title: Adolescence

text: A third gain in cognitive ability involves thinking about thinking itself, a process referred to as metacognition. It often involves monitoring one's own cognitive activity during the thinking process. Adolescents' improvements in knowledge of their own thinking patterns lead to better self-control and more effective studying. It is also relevant in social cognition, resulting in increased introspection, self-consciousness, and intellectualization (in the sense of thought about one's own thoughts, rather than the Freudian definition as a defense mechanism). Adolescents are much better able than children to understand that people do not have complete control over their mental activity. Being able to introspect may lead to two forms of adolescent egocentrism, which results in two distinct problems in thinking: the imaginary audience and the personal fable. These likely peak at age fifteen, along with self-consciousness in general.


title: Adolescence

text: Related to metacognition and abstract thought, perspective-taking involves a more sophisticated theory of mind. Adolescents reach a stage of social perspective-taking in which they can understand how the thoughts or actions of one person can influence those of another person, even if they personally are not involved.


title: Adolescence

text: Compared to children, adolescents are more likely to question others' assertions, and less likely to accept facts as absolute truths. Through experience outside the family circle, they learn that rules they were taught as absolute are in fact relativistic. They begin to differentiate between rules instituted out of common sense—not touching a hot stove—and those that are based on culturally relative standards (codes of etiquette, not dating until a certain age), a delineation that younger children do not make. This can lead to a period of questioning authority in all domains.


title: Adolescence

text: Because most injuries sustained by adolescents are related to risky behavior (alcohol consumption and drug use, reckless or distracted driving, unprotected sex), a great deal of research has been done on the cognitive and emotional processes underlying adolescent risk-taking. In addressing this question, it is important to distinguish whether adolescents are more likely to engage in risky behaviors (prevalence), whether they make risk-related decisions similarly or differently than adults (cognitive processing perspective), or whether they use the same processes but value different things and thus arrive at different conclusions.


title: Adolescence

text: The behavioral decision-making theory proposes that adolescents and adults both weigh the potential rewards and consequences of an action. However, research has shown that adolescents seem to give more weight to rewards, particularly social rewards, than do adults.


title: Adolescence

text: Research seems to favor the hypothesis that adolescents and adults think about risk in similar ways, but hold different values and thus come to different conclusions. Some have argued that there may be evolutionary benefits to an increased propensity for risk-taking in adolescence. For example, without a willingness to take risks, teenagers would not have the motivation or confidence necessary to leave their family of origin. In addition, from a population perspective, there is an advantage to having a group of individuals willing to take more risks and try new methods, counterbalancing the more conservative elements more typical of the received knowledge held by older adults.


title: Adolescence

text: Risk-taking may also have reproductive advantages: adolescents have a newfound priority in sexual attraction and dating, and risk-taking is required to impress potential mates. Research also indicates that baseline sensation seeking may affect risk-taking behavior throughout the lifespan. Given the potential consequences, engaging in sexual behavior is somewhat risky, particularly for adolescents. Having unprotected sex, using poor birth control methods (e.g. withdrawal), having multiple sexual partners, and poor communication are some aspects of sexual behavior that increase individual and/or social risk.


title: Adolescence

text: Aspects of adolescents' lives that are correlated with risky sexual behavior include higher rates of parental abuse, and lower rates of parental support and monitoring.


title: Adolescence

text: Related to their increased tendency for risk-taking, adolescents show impaired behavioral inhibition, including deficits in extinction learning. This has important implications for engaging in risky behavior such as unsafe sex or illicit drug use, as adolescents are less likely to inhibit actions that may have negative outcomes in the future. This phenomenon also has consequences for behavioral treatments based on the principle of extinction, such as cue exposure therapy for anxiety or drug addiction. It has been suggested that impaired inhibition, specifically extinction, may help to explain adolescent propensity to relapse to drug-seeking even following behavioral treatment for addiction.


title: Adolescence

text: The formal study of adolescent psychology began with the publication of G. Stanley Hall's "Adolescence" in 1904. Hall, who was the first president of the American Psychological Association, viewed adolescence primarily as a time of internal turmoil and upheaval (). This understanding of youth was based on two then-new ways of understanding human behavior: Darwin's evolutionary theory and Freud's psychodynamic theory. He believed that adolescence was a representation of our human ancestors' phylogenetic shift from being primitive to being civilized. Hall's assertions stood relatively uncontested until the 1950s when psychologists such as Erik Erikson and Anna Freud started to formulate their theories about adolescence. Freud believed that the psychological disturbances associated with youth were biologically based and culturally universal while Erikson focused on the dichotomy between identity formation and role fulfillment. Even with their different theories, these three psychologists agreed that adolescence was inherently a time of disturbance and psychological confusion. The less turbulent aspects of adolescence, such as peer relations and cultural influence, were left largely ignored until the 1980s. From the '50s until the '80s, the focus of the field was mainly on describing patterns of behavior as opposed to explaining them.


title: Adolescence

text: Jean Macfarlane founded the University of California, Berkeley's Institute of Human Development, formerly called the Institute of Child Welfare, in 1927. The institute was instrumental in initiating studies of healthy development, in contrast to previous work that had been dominated by theories based on pathological personalities. The studies looked at human development during the Great Depression and World War II, unique historical circumstances under which a generation of children grew up. The Oakland Growth Study, initiated by Harold Jones and Herbert Stolz in 1931, aimed to study the physical, intellectual, and social development of children in the Oakland area. Data collection began in 1932 and continued until 1981, allowing the researchers to gather longitudinal data on the individuals that extended past adolescence into adulthood. Jean Macfarlane launched the Berkeley Guidance Study, which examined the development of children in terms of their socioeconomic and family backgrounds. These studies provided the background for Glen Elder in the 1960s to propose a life course perspective of adolescent development. Elder formulated several descriptive principles of adolescent development. The principle of historical time and place states that an individual's development is shaped by the period and location in which they grow up. The principle of the importance of timing in one's life refers to the different impact that life events have on development based on when in one's life they occur. The idea of linked lives states that one's development is shaped by the interconnected network of relationships of which one is a part and the principle of human agency asserts that one's life course is constructed via the choices and actions of an individual within the context of their historical period and social network.


title: Adolescence

text: In 1984, the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA) became the first official organization dedicated to the study of adolescent psychology. Some of the issues first addressed by this group include: the nature versus nurture debate as it pertains to adolescence; understanding the interactions between adolescents and their environment; and considering culture, social groups, and historical context when interpreting adolescent behavior.


title: Adolescence

text: Evolutionary biologists like Jeremy Griffith have drawn parallels between adolescent psychology and the developmental evolution of modern humans from hominid ancestors as a manifestation of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.


title: Adolescence

text: Identity development is a stage in the adolescent life cycle. For most, the search for identity begins in the adolescent years. During these years, adolescents are more open to 'trying on' different behaviours and appearances to discover who they are. In an attempt to find their identity and discover who they are, adolescents are likely to cycle through a number of identities to find one that suits them best. Developing and maintaining identity (in adolescent years) is a difficult task due to multiple factors such as family life, environment, and social status. Empirical studies suggest that this process might be more accurately described as identity development, rather than formation, but confirms a normative process of change in both content and structure of one's thoughts about the self. The two main aspects of identity development are self-clarity and self-esteem. Since choices made during adolescent years can influence later life, high levels of self-awareness and self-control during mid-adolescence will lead to better decisions during the transition to adulthood. Researchers have used three general approaches to understanding identity development: self-concept, sense of identity, and self-esteem. The years of adolescence create a more conscientious group of young adults. Adolescents pay close attention and give more time and effort to their appearance as their body goes through changes. Unlike children, teens put forth an effort to look presentable (1991). The environment in which an adolescent grows up also plays an important role in their identity development. Studies done by the American Psychological Association have shown that adolescents with a less privileged upbringing have a more difficult time developing their identity.


title: Adolescence

text: The idea of self-concept is known as the ability of a person to have opinions and beliefs that are defined confidently, consistent and stable. Early in adolescence, cognitive developments result in greater self-awareness, greater awareness of others and their thoughts and judgments, the ability to think about abstract, future possibilities, and the ability to consider multiple possibilities at once. As a result, adolescents experience a significant shift from the simple, concrete, and global self-descriptions typical of young children; as children, they defined themselves by physical traits whereas adolescents define themselves based on their values, thoughts, and opinions.


title: Adolescence

text: Adolescents can conceptualize multiple "possible selves" that they could become and long-term possibilities and consequences of their choices. Exploring these possibilities may result in abrupt changes in self-presentation as the adolescent chooses or rejects qualities and behaviors, trying to guide the actual self toward the ideal self (who the adolescent wishes to be) and away from the feared self (who the adolescent does not want to be). For many, these distinctions are uncomfortable, but they also appear to motivate achievement through behavior consistent with the ideal and distinct from the feared possible selves.


title: Adolescence

text: Further distinctions in self-concept, called "differentiation," occur as the adolescent recognizes the contextual influences on their own behavior and the perceptions of others, and begin to qualify their traits when asked to describe themselves. Differentiation appears fully developed by mid-adolescence. Peaking in the 7th-9th grades, the personality traits adolescents use to describe themselves refer to specific contexts, and therefore may contradict one another. The recognition of inconsistent content in the self-concept is a common source of distress in these years (see Cognitive dissonance), but this distress may benefit adolescents by encouraging structural development.


