The Adolescent Journey: Identity, Culture, and Development

The Transformative Stage of Adolescence

Adolescence is a crucial stage between childhood and adulthood. It is a period of significant biological transformation that enables individuals to reach maturity and the capacity for reproduction.

Core Objectives of Adolescence

During this period, individuals work towards several key objectives:

• Developing their cognitive and emotional capacities.
• Building their own personal identity.
• Acquiring new social skills, developing an autonomous morality, forming new relationships, and taking on student and labor roles.

The Search for Identity

Self-esteem is the ability of each person to establish their identity. An identity crisis can be caused by several factors:

• The introjection of masculinity or femininity, contrasted with bisexual confusion.
• The need to address various social roles.
• The search for an ideological commitment versus a confusion of values.
• An ambiguous status in the social group, where one is sometimes expected to have a child's obedience and at other times, the responsibility of an adult.

Characteristics of Youth Culture

If we understand culture as the values that establish a group's identity, then youth culture has the following features:

• New Forms of Communication: Extensive use of the internet and other technological tools.
• Individualization: Rejecting definitions imposed by others, which involves a period of experimentation and exploring one's own body.
• Valuation of the Body: This includes a cult of sports, risk, and adventure for boys, while for girls, it often expresses itself through a focus on slimness and body image.
• Media Influence: The media, TV, and the internet heavily influence young people.
• Focus on the Present: A tendency to enjoy the moment and show little interest in past history.
• Playful Sensitivity: A cult of sensibility that can border on narcissism.
• Consumerism: An idolatry of youth-centric values and products.
• Nomadism: A sense of avoidance as a necessity, where life is not seen as a single, linear path.

Personal Development in Adolescence

Cognitive Development

Key functional characteristics of cognitive development include:

• Opening up to the world of the possible.
• The capacity for logical thinking.
• The ability to use hypothetical-deductive reasoning.
• The presence of egocentric thinking.

Moral Development: Kohlberg's Stages

Lawrence Kohlberg identified six stages of moral development, grouped into three levels:

Level 1: Pre-conventional Morality (Ages 4-10)

At this level, the child is receptive to cultural norms of right and wrong.

• Stage 1: Orientation toward punishment and obedience.
• Stage 2: The right action is defined as that which satisfies one's own needs.

Level 2: Conventional Morality (Ages 10-13)

This level is characterized by respect for social expectations and order.

• Stage 3: The goal is compliance with the majority and gaining approval.
• Stage 4: Orientation toward law and order.

Level 3: Post-conventional Morality (From Age 13)

Individuals at this level act based on universal ethical principles.

• Stage 5: An understanding of social consensus and individual rights.
• Stage 6: Actions are guided by self-chosen, universal ethical principles.

Beliefs and Irrational Ideas

Beliefs are frameworks that help us manage our experiences. However, a key task of adolescence is to acquire a rational and open mind. Irrational ideas often have these features:

• They produce intense and lasting negative emotions.
• They exaggerate the negative consequences of an event.
• They reflect unrealistic obligations and demands on oneself and others.
• They are absolutist, often accompanied by words such as "all" or "nothing."