The adolescent’s search for identity may seem self-absorbed, because each young person works to establish his or her unique self. But that does not occur in isolation.

As at every age, adolescents are social beings, dependent on other people to validate whatever identity they seek. Adults as well as peers have an impact: Relationships at home, in school, or with peers correlate with relationships in the other two areas. Likewise, conflict in one setting increases conflict and affects mood in the other settings (Timmons & Margolin, 2015; Flook & Fuligni, 2008; Chung et al. 2011).

Adolescence is often characterized as a time when children distance themselves from their elders. That is only half true. Adult influence is less obvious but no less important.

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PARENTS Parent–adolescent relationships are pivotal, not always peaceful (Laursen & Collins, 2009). Disputes are common because the drive for independence, arising from biological as well as psychological impulses and social expectations, clashes with the parents’ desire for control.

Conflict peaks in early adolescence, especially with mothers. Typical are repeated, petty arguments (more nagging than fighting) about routine, day-to-day concerns such as cleanliness, clothes, chores, and schedules. Bickering and squabbling is considered normal, even necessary, primarily because adolescents are driven to seek autonomy and parents are programmed to guide and protect (Amsel & Smetana, 2011).

Each generation tends to misjudge the other, which may add to the conflict. Parents think their offspring resent them more than they actually do, and adolescents imagine their parents want to dominate them more than they actually do (Sillars et al., 2010).

Unspoken concerns need to be aired so that both generations better understand each other. Imagine a parent seeing filthy socks on the living room floor. The parent might interpret that as deliberate disrespect and react angrily to the attack, yelling “Put those socks in the hamper right now!” But perhaps the adolescent was merely egocentric and distracted, oblivious to the parent’s desire for a neat house. If so, then the parent could merely sigh and put the socks in the child’s room.

Some bickering may indicate a healthy family, since close relationships almost always include conflict. A study of mothers and their adolescents suggested that “although too much anger may be harmful . . . some expression of anger may be adaptive” (Hofer et al., 2013, p. 276).

The parent–child relationship usually improves with time. Over the years, teenagers learn to modify their outbursts and parents increasingly grant autonomy. Parents learn to ignore most adolescent behaviors that bother them (the purple hair, the loud music) and focus on the serious ones (cigarette smoking, anorexia). By age 18, many teenagers appreciate their parents (and put their socks in the hamper) and many parents adjust to their child’s independence (suggesting that every family member put his or her clothes away) (Masche, 2010).

You already know that authoritative parenting is best for children and that uninvolved parenting is worst. This continues in adolescence. Neglect is always destructive and authoritarian parenting can boomerang, resulting in teenagers who lie or leave. The effect is reciprocal: Teenagers of authoritarian parents become secretive, which makes the parents even more authoritarian (Kerr et al., 2012).

CLOSENESS WITHIN THE FAMILY More important than conflict may be family closeness, which has four aspects:

No social scientist doubts that the first two, communication and support, are helpful, perhaps essential, for healthy development. Patterns set in place during childhood continue, ideally buffering the turbulence of adolescence (Amsel & Smetana, 2011; Laursen & Collins, 2009).

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Regarding the next two, connectedness and control, consequences vary and observers differ in what they see. How do you react to this example, written by one of my students?

I got pregnant when I was sixteen years old, and if it weren’t for the support of my parents, I would probably not have my son. And if they hadn’t taken care of him, I wouldn’t have been able to finish high school or attend college. My parents also helped me overcome the shame that I felt when . . . my aunts, uncles, and especially my grandparents found out that I was pregnant.

[I., personal communication]

My student is grateful to her parents, but did teenage motherhood give her parents too much control, requiring her to depend on them instead of seeking her identity? Indeed, had they unconsciously encouraged pregnancy, by permitting her to be with her boyfriend but not explaining contraception? The child’s father was no longer in her life when I knew her; was that an unhealthy disconnection?

An added complexity is that this young woman’s parents had emigrated from South America. Cultural expectations affect everyone’s responses, so her dependence may have been normative in her culture but not elsewhere. A longitudinal study of nonimmigrant adolescent mothers in the United States found that most (not all) fared best if their parents were supportive but did not take over child care (Borkowski et al., 2007).