title: Adolescence

text: Egocentrism in adolescents forms a self-conscious desire to feel important in their peer groups and enjoy social acceptance. Unlike the conflicting aspects of self-concept, identity represents a coherent sense of self stable across circumstances and including past experiences and future goals. Everyone has a self-concept, whereas Erik Erikson argued that not everyone fully achieves identity. Erikson's theory of stages of development includes the identity crisis in which adolescents must explore different possibilities and integrate different parts of themselves before committing to their beliefs. He described the resolution of this process as a stage of "identity achievement" but also stressed that the identity challenge "is never fully resolved once and for all at one point in time". Adolescents begin by defining themselves based on their crowd membership. "Clothes help teens explore new identities, separate from parents, and bond with peers." Fashion has played a major role when it comes to teenagers "finding their selves"; Fashion is always evolving, which corresponds with the evolution of change in the personality of teenagers. Adolescents attempt to define their identity by consciously styling themselves in different manners to find what best suits them. Trial and error in matching both their perceived image and the image others respond to and see, allows for the adolescent to grasp an understanding of who they are.


title: Adolescence

text: Just as fashion is evolving to influence adolescents so is the media. "Modern life takes place amidst a never-ending barrage of flesh on screens, pages, and billboards." This barrage consciously or subconsciously registers into the mind causing issues with self-image a factor that contributes to an adolescence sense of identity. Researcher James Marcia developed the current method for testing an individual's progress along these stages. His questions are divided into three categories: occupation, ideology, and interpersonal relationships. Answers are scored based on the extent to which the individual has explored and the degree to which he has made commitments. The result is classification of the individual into a) identity diffusion in which all children begin, b) Identity Foreclosure in which commitments are made without the exploration of alternatives, c) Moratorium, or the process of exploration, or d) Identity Achievement in which Moratorium has occurred and resulted in commitments.


title: Adolescence

text: Research since reveals self-examination beginning early in adolescence, but identity achievement rarely occurring before age 18. The freshman year of college influences identity development significantly, but may actually prolong psychosocial moratorium by encouraging reexamination of previous commitments and further exploration of alternate possibilities without encouraging resolution. For the most part, evidence has supported Erikson's stages: each correlates with the personality traits he originally predicted. Studies also confirm the impermanence of the stages; there is no final endpoint in identity development.


title: Adolescence

text: An adolescent's environment plays a huge role in their identity development. While most adolescent studies are conducted on white, middle class children, studies show that the more privileged upbringing people have, the more successfully they develop their identity. The forming of an adolescent's identity is a crucial time in their life. It has been recently found that demographic patterns suggest that the transition to adulthood is now occurring over a longer span of years than was the case during the middle of the 20th century. Accordingly, youth, a period that spans late adolescence and early adulthood, has become a more prominent stage of the life course. This, therefore, has caused various factors to become important during this development. So many factors contribute to the developing social identity of an adolescent from commitment, to coping devices, to social media. All of these factors are affected by the environment an adolescent grows up in. A child from a more privileged upbringing is exposed to more opportunities and better situations in general. An adolescent from an inner city or a crime-driven neighborhood is more likely to be exposed to an environment that can be detrimental to their development. Adolescence is a sensitive period in the development process, and exposure to the wrong things at that time can have a major effect on future decisions. While children that grow up in nice suburban communities are not exposed to bad environments they are more likely to participate in activities that can benefit their identity and contribute to a more successful identity development.


title: Adolescence

text: Sexual orientation has been defined as "an erotic inclination toward people of one or more genders, most often described as sexual or erotic attractions". In recent years, psychologists have sought to understand how sexual orientation develops during adolescence. Some theorists believe that there are many different possible developmental paths one could take, and that the specific path an individual follows may be determined by their sex, orientation, and when they reached the onset of puberty.


title: Adolescence

text: In 1989, Troiden proposed a four-stage model for the development of homosexual sexual identity. The first stage, known as sensitization, usually starts in childhood, and is marked by the child's becoming aware of same-sex attractions. The second stage, identity confusion, tends to occur a few years later. In this stage, the youth is overwhelmed by feelings of inner turmoil regarding their sexual orientation, and begins to engage in sexual experiences with same-sex partners. In the third stage of identity assumption, which usually takes place a few years after the adolescent has left home, adolescents begin to come out to their family and close friends, and assumes a self-definition as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. In the final stage, known as commitment, the young adult adopts their sexual identity as a lifestyle. Therefore, this model estimates that the process of coming out begins in childhood, and continues through the early to mid 20s. This model has been contested, and alternate ideas have been explored in recent years.


title: Adolescence

text: In terms of sexual identity, adolescence is when most gay/lesbian and transgender adolescents begin to recognize and make sense of their feelings. Many adolescents may choose to come out during this period of their life once an identity has been formed; many others may go through a period of questioning or denial, which can include experimentation with both homosexual and heterosexual experiences. A study of 194 lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths under the age of 21 found that having an awareness of one's sexual orientation occurred, on average, around age 10, but the process of coming out to peers and adults occurred around age 16 and 17, respectively. Coming to terms with and creating a positive LGBT identity can be difficult for some youth for a variety of reasons. Peer pressure is a large factor when youth who are questioning their sexuality or gender identity are surrounded by heteronormative peers and can cause great distress due to a feeling of being different from everyone else. While coming out can also foster better psychological adjustment, the risks associated are real. Indeed, coming out in the midst of a heteronormative peer environment often comes with the risk of ostracism, hurtful jokes, and even violence. Because of this, statistically the suicide rate amongst LGBT adolescents is up to four times higher than that of their heterosexual peers due to bullying and rejection from peers or family members.


title: Adolescence

text: The final major aspect of identity formation is self-esteem. Self-esteem is defined as one's thoughts and feelings about one's self-concept and identity. Most theories on self-esteem state that there is a grand desire, across all genders and ages, to maintain, protect and enhance their self-esteem. Contrary to popular belief, there is no empirical evidence for a significant drop in self-esteem over the course of adolescence. "Barometric self-esteem" fluctuates rapidly and can cause severe distress and anxiety, but baseline self-esteem remains highly stable across adolescence. The validity of global self-esteem scales has been questioned, and many suggest that more specific scales might reveal more about the adolescent experience.


title: Adolescence

text: Girls are most likely to enjoy high self-esteem when engaged in supportive relationships with friends, the most important function of friendship to them is having someone who can provide social and moral support. Girls suffer from low self-esteem when they fail to win friends' approval or cannot find someone with whom to share common activities and common interests. In contrast, boys are more concerned with establishing and asserting their independence and defining their relation to authority. As such, they are more likely to derive high self-esteem from their ability to successfully influence their friends; on the other hand, the lack of romantic competence, for example, failure to win or maintain the affection of the opposite or same-sex (depending on sexual orientation), is the major contributor to low self-esteem in adolescent boys. Due to the fact that both men and women happen to have a low self-esteem after ending a romantic relationship, they are prone to other symptoms that is caused by this state. Depression and hopelessness are only two of the various symptoms and it is said that women are twice as likely to experience depression and men are three to four times more likely to commit suicide (Mearns, 1991; Ustun & Sartorius, 1995).


title: Adolescence

text: The relationships adolescents have with their peers, family, and members of their social sphere play a vital role in the social development of an adolescent. As an adolescent's social sphere develops rapidly as they distinguish the differences between friends and acquaintances, they often become heavily emotionally invested in friends. This is not harmful; however, if these friends expose an individual to potentially harmful situations, this is an aspect of peer pressure. Adolescence is a critical period in social development because adolescents can be easily influenced by the people they develop close relationships with. This is the first time individuals can truly make their own decisions, which also makes this a sensitive period. Relationships are vital in the social development of an adolescent due to the extreme influence peers can have over an individual. These relationships become significant because they begin to help the adolescent understand the concept of personalities, how they form and why a person has that specific type of personality. "The use of psychological comparisons could serve both as an index of the growth of an implicit personality theory and as a component process accounting for its creation. In other words, by comparing one person's personality characteristics to another's, we would be setting up the framework for creating a general theory of personality (and, ... such a theory would serve as a useful framework for coming to understand specific persons)." This can be likened to the use of social comparison in developing one's identity and self-concept, which includes ones personality, and underscores the importance of communication, and thus relationships, in one's development. In social comparison we use reference groups, with respect to both psychological and identity development. These reference groups are the peers of adolescents. This means that who the teen chooses/accepts as their friends and who they communicate with on a frequent basis often makes up their reference groups and can therefore have a huge impact on who they become. Research shows that relationships have the largest affect over the social development of an individual.


