Adolescence

1. Adolescence We will explore some major issues that adolescents face on a daily basis in order to better understand ourselves and to have a better awareness of what our peers may be facing.

2. Action Plan • As servants, we need to be there for one another. • As adolescents and emerging adults, your age group struggles with a lot. • Issues: • Substance abuse • Early Sex/Sexual experimentation • Homosexuality • Eating Disorders • Identity is established and/or experimented with • Self-esteem • Ethnic and cultural identity • Peer relations have an increased importance – as does conformity • Autonomy • Familiarize yourselves with these issues. Be aware of them. • Support one another.

3. Question: Why do adolescents face all of these big and difficult issues?

4. Let’s Start with Your Brains • Prefrontal cortex pruning • Use it or Lose it • Increased neural sensitivity to stimuli • Emotional/social network development outpaces cognitive-control network

5. Want to take a Risk?

6. Issues in Adolescence… • Substance abuse • Early Sex/Sexual experimentation • Homosexuality • Eating Disorders • Identity is established and/or experimented with • Self-esteem • Ethnic and cultural identity • Peer relations have an increased importance – as does conformity • Autonomy Making a little bit more sense now?

7. Feeling Moody? • There’s a reason… • Your neurons are more responsive to stressful events & experience pleasurable events more intensely

8. Regulating Emotions • Biological Processes • Hormones • Frontal Lobe • Early Adolescence • Puberty heightens emotional arousability, sensation seeking • Middle Adolescence • Period of heightened vulnerability to risk taking and problems regulating emotions and behavior • Late Adolescence • Maturation of frontal lobes facilitates emotion regulation

9. Parent-Child Relationships • Increased Conflict • Parent-daughter conflict is more intense than parent-son conflict • Girls reach puberty earlier and receive more parental restrictions

10. Romantic Relationships • Central to sense of belonging and group status • Can feel neglected when friends start dating • Opportunity to share experiences with friends can enhance friendships • Cultural variations

11. Social Relationships • Incredibly important • Occur in multiple stages • (This is its own lesson)

12. Peer Pressure and Conformity • Friendships, Cliques, and Crowds • (and yes, they are each different) • Homophily • The degree to which friends are similar to each other in terms of behaviors, tastes, views, and goals

13. Early Maturing Girls & Guys Boys Girls Withdrawn Lacking in Self-Confidence Anxious Prone to depression • Athletic stars • Hold leadership roles • Popular • Early maturing adolescents seek out older companions that encourage activities that they are not ready for yet. • They often feel emotionally stressed and perform worse academically.

14. Late Maturing Girls & Guys Boys Girls Considered physically attractive Lively Sociable • Express more anxiety • Depressed mood • Unpopular

15. Eating Disorders Anorexia Nervosa Bulimia Nervosa An eating disorder in which young people engage in strict dieting and excessive exercise accompanied by binge eating, often followed by deliberate vomiting and purging with laxatives. Again, mostly girls and bi- or homosexual boys • An eating disorder in which young people starve themselves because of a compulsive fear of becoming fat. • ~1% of North American and Western European teenagers are affected • 10-15% of that are boys • 50% of the boys affected are homosexual or bisexual boys that are uncomfortable with a strong, muscular appearance

16. Sex • Puberty brings an increased sex-drive • Most kids learn about sex from friends, books, magazines, movies, TV and the Internet • Nearly half of adolescents have had sex • US youth are more sexually active than their Canadian and European counterparts • (Typically) Parents don’t talk to their kids enough about sex

17. Sexual Identity • Sexual identity: • Individuals’ understanding of themselves as heterosexual, gay or lesbian, or bisexual • Sexual Minority Youth • Adolescents who develop identities as gay, lesbians, or bisexuals

18. Stages of Sexual Minority Identification • Sensitization, feeling different • Self-recognition, identity confusion • You are confused about what sort of person you are and where your life is going. You ask the questions: “Who am I?” “Am I homosexual?” “Am I really heterosexual?” • Identity assumption • You prefer same-sex relationships, may or may not openly acknowledge this identity/preference • Commitment, identity integration • Fusion of one’s sexuality and emotional commitments, openly acknowledged

19. Sexually Active Adolescents • Childhood impulsivity, weak sense of personal control over life events, early pubertal timing, parental divorce, single-parent, and stepfamily homes, large family size, little or no religious involvement, weak parental monitoring, disrupted parent-child communication, sexually active friends and older siblings, poor school performance, lower educational aspirations, and a tendency to engage in norm-violating acts (drug/alcohol use and delinquency)

20. Homosexuality & Sexual Orientation • Cultures vary in their acceptance of homosexuality • No culture is immune to homosexuality • Both genetic factors and environmental factors contribute to sexual orientation • Steps of people who identify as homosexual: • Feeling different as a kid • Confusion • Self-Acceptance

21. Substance Abuse • Common result of the increased risk-taking in adolescence • What is substance abuse? • A pattern of harmful use of any substance for mood-altering purposes • “The use of illicit drugs or the abuse of prescription or over-the-counter drugs for purposes other than those for which are indicated or in a manner or in quantities other than directed.”

22. Identity Formation • Mature Identity • You as a complete, total, you • Sexual Identity • Orientation • Preference • Ethnic Identity • Where do you come from? • Do you relate to your ethnic culture?

23. Self-Esteem • Self-esteem ≠ Feeling good about yourself

24. Autonomy