Note that family relationships for this young mother, as potentially for everyone, include other relatives. In this case, the parents buffered the relationship between the 16-year-old and her grandparents, but the opposite is sometimes the case, with grandparents supporting a child when the parents do not. For many youths who feel misunderstood at home, the most influential adult advisors are other family members—older siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, or grandparents.

Sometimes parents ask the adolescent’s aunt or uncle to discuss taboo topics, such as sex or delinquency that make parents uncomfortable (Milardo, 2009). Links between teenagers and relatives are especially common in developing nations and among immigrant groups for two reasons: (1) Relatives often live together or nearby, and (2) cultural values make family central.

A related issue that is not as simple as it appears is parental monitoring—that is, parental knowledge about each child’s whereabouts, activities, and companions. Many studies have shown that parental monitoring helps adolescents become confident, well-educated adults, avoiding drugs, depression, and risky sex (Hamza & Willoughby, 2011; Criss et al., 2015).

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However, researchers note that monitoring is a mutual process, with adults who care and adolescents who communicate. If the parents are cold, strict, and punitive, demands for information may provoke deception and rebellion.

Note that adolescents participate in their own monitoring: Some happily tell everyone about their activities, whereas others are secretive (Vieno et al., 2009). A “dynamic interplay between parent and child behaviors” (Abar et al., 2014, p. 2177) is particularly apparent in adolescence. Most teenagers disclose only part of the truth to their parents, selectively omitting whatever would meet disapproval (Brown & Bakken, 2011).

Thus, monitoring may signify a mutual, close interaction (Kerr et al., 2010). However, monitoring may be harmful when it derives from suspicion. Especially in early adolescence, if adolescents resist telling their parents much of anything, they are more likely to develop problems such as aggression against peers, lawbreaking, and drug abuse (Laird et al., 2013). But lack of communication may be the symptom, not the cause.

If a parent asks “tell me about that party last night,” the adolescent may reply “it was okay” or “nothing happened.” Disclosure may occur, instead, when the parent is tired, busy, or distracted—such as at bedtime, or in the middle of making dinner, or while driving to school. Whenever the teenager begins to disclose, good monitors are ready to listen.

Control can backfire. Adolescents expect adults to exert some control, especially over moral issues. However, overly restrictive and controlling parenting correlates with many problems, including severe depression (Brown & Bakken, 2011). Further, adults may restrict the wrong activity. One researcher laments that parents sometimes refuse to let their children use social media, inadvertently limiting supportive friendship (boyd, 2014).

Adolescents rely on peers to help them navigate the physical changes of puberty, the intellectual challenges of high school, and the social changes of leaving childhood. Friendships are important at every stage, but during early adolescence popularity (not just friendship) is especially coveted (LaFontana & Cillessen, 2010).

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Sometimes adults conceptualize adolescence as a tug-of-war between peers and parents, with the peers winning. This is not accurate. Relationships with parents are the model for peer relationships, and parental guidelines, examples, and respect make constructive peer relationships likely. The only common tug-of-war regards with whom the teen spends time. On this, peers have the strongest pull.

Parents and peers are often mutually reinforcing, although many adolescents downplay the influence of their parents and many parents are unaware of the influence of peers, as I was. Only when parents are harsh or neglectful does peer influence reign alone (Brown & Bakken, 2011).

Closeness to parents protects adolescent self-esteem. However, if adolescents have a poor relationship with parents, then it is particularly beneficial for the adolescent to have some good friends (Birkeland et al., 2014).

Helpful friends can be of either gender. Although same-sex friends are often preferred, many adolescents have members of the other sex as close friends. Other-sex friends increase the likelihood of drug use and early romance, but much depends on the social context: Parents should not assume that a good friend of the other sex means trouble (C. Lam et al., 2014).

PEER PRESSURE Adults worry about peer pressure; that is, they fear that peers will push innocent children to use drugs, break laws, and so on. But peers can be more helpful than harmful, especially in early adolescence, if biological and social stresses are overwhelming. Some adolescents are more influenced by peers than others, because genes and early experiences differ (Prinstein et al., 2011; Choukas-Bradley et al., 2014). In later adolescence, teenagers are less susceptible to peer pressure, either positive or negative (Monahan et al., 2009).