title: Adolescence

text: Adolescence marks a rapid change in one's role within a family. Young children tend to assert themselves forcefully, but are unable to demonstrate much influence over family decisions until early adolescence, when they are increasingly viewed by parents as equals. The adolescent faces the task of increasing independence while preserving a caring relationship with his or her parents. When children go through puberty, there is often a significant increase in parent–child conflict and a less cohesive familial bond. Arguments often concern minor issues of control, such as curfew, acceptable clothing, and the adolescent's right to privacy, which adolescents may have previously viewed as issues over which their parents had complete authority. Parent-adolescent disagreement also increases as friends demonstrate a greater impact on one another, new influences on the adolescent that may be in opposition to parents' values. Social media has also played an increasing role in adolescent and parent disagreements. While parents never had to worry about the threats of social media in the past, it has become a dangerous place for children. While adolescents strive for their freedoms, the unknowns to parents of what their child is doing on social media sites is a challenging subject, due to the increasing amount of predators on social media sites. Many parents have very little knowledge of social networking sites in the first place and this further increases their mistrust. An important challenge for the parent–adolescent relationship is to understand how to enhance the opportunities of online communication while managing its risks. Although conflicts between children and parents increase during adolescence, these are just relatively minor issues. Regarding their important life issues, most adolescents still share the same attitudes and values as their parents.


title: Adolescence

text: During childhood, siblings are a source of conflict and frustration as well as a support system. Adolescence may affect this relationship differently, depending on sibling gender. In same-sex sibling pairs, intimacy increases during early adolescence, then remains stable. Mixed-sex siblings pairs act differently; siblings drift apart during early adolescent years, but experience an increase in intimacy starting at middle adolescence. Sibling interactions are children's first relational experiences, the ones that shape their social and self-understanding for life. Sustaining positive sibling relations can assist adolescents in a number of ways. Siblings are able to act as peers, and may increase one another's sociability and feelings of self-worth. Older siblings can give guidance to younger siblings, although the impact of this can be either positive or negative depending on the activity of the older sibling.


title: Adolescence

text: A potential important influence on adolescence is change of the family dynamic, specifically divorce. With the divorce rate up to about 50%, divorce is common and adds to the already great amount of change in adolescence. Custody disputes soon after a divorce often reflect a playing out of control battles and ambivalence between parents. Divorce usually results in less contact between the adolescent and their noncustodial parent. In extreme cases of instability and abuse in homes, divorce can have a positive effect on families due to less conflict in the home. However, most research suggests a negative effect on adolescence as well as later development. A recent study found that, compared with peers who grow up in stable post-divorce families, children of divorce who experience additional family transitions during late adolescence, make less progress in their math and social studies performance over time. Another recent study put forth a new theory entitled the adolescent epistemological trauma theory, which posited that traumatic life events such as parental divorce during the formative period of late adolescence portend lifelong effects on adult conflict behavior that can be mitigated by effective behavioral assessment and training. A parental divorce during childhood or adolescence continues to have a negative effect when a person is in his or her twenties and early thirties. These negative effects include romantic relationships and conflict style, meaning as adults, they are more likely to use the styles of avoidance and competing in conflict management.


title: Adolescence

text: Despite changing family roles during adolescence, the home environment and parents are still important for the behaviors and choices of adolescents. Adolescents who have a good relationship with their parents are less likely to engage in various risk behaviors, such as smoking, drinking, fighting, and/or unprotected sexual intercourse.


title: Adolescence

text: In addition, parents influence the education of adolescence. A study conducted by Adalbjarnardottir and Blondal (2009) showed that adolescents at the age of 14 who identify their parents as authoritative figures are more likely to complete secondary education by the age of 22—as support and encouragement from an authoritative parent motivates the adolescence to complete schooling to avoid disappointing that parent.


title: Adolescence

text: Peer groups are essential to social and general development. Communication with peers increases significantly during adolescence and peer relationships become more intense than in other stages and more influential to the teen, affecting both the decisions and choices being made. High quality friendships may enhance children's development regardless of the characteristics of those friends. As children begin to bond with various people and create friendships, it later helps them when they are adolescent and sets up the framework for adolescence and peer groups.


title: Adolescence

text: Peer groups are especially important during adolescence, a period of development characterized by a dramatic increase in time spent with peers and a decrease in adult supervision. Adolescents also associate with friends of the opposite sex much more than in childhood and tend to identify with larger groups of peers based on shared characteristics. It is also common for adolescents to use friends as coping devices in different situations. A three-factor structure of dealing with friends including avoidance, mastery, and nonchalance has shown that adolescents use friends as coping devices with social stresses.


title: Adolescence

text: Communication within peer groups allows adolescents to explore their feelings and identity as well as develop and evaluate their social skills. Peer groups offer members the opportunity to develop social skills such as empathy, sharing, and leadership. Adolescents choose peer groups based on characteristics similarly found in themselves. By utilizing these relationships, adolescents become more accepting of who they are becoming. Group norms and values are incorporated into an adolescent's own self-concept. Through developing new communication skills and reflecting upon those of their peers, as well as self-opinions and values, an adolescent can share and express emotions and other concerns without fear of rejection or judgment. Peer groups can have positive influences on an individual, such as on academic motivation and performance. However, while peers may facilitate social development for one another they may also hinder it. Peers can have negative influences, such as encouraging experimentation with drugs, drinking, vandalism, and stealing through peer pressure. Susceptibility to peer pressure increases during early adolescence, peaks around age 14, and declines thereafter. Further evidence of peers hindering social development has been found in Spanish teenagers, where emotional (rather than solution-based) reactions to problems and emotional instability have been linked with physical aggression against peers. Both physical and relational aggression are linked to a vast number of enduring psychological difficulties, especially depression, as is social rejection. Because of this, bullied adolescents often develop problems that lead to further victimization. Bullied adolescents are more likely to both continue to be bullied and to bully others in the future. However, this relationship is less stable in cases of cyberbullying, a relatively new issue among adolescents.


title: Adolescence

text: Adolescents tend to associate with "cliques" on a small scale and "crowds" on a larger scale. During early adolescence, adolescents often associate in cliques, exclusive, single-sex groups of peers with whom they are particularly close. Despite the common notion that cliques are an inherently negative influence, they may help adolescents become socially acclimated and form a stronger sense of identity. Within a clique of highly athletic male-peers, for example, the clique may create a stronger sense of fidelity and competition. Cliques also have become somewhat a "collective parent", i.e. telling the adolescents what to do and not to do. Towards late adolescence, cliques often merge into mixed-sex groups as teenagers begin romantically engaging with one another. These small friend groups then break down further as socialization becomes more couple-oriented. On a larger scale, adolescents often associate with "crowds", groups of individuals who share a common interest or activity. Often, crowd identities may be the basis for stereotyping young people, such as jocks or nerds. In large, multi-ethnic high schools, there are often ethnically determined crowds. Adolescents use online technology to experiment with emerging identities and to broaden their peer groups, such as increasing the amount of friends acquired on Facebook and other social media sites. Some adolescents use these newer channels to enhance relationships with peers however there can be negative uses as well such as cyberbullying, as mentioned previously, and negative impacts on the family.


title: Adolescence

text: Romantic relationships tend to increase in prevalence throughout adolescence. By age 15, 53% of adolescents have had a romantic relationship that lasted at least one month over the course of the previous 18 months. In a 2008 study conducted by YouGov for Channel 4, 20% of 14−17-year-olds surveyed revealed that they had their first sexual experience at 13 or under in the United Kingdom. A 2002 American study found that those aged 15–44 reported that the average age of first sexual intercourse was 17.0 for males and 17.3 for females. The typical duration of relationships increases throughout the teenage years as well. This constant increase in the likelihood of a long-term relationship can be explained by sexual maturation and the development of cognitive skills necessary to maintain a romantic bond (e.g. caregiving, appropriate attachment), although these skills are not strongly developed until late adolescence. Long-term relationships allow adolescents to gain the skills necessary for high-quality relationships later in life and develop feelings of self-worth. Overall, positive romantic relationships among adolescents can result in long-term benefits. High-quality romantic relationships are associated with higher commitment in early adulthood and are positively associated with self-esteem, self-confidence, and social competence. For example, an adolescent with positive self-confidence is likely to consider themselves a more successful partner, whereas negative experiences may lead to low confidence as a romantic partner. Adolescents often date within their demographic in regards to race, ethnicity, popularity, and physical attractiveness. However, there are traits in which certain individuals, particularly adolescent girls, seek diversity. While most adolescents date people approximately their own age, boys typically date partners the same age or younger; girls typically date partners the same age or older.


title: Adolescence

text: Some researchers are now focusing on learning about how adolescents view their own relationships and sexuality; they want to move away from a research point of view that focuses on the problems associated with adolescent sexuality. College Professor Lucia O'Sullivan and her colleagues found that there were no significant gender differences in the relationship events adolescent boys and girls from grades 7–12 reported. Most teens said they had kissed their partners, held hands with them, thought of themselves as being a couple and told people they were in a relationship. This means that private thoughts about the relationship as well as public recognition of the relationship were both important to the adolescents in the sample. Sexual events (such as sexual touching, sexual intercourse) were less common than romantic events (holding hands) and social events (being with one's partner in a group setting). The researchers state that these results are important because the results focus on the more positive aspects of adolescents and their social and romantic interactions rather than focusing on sexual behavior and its consequences.


