Adolescent Social Development
Younger children will often use the word “friend” to refer to any other child whom they happen to know. However, as children mature and become adolescents they begin to differentiate friends from acquaintances, indicating a more mature understanding of the qualitatively different ways to know another person. Likewise, youth develop the capacity to form closer, more intimate relationships with others. They also begin to form romantic attachments; and, as the desire for a romantic relationship increases, youth may begin to question their sexual orientation and gender identity.
Youth must also learn to balance multiple relationships that compete for their time, energy, and attention. Instead of just a single teacher and coach as in grade school, there are now several teachers and several coaches each with different requirements and priorities. Higher education and gainful employment also require increasingly sophisticated social skills such as the ability to form cooperative relationships with classmates in order to complete group projects or assignments; learning to interact with their boss in an appropriately deferential and respectful manner; or working alongside a diverse set of co-workers in a team-like atmosphere.
New communication technologies enable youth to create and to maintain social bonds in completely different ways: e.g., email, chat rooms, mobile phones with “texting,” online social networks such as Facebook® and Twitter™, video communication such as Skype®, and online gaming. These technologies have dramatically expanded the size and complexity of social networks by: 1) changing the way youth relate to one another, 2) increasing the amount of time spent staying connected with one another and, 3) redefining what it mean to be a “friend.” In fact, it is quite possible to have a “virtual” friendship without ever having direct face-to-face personal contact. Parents are often amazed and confused by these vastly different means of socializing and connecting with others.
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