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Peers are particularly needed by adolescents of minority and immigrant groups as they strive to achieve ethnic identity, attaining their own firm self-concept (not confused or foreclosed). They need to accept who they are—glad to be Asian, African, Latino, and so on.

The larger society may promulgate stereotypes and prejudice, and that may make teenagers depressed. Ideally, parents combat that with racial socialization, describing ethnic heroes and reasons to be proud (Umana-Taylor et al., 2010; Priest et al., 2014). Then peers of the same group bolster self-esteem, allowing teenagers to withstand discrimination and criticize their parents while maintaining their integrity.

For example, a study of Hispanic adolescents found that, compared to those who did not notice discrimination, those who experienced ethnic prejudice were more likely to abuse drugs. However, their risk of drug abuse was reduced if they proudly identified as Hispanic (Grigsby et al., 2014).

The particular peers who are most influential are those with the adolescent at the moment. This was found in a study in which all the eleventh-graders in several public schools in Los Angeles were offered a free, online SAT prep course (worth $200), They could register for the course on a paper the organizers distributed (Bursztyn & Jensen, 2014). Students were not allowed to talk before deciding whether or not to accept the offer, so they did not know that although all the papers had identical, detailed descriptions of the SAT program, one word differed.

The two versions were:

Your decision to sign up for the course will be kept completely private from everyone, except the other students in the room.

or:

Your decision to sign up for the course will be kept completely private from everyone, including the other students in the room.

A marked difference was found if students thought their classmates would learn of their decision, with the honors students more likely to sign up and the non-honors students less likely to sign up if they thought their classmates would know. To make sure this was a peer effect, not just divergent motivation and ability between honors and non-honors students, the researchers compared 107 students who took exactly two honors classes and several non-honors ones.

When the decisions of these 107 were said to be unknown to classmates, acceptance rates were similar (72 and 79 percent) no matter which class they were in at the moment of the sign up. But if they thought their classmates might know their decision, imagined peer pressure affected them. For those students who were enrolled in two honors classes and several non-honors ones, if they registered when they happened to be sitting in an honors class, 97 percent signed up for the SAT program. But if they were in a non-honors class, only 54 percent did so, a 43 percent difference (Bursztyn & Jensen, 2014).

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SOCIAL NETWORKING You read in Chapter 9 about the dangers of technology. Remember, however, that technology is a tool. It might exacerbate depression or self-destruction but not cause it (Yom-Tov et al., 2012). “Stranger danger” is more in the adult mind than in the adolescent reality (boyd, 2014).

Indeed, technology usually brings friends together in adolescence (Mesch & Talmud, 2010). This is obvious with texting, instant messaging, and social media, but it also occurs with video games. Many games now pit one player against another or require cooperation among several players (Collins & Freeman, 2013). Technology users, including video game players, are usually at least as extraverted and socially connected as other adolescents.

Although most social networking is between friends who know each other well, the Internet may be a lifeline for teenagers who are isolated because of their sexual orientation, culture, religion, or home language. These teenagers are vulnerable to depression; technology can help.

Technology may also be vital for adolescents with special health needs. During these years, many refuse to follow special diets, take medication, see doctors, do exercises, or whatever. However, among teenagers with diabetes, some monitor their insulin via smart phone, talk to the doctor via Skype, and chat with other young people with diabetes via the Internet (Harris et al., 2012).

SELECTING FRIENDS Of course, peers can lead one another into trouble. Collectively, they may provide deviancy training, when one person shows another how to resist social norms (Dishion et al., 2001).

The same phenomenon occurs for many destructive behaviors. A study found that the suicide of a peer, of an admired celebrity, or of a family member, markedly increased the risk of adolescent suicide (Abrutyn & Mueller, 2014).

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Especially during adolescence, the actions of other people are contagious. However, innocent teens are not corrupted by deviant peers. Adolescents choose their friends and models—not always wisely, but never randomly.

A developmental progression can be traced: The combination of “problem behavior, school marginalization, and low academic performance” at age 11 leads to gang involvement two years later, deviancy training two years after that, and violent behavior at age 18 or 19 (Dishion et al., 2010, p. 603). This cascade is not inevitable; adults need to engage marginalized 11-year-olds instead of blaming their friends years later.