title: Adolescence

text: Adolescence marks a time of sexual maturation, which manifests in social interactions as well. While adolescents may engage in casual sexual encounters (often referred to as hookups), most sexual experience during this period of development takes place within romantic relationships. Adolescents can use technologies and social media to seek out romantic relationships as they feel it is a safe place to try out dating and identity exploration. From these social media encounters, a further relationship may begin. Kissing, hand holding, and hugging signify satisfaction and commitment. Among young adolescents, "heavy" sexual activity, marked by genital stimulation, is often associated with violence, depression, and poor relationship quality. This effect does not hold true for sexual activity in late adolescence that takes place within a romantic relationship. Some research suggest that there are genetic causes of early sexual activity that are also risk factors for delinquency, suggesting that there is a group who are at risk for both early sexual activity and emotional distress. For older adolescents, though, sexual activity in the context of romantic relationships was actually correlated with lower levels of deviant behavior after controlling for genetic risks, as opposed to sex outside of a relationship (hook-ups).


title: Adolescence

text: Dating violence is fairly prevalent within adolescent relationships. When surveyed, 10–45% of adolescents reported having experienced physical violence in the context of a relationship while a quarter to a third of adolescents reported having experiencing psychological aggression. This reported aggression includes hitting, throwing things, or slaps, although most of this physical aggression does not result in a medical visit. Physical aggression in relationships tends to decline from high school through college and young adulthood. In heterosexual couples, there is no significant difference between the rates of male and female aggressors, unlike in adult relationships.


title: Adolescence

text: Adolescent girls with male partners who are older than them are at higher risk for adverse sexual health outcomes than their peers. Research suggests that the larger the partner age difference, the less relationship power the girls experience. Behavioral interventions such as developing relationship skills in identifying, preventing, and coping with controlling behaviors may be beneficial. For condom use promotion, it is important to identify decision-making patterns within relationships and increase the power of the adolescent female in the relationship. Female adolescents from minority populations are at even higher risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). Recent research findings suggest that a substantial portion of young urban females are at high risk for being victims of multiple forms of IPV. Practitioners diagnosing depression among urban minority teens should assess for both physical and non-physical forms of IPV, and early detection can help to identify youths in need of intervention and care. Similarly to adult victims, adolescent victims do not readily disclose abuse, and may seek out medical care for problems not directly related to incidences of IPV. Therefore, screening should be a routine part of medical treatment for adolescents regardless of chief complaint. Many adults discount instances of IPV in adolescents or believe they do not occur because relationships at young ages are viewed as “puppy love,” however, it is crucial that adults take IPV in adolescents seriously even though often policy falls behind.


title: Adolescence

text: In contemporary society, adolescents also face some risks as their sexuality begins to transform. While some of these, such as emotional distress (fear of abuse or exploitation) and sexually transmitted infections/diseases (STIs/STDs), including HIV/AIDS, are not necessarily inherent to adolescence, others such as teenage pregnancy (through non-use or failure of contraceptives) are seen as social problems in most western societies. One in four sexually active teenagers will contract an STI. Adolescents in the United States often chose "anything but intercourse" for sexual activity because they mistakenly believe it reduces the risk of STIs. Across the country, clinicians report rising diagnoses of herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV), which can cause genital warts, and is now thought to affect 15 percent of the teen population. Girls 15 to 19 have higher rates of gonorrhea than any other age group. One-quarter of all new HIV cases occur in those under the age of 21. Multrine also states in her article that according to a March survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, eighty-one percent of parents want schools to discuss the use of condoms and contraception with their children. They also believe students should be able to be tested for STIs. Furthermore, teachers want to address such topics with their students. But, although 9 in 10 sex education instructors across the country believe that students should be taught about contraceptives in school, over one quarter report receiving explicit instructions from school boards and administrators not to do so. According to anthropologist Margaret Mead, 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.


title: Adolescence

text: There are certain characteristics of adolescent development that are more rooted in culture than in human biology or cognitive structures. Culture has been defined as the "symbolic and behavioral inheritance received from the past that provides a community framework for what is valued". Culture is learned and socially shared, and it affects all aspects of an individual's life. Social responsibilities, sexual expression, and belief system development, for instance, are all things that are likely to vary by culture. Furthermore, distinguishing characteristics of youth, including dress, music and other uses of media, employment, art, food and beverage choices, recreation, and language, all constitute a youth culture. For these reasons, culture is a prevalent and powerful presence in the lives of adolescents, and therefore we cannot fully understand today's adolescents without studying and understanding their culture. However, "culture" should not be seen as synonymous with nation or ethnicity. Many cultures are present within any given country and racial or socioeconomic group. Furthermore, to avoid ethnocentrism, researchers must be careful not to define the culture's role in adolescence in terms of their own cultural beliefs.


title: Adolescence

text: In Britain, teenagers first came to public attention during the Second World War, when there were fears of juvenile delinquency. By the 1950s, the media presented teenagers in terms of generational rebellion. The exaggerated moral panic among politicians and the older generation was typically belied by the growth in intergenerational cooperation between parents and children. Many working-class parents, enjoying newfound economic security, eagerly took the opportunity to encourage their teens to enjoy more adventurous lives. Schools were falsely portrayed as dangerous blackboard jungles under the control of rowdy kids. The media distortions of the teens as too affluent, and as promiscuous, delinquent, counter-cultural rebels do not reflect the actual experiences of ordinary young adults, particularly young women.


title: Adolescence

text: The degree to which adolescents are perceived as autonomous beings varies widely by culture, as do the behaviors that represent this emerging autonomy. Psychologists have identified three main types of autonomy: emotional independence, behavioral autonomy, and cognitive autonomy. Emotional autonomy is defined in terms of an adolescent's relationships with others, and often includes the development of more mature emotional connections with adults and peers. Behavioral autonomy encompasses an adolescent's developing ability to regulate his or her own behavior, to act on personal decisions, and to self-govern. Cultural differences are especially visible in this category because it concerns issues of dating, social time with peers, and time-management decisions. Cognitive autonomy describes the capacity for an adolescent to partake in processes of independent reasoning and decision-making without excessive reliance on social validation. Converging influences from adolescent cognitive development, expanding social relationships, an increasingly adultlike appearance, and the acceptance of more rights and responsibilities enhance feelings of autonomy for adolescents. Proper development of autonomy has been tied to good mental health, high self-esteem, self-motivated tendencies, positive self-concepts, and self-initiating and regulating behaviors. Furthermore, it has been found that adolescents' mental health is best when their feelings about autonomy match closely with those of their parents.


title: Adolescence

text: A questionnaire called the teen timetable has been used to measure the age at which individuals believe adolescents should be able to engage in behaviors associated with autonomy. This questionnaire has been used to gauge differences in cultural perceptions of adolescent autonomy, finding, for instance, that White parents and adolescents tend to expect autonomy earlier than those of Asian descent. It is, therefore, clear that cultural differences exist in perceptions of adolescent autonomy, and such differences have implications for the lifestyles and development of adolescents. In sub-Saharan African youth, the notions of individuality and freedom may not be useful in understanding adolescent development. Rather, African notions of childhood and adolescent development are relational and interdependent.


title: Adolescence

text: The lifestyle of an adolescent in a given culture is profoundly shaped by the roles and responsibilities he or she is expected to assume. The extent to which an adolescent is expected to share family responsibilities is one large determining factor in normative adolescent behavior. For instance, adolescents in certain cultures are expected to contribute significantly to household chores and responsibilities. Household chores are frequently divided into self-care tasks and family-care tasks. However, specific household responsibilities for adolescents may vary by culture, family type, and adolescent age. Some research has shown that adolescent participation in family work and routines has a positive influence on the development of an adolescent's feelings of self-worth, care, and concern for others.


title: Adolescence

text: In addition to the sharing of household chores, certain cultures expect adolescents to share in their family's financial responsibilities. According to family economic and financial education specialists, adolescents develop sound money management skills through the practices of saving and spending money, as well as through planning ahead for future economic goals. Differences between families in the distribution of financial responsibilities or provision of allowance may reflect various social background circumstances and intrafamilial processes, which are further influenced by cultural norms and values, as well as by the business sector and market economy of a given society. For instance, in many developing countries it is common for children to attend fewer years of formal schooling so that, when they reach adolescence, they can begin working.


title: Adolescence

text: While adolescence is a time frequently marked by participation in the workforce, the number of adolescents in the workforce is much lower now than in years past as a result of increased accessibility and perceived importance of formal higher education. For example, half of all 16-year-olds in China were employed in 1980, whereas less than one fourth of this same cohort were employed in 1990.


title: Adolescence

text: Furthermore, the amount of time adolescents spend on work and leisure activities varies greatly by culture as a result of cultural norms and expectations, as well as various socioeconomic factors. American teenagers spend less time in school or working and more time on leisure activities—which include playing sports, socializing, and caring for their appearance—than do adolescents in many other countries. These differences may be influenced by cultural values of education and the amount of responsibility adolescents are expected to assume in their family or community.


title: Adolescence

text: Time management, financial roles, and social responsibilities of adolescents are therefore closely connected with the education sector and processes of career development for adolescents, as well as to cultural norms and social expectations. In many ways, adolescents' experiences with their assumed social roles and responsibilities determine the length and quality of their initial pathway into adult roles.


