Advantages And Limitations Of Adolescent Identity Development

The previous article discussed how positive peer relationships resulted in a more facilitated identity development while this article focuses on how communication technologies can positively and negatively affect the quality of adolescents’ peer relations and their identity development. In the introduction of this article, the authors describe the rising popularity of technology and social networking sites to interact with other people. According to the article, an important task in adolescence is to determine an identity. During this phase the adolescent explores different roles, goals, norms, and values that will most likely stick with them throughout their lives. James Marcia continued this idea by defining identity as a process where identity exploration and identity commitment take place. Identity exploration is where adolescents take on several roles and identities in order to try to decide which one best fits them. Identity commitment is where an adolescent has chosen an identity and adopts a set of values and goals. When an individual does not go through these two processes or is stuck on one, they often experience depression or anxiety. (Cyr, B et al 80)

The life transitions are the major changes that occur throughout individual’s lifespan. Adolescence is often classified as one of the most challenging and significant stage during life transition. In this phrase, the individuals not only developing physical and sexual maturation but also experiencing the development of identity and transitions into social and economic independence (WHO, 2014). This essay will discuss the different concept of self-identity for adolescents, the important predictable and unpredictable elements during the transition, as well as the nurses’ role in relation to adolescence care.

One of the theorists to investigate the development of identity would be Erik Erikson. According to Erikson (1968), throughout an individual’s life-span, they experience conflicts. These conflicts arise at certain points in life and need to be successfully resolved for the progression in to the next of Erikson’s eight stages (Sigelman & Rider, 2015). The specific stage relevant to the development of identity formation in adolescence would be the ‘identity versus role confusion’ stage. Identity development involves exploring options and making commitments to obtain a relatively stable self-perception (DeHaan & MacDermid, 1996). In contrast, role confusion occurs when individuals are not able to commit specific life choices (DeHaan & MacDermid,

Erik Erikson named the stage of adolescents “identity versus role confusion” (Sigelman, C. & Rider, E. pg. 343). This is a pivotal time in an individual’s life where many future endeavors; personal, academic, and professional, depend on the outcome of this stage. During this time, adolescents are trying to refine the many facets of their personality such as, political, sexual, religiousness, just to name a few. This is an arduous

Identity has been defined in many ways. It is the concept used to describe an individual's sense of who he or she is (Dashefsky and Shapiro, 1976). Changes in identity occur throughout the life cycle, however, the changes in identity are usually most notable during adolescence. Integrating a positive sense of ethnic identity into one's overall personal identity is an important task of late adolescence (Steinberg, 1996).

Culture, ethnicity, family, sexuality, and society are all factors that can influence a person’s identity. A combination of all these elements usually result in the successful discovery of self-identity. Preadolescents and adolescents often find themselves in a constant battle attempting to find who they are or who they want to be. Adolescents are faced with questions like, What do you want to be when you grow up? What colleges are you looking into? What are your plans after high school?. In a normal process of growth, teens experiment with new activities in order to find their identity, but this is not the case for every teen. Some adolescents do not go through the normal process of experimentation for various reasons.

There was no predominance in roles, either men or woman can choose to be whatever they interpret to be. In addition to these roles, sometimes Native American’s have a calling predestined to them. Unlike European culture, Indians recognize gender with their own system. They use a term called two-spirited, that is used to define what seems to be LGBT roles for Native American. Two-spirited indicated a person whose body simultaneously houses a spirit both masculine and feminine, they do not want to set themselves apart from their native communities and assume a role to benefit their community.

“Identity Development “ Identity is most simply defined as a person's own sense of self; their personal sense of who they are. Identity development is intrinsically linked with adolescence because, according to John Santrock author of the book entitled Adolescence 15th edition, "...for the first time, physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional development advance to the point at which the individual can sort through and synthesize childhood identities and identifications to construct a viable path toward adult maturity.” We often see the results of this sorting process in behaviors of adolescents such as adopting and shedding different personas, including speech patterns, clothing styles and peer groups. Although these transitions

Western society has commonly viewed gender in a binary way: male and female. However, the emergence of transgender people in the media has challenged this core idea, publicizing the fact that gender is merely a social construct. Cultures all around the world recognize the existence of a third, fourth, or even fifth gender. For example, some Native American tribes recognized people of a third gender, believing they had the spirit of both a man and a woman. These “two-spirit people” were believed to more easily navigate between the feminine and masculine world. When Europeans discovered the existence of the Native Americans, they called the two spirit people “berdaches,” a word that means male prostitute, and

Gender is a complex socially constructed idea. Often people interchangeably use gender to refer to someone’s sex. This is not the case. Sex is the biological characteristics that makes someone a male, female or intersex. Gender however is made up of expression, identity, and sexual orientation. Gender identity is how one views themselves such as a woman, man or transgender. Gender identity does not correspond to the sex of that person. Gender expression is how one expresses their gender identity. This could be through a masculine , feminine or androgynous expression. In Western societies, although there has been a push for change in our gender system, the gender system as been a binary system. This binary system only believes that there are

Sex and gender are often used interchangeably in American culture, yet they have distinctly different meanings. Sex is based on a person’s biological traits, such as chromosomes and genitals, while gender is used to outline what cultural roles a person will perform. American society uses a binary system of male or female for sex and gender. Both sex and gender are integral in shaping a person’s identity. The gender and sex binary system can be detrimental to individuals who do not conform to it.

Levy (2009) discussed another important influence on the path toward developing a sense of identity, sexual identity. Levy (2009) points out that most stage models focus on what is considered typical development. Robbins et al. (2012) report that an unsuccessful identify development could result in confusion and a sense of inferiority. It could be easily assumed that individuals who do not identify as heterosexual would struggle to successfully resolve their identity. Adolescence is well known to be a time when young adults start to sexually explore and establish their path in life. The political climate the last year and a half speak to the struggles that individual face when they do not identify as heteronormative. Stifling one’s sense of identity to meet the expectations of society could play a major role in developing a sense of identity.

High school is the most important time for teenagers and it is the time where they grow and learn to think differently about their self. If we could recall back to any films that has been made from the past years for example, Cyberbully, Mean girls, Cassi and vise versa, we could see that this these films focus on teenagers concerning about identity and their self; whether popularity that boost their confidence, and bullying. However, this paper will be about the observation conducted at McDonald’s; the first part of the essay will focus on the environment, secondly, the adolescent’s physical characteristic, then social skills, language skills, and behavior. The essay will continue on discussion about some possible programs that should be created to help middle adolescents or teenagers with identity issues; because identity affects all categories of development.

All throughout our lives, we wrestle with the question of who am I and what do I want in life? However, it is usually during the adolescent years that this issue really comes to a head and we begin a more earnest search into finding ourselves and deciding the direction we want to take with our lives. One of the theorists who studied this idea of identity formation was James Marcia. Marcia proposed that there were four different stages or statuses in the development of identity which he labeled Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Identity Moratorium, and Identity Achievement. In this essay, we will briefly summarize his four different stages and then apply his theory to my own identity development during the adolescent years.

Adolescence is the fifth stage in Erikson's psychosocial development theory. It is posited to last from ages 12 to 18, and the basic conflict inherent in the adolescent stage, which the person must resolve, is between identity and role confusion. This conflict between identity and role confusion especially plays itself out in peer relationships, but the teenager also navigates through identity and role confusion with relationships in the family unit. Identity and role confusion issues can arise with sexuality, as well as worldviews.