romantic relationships are a domain in which adolescents experiment with new behaviors and identities.

Behavioral and Psychological Adjustment

Identity germination

Theories of adolescent development oftentimes focus on identity formation as a central issue. For instance, in Erikson'south (1968^[8]) archetype theory of developmental stages, identity formation was highlighted equally the primary indicator of successful evolution during boyhood (in contrast to role confusion, which would be an indicator of non successfully meeting the job of boyhood). Marcia (1966^[9]) described identify formation during adolescence as involving both decision points and commitments with respect to ideologies (e.g., faith, politics) and occupations. He described 4 identity statuses: foreclosure, identity diffusion, moratorium, and identity achievement. Foreclosure occurs when an private commits to an identity without exploring options. Identity diffusion occurs when adolescents neither explore nor commit to whatsoever identities. Moratorium is a state in which adolescents are actively exploring options but have not yet fabricated commitments. Identity achievement occurs when individuals accept explored different options and and then made identity commitments. Building on this work, other researchers accept investigated more specific aspects of identity. For example, Phinney (1989^[ten]) proposed a model of ethnic identity evolution that included stages of unexplored ethnic identity, ethnic identity search, and achieved indigenous identity.

Assailment and antisocial behavior

Early, hating behavior leads to befriending others who also engage in antisocial behavior, which only perpetuates the downward cycle of aggression and wrongful acts. [Image: Philippe Put]

Several major theories of the development of hating behavior treat adolescence as an important period. Patterson's (1982^[xi]) early on versus belatedly starter model of the development of ambitious and hating behavior distinguishes youths whose antisocial behavior begins during childhood (early starters) versus adolescence (belatedly starters). According to the theory, early starters are at greater hazard for long-term hating beliefs that extends into adulthood than are tardily starters. Late starters who become antisocial during adolescence are theorized to experience poor parental monitoring and supervision, aspects of parenting that become more salient during adolescence. Poor monitoring and lack of supervision contribute to increasing involvement with deviant peers, which in plow promotes adolescents' own hating behavior. Tardily starters desist from antisocial behavior when changes in the surround brand other options more highly-seasoned. Similarly, Moffitt'south (1993^[12]) life-grade persistent versus adolescent-limited model distinguishes between hating beliefs that begins in babyhood versus adolescence. Moffitt regards adolescent-express hating behavior every bit resulting from a "maturity gap" betwixt adolescents' dependence on and control by adults and their desire to demonstrate their freedom from adult constraint. However, as they keep to develop, and legitimate adult roles and privileges go available to them, there are fewer incentives to appoint in antisocial beliefs, leading to desistance in these antisocial behaviors.

Anxiety and low

Developmental models of anxiety and depression also treat adolescence as an important catamenia, particularly in terms of the emergence of gender differences in prevalence rates that persist through machismo (Rudolph, 2009^[13]). Starting in early adolescence, compared with males, females have rates of feet that are about twice as high and rates of low that are 1.5 to 3 times as high (American Psychiatric Association, 2013^[14]). Although the rates vary beyond specific anxiety and low diagnoses, rates for some disorders are markedly college in adolescence than in childhood or machismo. For example, prevalence rates for specific phobias are nigh v% in children and three%–5% in adults simply 16% in adolescents. Anxiety and depression are particularly apropos because suicide is ane of the leading causes of death during adolescence. Developmental models focus on interpersonal contexts in both childhood and adolescence that foster low and anxiety (eastward.thou., Rudolph, 2009^[xv]). Family adversity, such equally corruption and parental psychopathology, during childhood sets the stage for social and behavioral problems during adolescence. Adolescents with such problems generate stress in their relationships (e.g., by resolving conflict poorly and excessively seeking reassurance) and select into more than maladaptive social contexts (e.g., "misery loves company" scenarios in which depressed youths select other depressed youths as friends and so often co-ruminate as they hash out their problems, exacerbating negative affect and stress). These processes are intensified for girls compared with boys because girls accept more relationship-oriented goals related to intimacy and social approval, leaving them more than vulnerable to disruption in these relationships. Anxiety and low then exacerbate problems in social relationships, which in plough contribute to the stability of anxiety and depression over time.