title: Adolescence

text: Adolescence is frequently characterized by a transformation of an adolescent's understanding of the world, the rational direction towards a life course, and the active seeking of new ideas rather than the unquestioning acceptance of adult authority. An adolescent begins to develop a unique belief system through his or her interaction with social, familial, and cultural environments. While organized religion is not necessarily a part of every adolescent's life experience, youth are still held responsible for forming a set of beliefs about themselves, the world around them, and whatever higher powers they may or may not believe in. This process is often accompanied or aided by cultural traditions that intend to provide a meaningful transition to adulthood through a ceremony, ritual, confirmation, or rite of passage.


title: Adolescence

text: Many cultures define the transition into adultlike sexuality by specific biological or social milestones in an adolescent's life. For example, menarche (the first menstrual period of a female), or semenarche (the first ejaculation of a male) are frequent sexual defining points for many cultures. In addition to biological factors, an adolescent's sexual socialization is highly dependent upon whether their culture takes a restrictive or permissive attitude toward teen or premarital sexual activity. In the United States specifically, adolescents are said to have "raging hormones" that drive their sexual desires. These sexual desires are then dramatized regarding teen sex and seen as "a site of danger and risk; that such danger and risk is a source of profound worry among adults". There is little to no normalization regarding teenagers having sex in the U.S., which causes conflict in how adolescents are taught about sex education. There is a constant debate about whether abstinence-only sex education or comprehensive sex education should be taught in schools and this stems back to whether or not the country it is being taught in is permissive or restrictive. Restrictive cultures overtly discourage sexual activity in unmarried adolescents or until an adolescent undergoes a formal rite of passage. These cultures may attempt to restrict sexual activity by separating males and females throughout their development, or through public shaming and physical punishment when sexual activity does occur. In less restrictive cultures, there is more tolerance for displays of adolescent sexuality, or of the interaction between males and females in public and private spaces. Less restrictive cultures may tolerate some aspects of adolescent sexuality, while objecting to other aspects. For instance, some cultures find teenage sexual activity acceptable but teenage pregnancy highly undesirable. Other cultures do not object to teenage sexual activity or teenage pregnancy, as long as they occur after marriage. In permissive societies, overt sexual behavior among unmarried teens is perceived as acceptable, and is sometimes even encouraged. Regardless of whether a culture is restrictive or permissive, there are likely to be discrepancies in how females versus males are expected to express their sexuality. Cultures vary in how overt this double standard is—in some it is legally inscribed, while in others it is communicated through social convention. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth face much discrimination through bullying from those unlike them and may find telling others that they are gay to be a traumatic experience. The range of sexual attitudes that a culture embraces could thus be seen to affect the beliefs, lifestyles, and societal perceptions of its adolescents.


title: Adolescence

text: Adolescence is a period frequently marked by increased rights and privileges for individuals. While cultural variation exists for legal rights and their corresponding ages, considerable consistency is found across cultures. Furthermore, since the advent of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989 (children here defined as under 18), almost every country in the world (except the U.S. and South Sudan) has legally committed to advancing an anti-discriminatory stance towards young people of all ages. This includes protecting children against unchecked child labor, enrollment in the military, prostitution, and pornography.


title: Adolescence

text: In many societies, those who reach a certain age (often 18, though this varies) are considered to have reached the age of majority and are legally regarded as adults who are responsible for their actions. People below this age are considered minors or children. A person below the age of majority may gain adult rights through legal emancipation.


title: Adolescence

text: The legal working age in Western countries is usually 14 to 16, depending on the number of hours and type of employment under consideration. Many countries also specify a minimum school leaving age, at which a person is legally allowed to leave compulsory education. This age varies greatly cross-culturally, spanning from 10 to 18, which further reflects the diverse ways formal education is viewed in cultures around the world.


title: Adolescence

text: In most democratic countries, a citizen is eligible to vote at age 18. In a minority of countries, the voting age is as low as 16 (for example, Brazil), and at one time was as high as 25 in Uzbekistan.


title: Adolescence

text: The age of consent to sexual activity varies widely between jurisdictions, ranging from 12 to 20 years, as does the age at which people are allowed to marry. Specific legal ages for adolescents that also vary by culture are enlisting in the military, gambling, and the purchase of alcohol, cigarettes or items with parental advisory labels.


title: Adolescence

text: The legal coming of age often does not correspond with the sudden realization of autonomy; many adolescents who have legally reached adult age are still dependent on their guardians or peers for emotional and financial support. Nonetheless, new legal privileges converge with shifting social expectations to usher in a phase of heightened independence or social responsibility for most legal adolescents.


title: Adolescence

text: Following a steady decline beginning in the late 1990s up through the mid-2000s and a moderate increase in the early 2010s, illicit drug use among adolescents has roughly plateaued in the U.S. Aside from alcohol, marijuana is the most commonly indulged drug habit during adolescent years. Data collected by the National Institute on Drug Abuse shows that between the years of 2015 and 2018, past year marijuana usage among 8th graders declined from 11.8% to 10.5%; among 10th grade students, usage rose from 25.4% to 27.50%; and among 12th graders, usage rose slightly from 34.9% to 35.9%. Additionally, while the early 2010s saw a surge in the popularity of MDMA, usage has stabilized with 2.2% of 12th graders using MDMA in the past year in the U.S. The heightened usage of ecstasy most likely ties in at least to some degree with the rising popularity of rave culture.


title: Adolescence

text: One significant contribution to the increase in teenage substance abuse is an increase in the availability of prescription medication. With an increase in the diagnosis of behavioral and attentional disorders for students, taking pharmaceutical drugs such as Vicodin and Adderall for pleasure has become a prevalent activity among adolescents: 9.9% of high school seniors report having abused prescription drugs within the past year.


title: Adolescence

text: In the U.S., teenage alcohol use rose in the late 2000s and is currently stable at a moderate level. Out of a polled body of U.S. students age 12–18, 8.2% of 8th graders reported having been on at least one occasion having consumed alcohol within the previous month; for 10th graders, the number was 18.6%, and for 12th graders, 30.2%. More drastically, cigarette smoking has become a far less prevalent activity among American middle- and high-school students; in fact, a greater number of teens now smoke marijuana than smoke cigarettes, with one recent study showing a respective 23.8% versus 43.6% of surveyed high school seniors. Recent studies have shown that male late adolescents are far more likely to smoke cigarettes rather than females. The study indicated that there was a discernible gender difference in the prevalence of smoking among the students. The finding of the study shows that more males than females began smoking when they were in primary and high schools whereas most females started smoking after high school. This may be attributed to recent changing social and political views towards marijuana; issues such as medicinal use and legalization have tended towards painting the drug in a more positive light than historically, while cigarettes continue to be vilified due to associated health risks.


title: Adolescence

text: Different drug habits often relate to one another in a highly significant manner. It has been demonstrated that adolescents who drink at least to some degree may be as much as sixteen times more likely than non-drinkers to experiment with illicit drugs.


title: Adolescence

text: Peer acceptance and social norms gain a significantly greater hand in directing behavior at the onset of adolescence; as such, the alcohol and illegal drug habits of teens tend to be shaped largely by the substance use of friends and other classmates. In fact, studies suggest that more significantly than actual drug norms, an individual's perception of the illicit drug use by friends and peers is highly associated with his or her own habits in substance use during both middle and high school, a relationship that increases in strength over time. Whereas social influences on alcohol use and marijuana use tend to work directly in the short term, peer and friend norms on smoking cigarettes in middle school have a profound effect on one's own likelihood to smoke cigarettes well into high school. Perhaps the strong correlation between peer influence in middle school and cigarette smoking in high school may be explained by the addictive nature of cigarettes, which could lead many students to continue their smoking habits from middle school into late adolescence.


title: Adolescence

text: Until mid-to-late adolescence, boys and girls show relatively little difference in drinking motives. Distinctions between the reasons for alcohol consumption of males and females begin to emerge around ages 14–15; overall, boys tend to view drinking in a more social light than girls, who report on average a more frequent use of alcohol as a coping mechanism. The latter effect appears to shift in late adolescence and onset of early adulthood (20–21 years of age); however, despite this trend, age tends to bring a greater desire to drink for pleasure rather than coping in both boys and girls.


title: Adolescence

text: Drinking habits and the motives behind them often reflect certain aspects of an individual's personality; in fact, four dimensions of the Five-Factor Model of personality demonstrate associations with drinking motives (all but 'Openness'). Greater enhancement motives for alcohol consumption tend to reflect high levels of extraversion and sensation-seeking in individuals; such enjoyment motivation often also indicates low conscientiousness, manifesting in lowered inhibition and a greater tendency towards aggression. On the other hand, drinking to cope with negative emotional states correlates strongly with high neuroticism and low agreeableness. Alcohol use as a negative emotion control mechanism often links with many other behavioral and emotional impairments, such as anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem.


title: Adolescence

text: Research has generally shown striking uniformity across different cultures in the motives behind teen alcohol use. Social engagement and personal enjoyment appear to play a fairly universal role in adolescents' decision to drink throughout separate cultural contexts. Surveys conducted in Argentina, Hong Kong, and Canada have each indicated the most common reason for drinking among adolescents to relate to pleasure and recreation; 80% of Argentinian teens reported drinking for enjoyment, while only 7% drank to improve a bad mood. The most prevalent answers among Canadian adolescents were to "get in a party mood," 18%; "because I enjoy it," 16%; and "to get drunk," 10%. In Hong Kong, female participants most frequently reported drinking for social enjoyment, while males most frequently reported drinking to feel the effects of alcohol.


title: Adolescence

text: Much research has been conducted on the psychological ramifications of body image on adolescents. Modern day teenagers are exposed to more media on a daily basis than any generation before them. As such, modern day adolescents are exposed to many representations of ideal, societal beauty. The concept of a person being unhappy with their own image or appearance has been defined as "body dissatisfaction". In teenagers, body dissatisfaction is often associated with body mass, low self-esteem, and atypical eating patterns that can result in health procedures. Scholars continue to debate the effects of media on body dissatisfaction in teens.


title: Adolescence

text: Because exposure to media has increased over the past decade, adolescents' use of computers, cell phones, stereos and televisions to gain access to various mediums of popular culture has also increased. Almost all American households have at least one television, more than three-quarters of all adolescents' homes have access to the Internet, and more than 90% of American adolescents use the Internet at least occasionally. As a result of the amount of time adolescents spend using these devices, their total media exposure is high. In the last decade, the amount of time that adolescents spend on the computer has greatly increased. Online activities with the highest rates of use among adolescents are video games (78% of adolescents), email (73%), instant messaging (68%), social networking sites (65%), news sources (63%), music (59%), and videos (57%).


title: Adolescence

text: In the 2000s, social networking sites proliferated and a high proportion of adolescents used them. As of 2012, 73% of 12–17 year olds reported having at least one social networking profile; two-thirds (68%) of teens texted every day, half (51%) visited social networking sites daily, and 11% sent or received tweets at least once every day. More than a third (34%) of teens visited their main social networking site several times a day. One in four (23%) teens were "heavy" social media users, meaning they used at least two different types of social media each and every day.


title: Adolescence

text: Although research has been inconclusive, some findings have indicated that electronic communication negatively affects adolescents' social development, replaces face-to-face communication, impairs their social skills, and can sometimes lead to unsafe interaction with strangers. A 2015 review reported that "adolescents lack awareness of strategies to cope with cyberbullying, which has been consistently associated with an increased likelihood of depression." Furthermore, in 2020, 32% of adolescent girls that use Instagram reported feeling worse about their body image after using the platform. Studies have shown differences in the ways the internet negatively impacts adolescents' social functioning. Online socializing tends to make girls particularly vulnerable, while socializing in Internet cafés seems only to affect boys' academic achievement. However, other research suggests that Internet communication brings friends closer and is beneficial for socially anxious teens, who find it easier to interact socially online.


title: Adolescence

text: A broad way of defining adolescence is the transition from child-to-adulthood. According to Hogan & Astone (1986), this transition can include markers such as leaving school, starting a full-time job, leaving the home of origin, getting married, and becoming a parent for the first time. However, the time frame of this transition varies drastically by culture. In some countries, such as the United States, adolescence can last nearly a decade, but in others, the transition—often in the form of a ceremony—can last for only a few days.


title: Adolescence

text: Some examples of social and religious transition ceremonies that can be found in the U.S., as well as in other cultures around the world, are Confirmation, Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, Quinceañeras, sweet sixteens, cotillions, and débutante balls. In other countries, initiation ceremonies play an important role, marking the transition into adulthood or the entrance into adolescence. This transition may be accompanied by obvious physical changes, which can vary from a change in clothing to tattoos and scarification. Furthermore, transitions into adulthood may also vary by gender, and specific rituals may be more common for males or for females. This illuminates the extent to which adolescence is, at least in part, a social construction; it takes shape differently depending on the cultural context, and may be enforced more by cultural practices or transitions than by universal chemical or biological physical changes.


title: Adolescence

text: At the decision-making point of their lives, youth are susceptible to drug addiction, sexual abuse, peer pressure, violent crimes and other illegal activities. Developmental Intervention Science (DIS) is a fusion of the literature of both developmental and intervention sciences. This association conducts youth interventions that mutually assist both the needs of the community as well as psychologically stranded youth by focusing on risky and inappropriate behaviors while promoting positive self-development along with self-esteem among adolescents.


title: Adolescence

text: The concept of adolescence has been criticized by experts, such as Robert Epstein, who state that an undeveloped brain is not the main cause of teenagers' turmoils. Some have criticized the concept of adolescence because it is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history created by modern society, and have been highly critical of what they view as the infantilization of young adults in American society. In an article for "Scientific American", Robert Epstein and Jennifer Ong state that "American-style teen turmoil is absent in more than 100 cultures around the world, suggesting that such mayhem is not biologically inevitable. Second, the brain itself changes in response to experiences, raising the question of whether adolescent brain characteristics are the cause of teen tumult or rather the result of lifestyle and experiences." David Moshman has also stated in regards to adolescence that brain research "is crucial for a full picture, but it does not provide an ultimate explanation."


title: Adolescence

text: Other critics of the concept of adolescence do point at individual differences in brain growth rate, citing that some (though not all) early teens still have infantile undeveloped corpus callosums, concluding that "the adult in *every* adolescent" is too generalizing. These people tend to support the notion that a more interconnected brain makes more precise distinctions (citing Pavlov's comparisons of conditioned reflexes in different species) and that there is a non-arbitrary threshold at which distinctions become sufficiently precise to correct assumptions afterward as opposed to being ultimately dependent on exterior assumptions for communication. They argue that this threshold is the one at which an individual is objectively capable of speaking for himself or herself, as opposed to culturally arbitrary measures of "maturity" which often treat this ability as a sign of "immaturity" merely because it leads to questioning of authorities. These people also stress the low probability of the threshold being reached at a birthday, and instead advocate non-chronological emancipation at the threshold of afterward correction of assumptions. They sometimes cite similarities between "adolescent" behavior and KZ syndrome (inmate behavior in adults in prison camps) such as aggression being explainable by oppression and "immature" financial or other risk behavior being explainable by a way out of captivity being more worth to captive people than any incremental improvement in captivity, and argue that this theory successfully predicted remaining "immature" behavior after reaching the age of majority by means of longer-term traumatization. In this context, they refer to the fallibility of official assumptions about what is good or bad for an individual, concluding that paternalistic "rights" may harm the individual. They also argue that since it never took many years to move from one group to another to avoid inbreeding in the paleolithic, evolutionary psychology is unable to account for a long period of "immature" risk behavior.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Footloose is a 1984 American comedy drama film directed by Herbert Ross. It tells the story of Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon), a teenager from Chicago who moves to a small town, where he attempts to overturn the ban on dancing instituted by the efforts of a local minister (John Lithgow).


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: The film received mixed reviews from the critics but became a box office hit, grossing $80 million in North America, becoming the seventh highest-grossing film of 1984. The film is known for its music, with the songs "Footloose" by Kenny Loggins and "Let's Hear It for the Boy" by Deniece Williams being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Chicago native Ren McCormack and his mother Ethel move to the small town of Bomont to live with Ren's aunt and uncle. While attending church, Ren meets Reverend Shaw Moore, his wife Vi, and daughter Ariel. Ariel recklessly endangers her life by rebelling against Shaw's strict religious nature, greatly annoying her friends and boyfriend Chuck Cranston.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: At school, Ren befriends Willard Hewitt, and learns the town council has banned dancing and rock music within the town boundary. He soon begins to fall for Ariel. After he and Chuck insult each other, Ren is challenged to a game of chicken involving tractors, which he wins when his


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: shoelace becomes stuck, preventing him from jumping. Distrusting Ren, Shaw forbids Ariel from seeing him after she shows interest in him.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Wanting to show his friends the joy and freedom of dance, Ren drives Ariel, Willard, and her best friend Rusty to a country bar 100 miles away from Bomont. Once there, Willard is unable to dance and gets into a jealous fight with a man who dances with Rusty. On the drive home, they cross a bridge where Ariel describes how her older brother died in a car accident while driving under the influence of alcohol after a night of dancing. The devastating accident prompted Shaw to persuade the town council to enact strict anti-liquor, anti-drug, and anti-dance laws. Ariel begins to defy Shaw's authority at home. Ren decides to challenge the anti-dancing ordinance so that the high school can hold a senior prom.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Willard is embarrassed he can't dance with Rusty, so Ren gives him lessons after school hours. Chuck confronts Ariel about her feelings towards Ren behind the bleachers. Provoked by his insults, Ariel throws the first punch, which Chuck retaliates to with a backhand slap, knocking her to the ground. Ariel retaliates by getting a pole and smashing Chuck's pickup. He grabs her to prevent further damage, but she continues to fight - it only ends when Chuck incapacitates her with a final punch, telling her that he "was through with her anyway".