Academic achievement

Adolescents spend more waking fourth dimension in school than in whatever other context (Eccles & Roeser, 2011^[16]). Academic achievement during adolescence is predicted by interpersonal (east.g., parental engagement in adolescents' education), intrapersonal (eastward.chiliad., intrinsic motivation), and institutional (east.g., school quality) factors. Academic achievement is important in its own right as a marker of positive aligning during adolescence only also because academic achievement sets the stage for time to come educational and occupational opportunities. The virtually serious consequence of school failure, especially dropping out of school, is the loftier risk of unemployment or underemployment in machismo that follows. Loftier achievement tin can set the phase for higher or time to come vocational training and opportunities.

Diversity

Adolescent development does not necessarily follow the aforementioned pathway for all individuals. Certain features of adolescence, particularly with respect to biological changes associated with puberty and cognitive changes associated with brain development, are relatively universal. Only other features of adolescence depend largely on circumstances that are more environmentally variable. For instance, adolescents growing up in one country might have different opportunities for risk taking than adolescents in a different state, and supports and sanctions for different behaviors in adolescence depend on laws and values that might be specific to where adolescents live. Likewise, different cultural norms regarding family and peer relationships shape adolescents' experiences in these domains. For case, in some countries, adolescents' parents are expected to retain command over major decisions, whereas in other countries, adolescents are expected to begin sharing in or taking control of decision making.

Even within the same country, adolescents' gender, ethnicity, immigrant status, religion, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and personality can shape both how adolescents comport and how others answer to them, creating diverse developmental contexts for different adolescents. For example, early on puberty (that occurs before most other peers have experienced puberty) appears to be associated with worse outcomes for girls than boys, likely in part because girls who enter puberty early tend to associate with older boys, which in turn is associated with early sexual beliefs and substance employ. For adolescents who are indigenous or sexual minorities, discrimination sometimes presents a fix of challenges that nonminorities do not face up.

Finally, genetic variations contribute an additional source of multifariousness in boyhood. Current approaches emphasize cistron X surroundings interactions, which often follow a differential susceptibility model (Belsky & Pluess, 2009^[17]). That is, particular genetic variations are considered riskier than others, only genetic variations also tin can make adolescents more or less susceptible to ecology factors. For example, the association between the CHRM2genotype and boyish externalizing behavior (aggression and malversation)has been plant in adolescents whose parents are low in monitoring behaviors (Dick et al., 2011^[eighteen]). Thus, it is important to bear in mind that individual differences play an important role in adolescent development.

Conclusions

Adolescent evolution is characterized by biological, cognitive, and social changes. Social changes are particularly notable as adolescents go more autonomous from their parents, spend more fourth dimension with peers, and begin exploring romantic relationships and sexuality. Adjustment during adolescence is reflected in identity formation, which oftentimes involves a menstruation of exploration followed by commitments to detail identities. Adolescence is characterized by risky behavior, which is made more likely past changes in the encephalon in which reward-processing centers develop more rapidly than cognitive command systems, making adolescents more sensitive to rewards than to possible negative consequences. Despite these generalizations, factors such as country of residence, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation shape development in ways that lead to diversity of experiences across adolescence.

Outside Resources

Podcasts: Society for Research on Adolescence website with links to podcasts on a variety of topics related to adolescent development

http://world wide web.s-r-a.org/sra-news/podcasts

Report: Add Health website on one of the biggest longitudinal studies of adolescence to date

http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/addhealth

Video: A selection of TED talks on boyish brain evolution

http://tinyurl.com/lku4a3k

Web: UNICEF website on adolescents around the world

http://world wide web.unicef.org/adolescence/index.html

Give-and-take Questions

1. What can parents do to promote their adolescents' positive aligning?
2. In what ways practise changes in encephalon development and cognition brand adolescents particularly susceptible to peer influence?
3. How could interventions designed to prevent or reduce adolescents' trouble beliefs be developed to take advantage of what we know about adolescent development?
4. Reflecting on your ain adolescence, provide examples of times when you think your experience was different from those of your peers as a function of something unique virtually you lot.
5. In what ways was your experience of adolescence different from your parents' experience of adolescence? How do y'all think adolescence may be unlike 20 years from now?

---

mattsonandeep36.blogspot.com

Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-lifespandevelopment2/chapter/social-development/