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Ren helps Ariel clean herself up before going home, cementing their relationship. Later that night, a brick with the words "Burn in Hell" is thrown through the window of Ren's house, causing his uncle to criticize his outspoken behavior. Ethel reveals that though Ren's actions cost her her job, he should stand up for what he feels is right.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: With Ariel's help, Ren goes before the town council and reads several Bible verses to cite scriptural significance of dancing as a way to rejoice, exercise, and celebrate. Although Shaw is moved, the council votes against Ren's proposal, but Vi, who supports the movement, explains to Shaw that he cannot be everyone's father and that he is hardly being one to Ariel.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Despite further discussion with Ren about his own family losses and Ariel's opening up about her own past, disclosing that she has had sexual relations, Shaw cannot bring himself to change his stance. The next day, Shaw sees members of his congregation burning library books that they claim endanger the town's youth. Realizing the situation has become uncontrollable, Shaw stops the book-burners, rebukes them, and sends them home.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: The following Sunday, Shaw asks his congregation to pray for the high school students putting on the prom, set up at a grain mill just outside the town limits. On prom night, Shaw and Vi listen from outside the mill, dancing for the first time in years. Chuck and his friends arrive and attack Willard; Ren arrives in time to even the odds and knocks out Chuck. Ren, Ariel, Willard, and Rusty rejoin the party and happily dance the night away.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Dean Pitchford, an Academy Award-winning lyricist for the title song for the 1980 film "Fame", came up with the idea for "Footloose" in 1979 and teamed up with Melnick's IndieProd who set the production up at 20th Century Fox in 1981. Pitchford wrote the screenplay (his first) and most of the lyrics however, Fox put it into turnaround. In 1982, Paramount Pictures made a pay-or-play deal for the film. When negotiations with Herbert Ross initially stalled, Ron Howard was approached to direct the film but he turned it down to direct "Splash" instead. Michael Cimino was hired by Paramount to direct the film, his first film since "Heaven's Gate".


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: After a month working on the film, the studio fired Cimino, who was making extravagant demands for the production, including demanding an additional $250,000 for his work, and ended up hiring Ross.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe were both slated to play the lead. The casting directors were impressed with Cruise because of the famous underwear dance sequence in "Risky Business", but he was unavailable for the part because he was filming "All the Right Moves". Lowe auditioned three times and had dancing ability and the "neutral teen" look that the director wanted, but injury prevented him from taking the part. Christopher Atkins claims that he was cast as Ren, but lost the role. Bacon had been offered the main role for the Stephen King film "Christine" at the same time that he was asked to do the screen test for "Footloose". He chose to take the gamble on the screen test. After watching his earlier film "Diner", the director persuaded the producers to go with Bacon.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: The film also stars Lori Singer as Reverend Moore's independent daughter Ariel, a role for which Madonna and Haviland Morris also auditioned. Valerie Bertinelli and Jennifer Jason Leigh were also considered. Dianne Wiest appears as Vi, the Reverend's devoted yet conflicted wife.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: The film features an early film appearance by Sarah Jessica Parker as Ariel's friend Rusty, for which she received a Best Young Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture Musical, Comedy, Adventure or Drama nomination at the Sixth Annual Youth in Film Awards. It was also an early role for Chris Penn as Willard Hewitt, who is taught how to dance by his friend Ren.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: The film was shot at various locations in Utah County, Utah. The high school and tractor scenes were filmed in and around Payson and Payson High School. The church scenes were filmed in American Fork and the steel mill was the Geneva Steel mill in Vineyard. The drive-in scenes were filmed in Provo at what was then the "High Spot" restaurant. The restaurant closed in the late 1980s and there is now an auto parts store located at 200 N 500 W. The final sequence was filmed in Lehi with the Lehi Roller Mills featured in the final sequence.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: For his dance scene in the warehouse, Bacon said he had four stunt doubles: "I had a stunt double, a dance double [Peter Tramm] and two gymnastics doubles." Principal photography took place from May 9, 1983 to January 1984.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: "Footloose" is loosely based on the town of Elmore City, Oklahoma. The town had banned dancing since its founding in 1898 in an attempt to decrease the amount of heavy drinking. One advocate of the dancing ban was the Reverend from the nearby town of Hennepin, F. R. Johnson. He said, "No good has ever come from a dance. If you have a dance somebody will crash it and they'll be looking for only two things—women and booze. When boys and girls hold each other, they get sexually aroused. You can believe what you want, but one thing leads to another." Because of the ban on dancing, the town never held a prom. In February 1980, the junior class of Elmore City's high school made national news when they requested permission to hold a junior prom and it was granted. The request to overturn the ban in order to hold the prom was met with a 2–2 decision from the school board when school board president Raymond Lee broke the tie with the words, "Let 'em dance."


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: In 1981, Lynden, a small town in Washington State, passed an ordinance that banned the practice of dancing at events and locations where alcohol would be served. This incident received national attention. And since this event happened only years before "Footloose" was released, the local residents believe that these two things are not a coincidence.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: The soundtrack was released in cassette, 8-track tape, vinyl, Reel To Reel and CD format. The 1984 open reel release was among the last commercial releases on the format. The soundtrack was also re-released on CD for the 15th anniversary of the film in 1999. The re-release included four new songs: "Bang Your Head (Metal Health)" by Quiet Riot, "Hurts So Good" by John Mellencamp, "Waiting for a Girl Like You" by Foreigner, and the extended 12" remix of "Dancing in the Sheets".


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: The album includes "Footloose" and "I'm Free (Heaven Helps the Man)", both by Kenny Loggins, "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler (co-written and produced by Jim Steinman), "Girl Gets Around" by Sammy Hagar, "Never" by Australian rock band Moving Pictures, "Let's Hear It for the Boy" by Deniece Williams, "Somebody's Eyes" by Karla Bonoff, "Dancing In The Sheets" by Shalamar, and the romantic theme "Almost Paradise" by Mike Reno from Loverboy and Ann Wilson of Heart (co-written by Eric Carmen). The soundtrack went on to sell over 9 million copies in the USA. All songs in the initial release were co-written by Pitchford based on various songwriting styles: for "Holding Out for a Hero", he listened to various songs written by Steinman such as his work with Meat Loaf and then wrote the first two lines ("Where have all the good men gone/And where are all the gods?/Where's the streetwise Hercules/To fight the rising odds?") in this manner to spark Steinman's creativity.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: "Footloose" and "Let's Hear It for the Boy" both topped the "Billboard" Hot 100 and received 1985 Academy Award nominations for Best Music (Original Song). "Footloose" also received a 1985 Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Original Song – Motion Picture.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Releasing the music from the soundtrack advertised the film prior to its release. The filmmakers also felt that songs produced a stronger emotional response from people already familiar with them, which heightened the experience of watching the movie. The music video for "Footloose" had scenes from the movie, rather than footage of Loggins.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: The film received mixed reviews from critics. "Chicago Sun-Times" critic Roger Ebert called it "a seriously confused movie that tries to do three things, and does all of them badly. It wants to tell the story of a conflict in a town, it wants to introduce some flashy teenage characters, and part of the time it wants to be a music video." Dave Denby in "New York" rechristened the film "Schlockdance", writing: ""Footloose" may be a hit, but it's trash - high powered fodder for the teen market... The only person to come out of the film better off is the smooth-cheeked, pug-nosed Bacon, who gives a cocky but likeable Mr. Cool performance."


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Jane Lamacraft reassessed the film for "Sight and Sound" "Forgotten pleasures of the multiplex" feature in 2010, writing "Nearly three decades on, Bacon's vest-clad set-piece dance in a flour mill looks cheesily 1980s, but the rest of Ross's drama wears its age well, real song-and-dance joy for the pre-Glee generation."


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 52% based on 44 reviews, with an average rating of 5.80/10. The consensus reads, "There's not much dancing, but what's there is great. The rest of the time, "Footloose" is a nice hunk of trashy teenage cheese." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 42 out of 100 based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: In 1998, a musical version of "Footloose" premiered. Featuring many of the songs from the film, the show has been presented on London's West End, on Broadway, and elsewhere. The musical is generally faithful to the film version, with some slight differences in the story and characters.


title: Footloose (1984 film)

text: Paramount announced plans to fast-track a remake of "Footloose". The remake was written and directed by Craig Brewer. Filming started in September 2010. It was budgeted at $25 million. It was released October 14, 2011.


title: Joan Clarke

text: Joan Elisabeth Lowther Murray, MBE ("née" Clarke; 24 June 1917 – 4 September 1996) was an English cryptanalyst and numismatist best known for her work as a code-breaker at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. Although she did not personally seek the spotlight, her role in the Enigma project that decrypted Nazi Germany's secret communications earned her awards and citations, such as appointment as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), in 1946.


title: Joan Clarke

text: Joan Elisabeth Lowther Clarke was born on 24 June 1917 in West Norwood, London, England. She was the youngest child of Dorothy (née Fulford) and the Revd William Kemp Lowther Clarke. She had three brothers and one sister.


title: Joan Clarke

text: Clarke attended Dulwich High School for Girls in south London and won a scholarship in 1936, to attend Newnham College, Cambridge, where she gained a double first degree in mathematics and was a Wrangler. She was denied a full degree, as until 1948 Cambridge awarded these only to males.


title: Joan Clarke

text: Clarke's mathematical abilities were first discovered by Gordon Welchman, in an undergraduate Geometry class at Cambridge. Welchman was one of the top four mathematicians to be recruited in 1939 to supervise decoding operations at Bletchley Park. After noticing Clarke's mathematical abilities he recruited her to join him at Bletchley Park and be a part of the 'Government Code and Cypher School' (GCCS).


title: Joan Clarke

text: The GCCS started up in 1939 with a single purpose: that of breaking the German Enigma Code. The Enigma machine was used by the Germans to encrypt their messages; they strongly believed their code was unbreakable. Clarke first arrived at Bletchley Park on 17 June 1940. She was initially placed in an all-women group, referred to as "The Girls", who mainly did routine clerical work. At this time, cryptology was not considered a job for a woman in England. According to Clarke, she knew of only one other female cryptologist working at Bletchley Park.


title: Joan Clarke

text: In June 1940, Clarke was recruited by her former academic supervisor, Gordon Welchman, to the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS). She worked at Bletchley Park in the section known as Hut 8 and quickly became the only female practitioner of Banburismus, a cryptanalytic process developed by Alan Turing which reduced the need for bombes—electromechanical devices as used by British cryptologists Welchman and Turing to decipher German encrypted messages during World War II. Clarke's first work promotion was to Linguist Grade which was designed to earn her extra money despite the fact that she did not speak another language. This promotion was a recognition of her workload and contributions to the team.


title: Joan Clarke

text: In 1941, trawlers were captured as well as their cipher equipment and codes. Before this information was obtained, wolf packs had sunk 282,000 tons of shipping a month from March to June 1941. By November, Clarke and her team were able to reduce this number to 62,000 tons. Hugh Alexander, head of Hut 8 from 1943 to 1944, described her as "one of the best Banburists in the section". Alexander himself was regarded as the best of the Banburists. He and I. J. Good considered the process more an intellectual game than a job. It was "not easy enough to be trivial, but not difficult enough to cause a nervous breakdown".


title: Joan Clarke

text: Clarke became deputy head of Hut 8 in 1944, although she was prevented from progressing because of her sex, and was paid less than the men. Clarke and Turing had been close friends since soon after they met, and continued to be until Turing's death in 1954. They shared many hobbies and had similar personalities. They became very good friends at Bletchley Park. Turing arranged their shifts so they could work together, and they also spent much of their free time together. In early 1941, Turing proposed marriage to Clarke, and subsequently introduced her to his family. Although he privately admitted his homosexuality to her — she was reportedly unfazed by the revelation — Turing decided that he could not go through with the marriage, and broke up with Clarke in mid-1941. Clarke later admitted that she suspected Turing's homosexuality for some time, and it was not much of a surprise when he made the admission to her.


title: Joan Clarke

text: After the war, Clarke worked for Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). There, in 1947, she met Lieutenant-Colonel John Kenneth Ronald Murray, a retired army officer who had served in India. They were married by the Bishop of Chichester on 26 July 1952 in Chichester Cathedral, where her father was a Canon. Shortly after their marriage, John Murray retired from GCHQ due to ill health and the couple moved to Crail in Fife where they lived at Priorscroft, 14 Nethergate. They returned to work at GCHQ in 1962 where Clarke remained until 1977 when she retired aged 60.


title: Joan Clarke

text: Following her husband's death in 1986, Clarke moved to Headington, Oxfordshire, where she continued her research into coinage. During the 1980s, she assisted Sir Harry Hinsley with the appendix to volume 3, part 2 of "British Intelligence in the Second World War". She also assisted historians studying war-time code breaking at Bletchley Park. Due to continuing secrecy among cryptanalysts, the full extent of her accomplishments remains unknown.


title: Joan Clarke

text: After meeting her husband, who had published work on the Scottish coinage of the 16th and 17th centuries, Clarke developed an interest in numismatics history. She established the sequence of the complex series of gold unicorn and heavy groat coins that were in circulation in Scotland during the reigns of James III and James IV. In 1986, her research was recognised by the British Numismatic Society when she was awarded the Sanford Saltus Gold Medal. Issue No. 405 of the "Numismatic Circular" described her paper on the topic as "magisterial".


title: Joan Clarke

text: On 4 September 1996, Clarke died at her home at 7 Larkfields, Headington Quarry. An Oxfordshire Blue Plaque was unveiled on her house on 27 July 2019.


title: Joan Clarke

text: Clarke was portrayed by Keira Knightley in the film "The Imitation Game" (2014), opposite Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing. Turing's surviving niece, Inagh Payne, described Clarke as "rather plain" and thought that Knightley was inappropriately cast as Clarke. Turing biographer Andrew Hodges also criticised the film, stating the script "built up the relationship with Joan much more than it actually was".


title: Joan Clarke

text: In contrast, an article by BBC journalist Joe Miller stated that Clarke's "story has been immortalised". In terms of the film itself, director Morten Tyldum has argued that it shows how Clarke succeeded in her field despite working in a time "when intelligence wasn't really appreciated in women".


title: Joan Clarke

text: Knightley was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 87th Academy Awards for her performance as Clarke.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: MrBeast Burger is an American virtual restaurant founded and developed by internet personality Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast), in partnership with Virtual Dining Concepts, LLC. There are virtual locations in North America and Europe, with plans to expand to more countries and increase the number of locations exponentially.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: The chains feature a menu consisting of various burgers, french fries, desserts, and canned beverages. Customers order food from a delivery app, which in turn is prepared at the brick-and-mortar locations of contracted restaurants.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: Although it is unclear when Donaldson began working on MrBeast Burger, he said on his Twitter account that he had been planning on the release "for forever". Will Hyde, a manager for Donaldson's YouTube channel, said that the project had been in the works for several months, while Reed Duchscher, another manager, stated that it had been planned for over a year. The official Twitter account for MrBeast Burger was created on August 12, 2020, and locations began appearing to users on delivery apps days before the official release.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: The first MrBeast Burger location officially opened on November 10, 2020, in Wilson, North Carolina. This location, which was a temporarily-redecorated Burger Boy restaurant, was the only physical location of the store. As part of a YouTube video, Donaldson advertised free food and gave away money, technology, and even a new car to patrons who lined up in the building's drive-through. The event attracted thousands of customers, with the line reaching as far as 20 miles at times.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: Although police worked to control traffic, the line eventually became too long to handle and, at the request of the police department, the line was closed. Donaldson uploaded a video of this event to his YouTube channel on December 19, 2020, where he officially announced the chain's opening with pop-up and contracted 300 locations across the United States. Donaldson also announced that a portion of each order would be donated to charities helping to ensure food security worldwide.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: MrBeast Burger rapidly rose to popularity after it was announced. Shortly after the video was uploaded, it reached the #1 trending spot on YouTube, and the corresponding MrBeast Burger apps rose to the top spot on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. The apps were downloaded at such a rate that servers became overwhelmed, causing temporary service outages for some users. The issue was fixed shortly thereafter. Due to its surge in popularity, almost all of the pop-up and contracted 300 locations reported running out of food on the first night.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: On April 26, 2021, MrBeast Burger announced a partnership with YouTuber Dream involving the introduction of a new limited-time Dream Burger featuring two smashed beef patties, American cheese, lettuce, mayo, bacon, two pickles, and smashed avocado.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: On March 18, 2022, Donaldson uploaded a video on his MrBeast 2 channel, titled "I Made 100 People Try This!". It featured the release of the newest item on the MrBeast Burger menu, the Shrek Quesadilla. Universal Studios had allowed him to license the Shrek IP. The quesadilla consists of two beef patties, cheese, pickles, and onions.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: Since its initial opening, plans for the expansion of MrBeast Burger locations have been announced. Following complaints from fans who did not live in areas served by delivery, Donaldson acknowledged the issue and stated that efforts were underway to double and triple the amount of locations.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: The first locations in Canada were opened in early February, with locations in Toronto, Edmonton, Calgary, with additional locations opening shortly after in Vancouver, Halifax and in Winnipeg. The first locations in the United Kingdom (UK) opened in early May, with five locations.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: On August 30, 2022, Donaldson announced that he would bring a MrBeast Burger shop to the American Dream Mall in East Rutherford, New Jersey, near New York City, to be the location of his first U.S. restaurant. The restaurant then proceeded to open on September 4, 2022.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: Upon opening, MrBeast Burger received mixed reviews. Many customers shared their opinions on Twitter, with some praising the chain while others complained of poor service, long wait times, and an unappealing presentation. Additionally, accusations surfaced that chains were serving raw food. YouTubers Josh Carrott and Ollie Kendal tasted the takeaway menu on their channel "Jolly"; one hamburger was shown served on a moldy bun.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: Although many customers tried to contact Donaldson to express their complaints directly, others came to Donaldson's defense and redirected the blame to the restaurants preparing the orders. Because the chain is operated as a ghost kitchen, the orders are cooked by staff of the contracted restaurant, hence the quality of an order can be dependent on the location it was ordered from.


title: MrBeast Burger

text: Donaldson addressed the complaints on Twitter, stating, "I’ll be the first to admit we are not perfect!...[S]ome people had problems and I will gladly refund them and do what I have to to make it right!"


title: MrBeast Burger

text: MrBeast Burger became a second source of revenue for struggling restaurants during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chain featured a menu that easily suits many restaurant kitchens without the need for new equipment or training. One location outside Dallas reported earning over $7,000 on their first day open. Most of the restaurants which MrBeast Burger operates from are Buca di Beppos, Bertucci's, and Bravo! Italian Kitchens, but other restaurants can also apply to become a MrBeast Burger location.