To further understand the impact of peers, two concepts are helpful: selection and facilitation. Teenagers select friends whose values and interests they share, abandoning former friends who follow other paths. Then friends facilitate destructive or constructive behaviors. It is easier to do wrong (“Let’s all skip school on Friday”) or right (“Let’s study together for the chem exam”) with friends. Peer facilitation helps adolescents do things with friends that they might not do alone.

Thus, adolescents select and facilitate, choose and are chosen. Happy, energetic, and successful teens have close friends who themselves are high achievers, with no major emotional problems. The opposite also holds: Those who are drug users, sexually active, and alienated from school choose compatible friends.

A study of identical twins from ages 14 to 17 found that selection typically precedes facilitation, rather than the other way around. Those who later rebelled chose more lawbreaking friends at age 14 compared to their more conventional twin (Burt et al., 2009).

Research on teenage cigarette smoking also found that selection precedes peer pressure (Kiuru et al., 2010). Another study found that young adolescents tend to select peers who drink alcohol and then start drinking themselves (Osgood et al., 2013). Finally, a third study, of teenage sexual activity, again found that peer selection was crucial (van de Bongardt et al., 2014). Thus, peers provide opportunity, companions, and encouragement for what adolescents are inclined to do.

A half-century ago, Dexter Dunphy (1963) described the sequence of male–female relationships during childhood and adolescence:

Culture affects the timing and manifestation of each step on Dunphy’s list, but subsequent research in many nations validates the sequence. Heterosexual youths worldwide (and even the young of other primates) avoid the other sex in childhood and are attracted to them by adulthood. Biology underlies this universal sequence, but the specific types of interaction—dating, dancing, texting, hooking up, or just hanging out—vary by cohort and culture.

The peer group is part of the process. Romantic partners, especially in early adolescence, are selected not for their individual traits as much as for the traits that peers admire. If the leader of a girls’ group pairs with the leader of a boys’ group, the unattached members of the two cliques tend to pair off as well.

A classic example is football players and cheerleaders: They often socialize together and then pair off with someone from the other group. Which particular football player or cheerleader is chosen depends more on availability than compatibility, which helps explain why adolescent romantic partners tend to have less in common, in personality and attitudes, than adult couples do (Zimmer-Gembeck & Ducat, 2010).

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FIRST LOVE Teens’ first romances typically occur in high school, with girls having a steady partner more often than boys do. Exclusive commitment is the ideal, but it is hard to maintain: “cheating,” flirting, switching, and disloyalty are rife. Breakups are common, as are unreciprocated crushes.

All teen romances are fraught with complications, and emotions zigzag from exhilaration to despair, leading to revenge or depression. In such cases, peer support can be a lifesaver; friends help adolescents cope with romantic ups and downs (Mehta & Strough, 2009).

For adults, satisfaction with a romantic relationship is a powerful antidote to depression. However, teen romances are unlike adult ones. One study of 60 adolescent couples found that “Contrary to expectation, relationship break-up and relationship satisfaction were unrelated to changes in depressive symptoms” over a two-year period (Ha et al., 2014, p. 551). This again suggests that teen romances are less closely connected to the actual interactions and more related to the teen’s overall emotional state.

Many teenage romances do not include coitus. In the United States in 2013, even though more than one-third of all tenth-grade students had experienced vaginal intercourse, about another one-third were virgins at high school graduation (see Figure 10.2). Norms vary markedly from group to group, school to school, city to city, and nation to nation.

For instance, more than twice as many high school students in Memphis than in San Francisco say they have had intercourse (60 percent versus 26 percent) (MMWR, June 13, 2014). Within every city are many subgroups, each with its own norms.

Parents have an impact. Thus, when parent–child relationships are good, girls from religious families tend to be romantically involved with boys from religious families. Their shared values typically slow down sexual activity (Kim-Spoon et al., 2012).

SAME-SEX ROMANCES Another slowdown occurs for those adolescents who are attracted to peers of the same sex. Sexual orientation refers to the direction of a person’s erotic desires. One meaning of orient is to “turn toward”; thus, sexual orientation refers to whether a person is romantically attracted to (turned on by) people of the other sex, the same sex, or both sexes. Sexual orientation can be strong, weak, overt, secret, or unconscious.

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Obviously, culture and cohort are powerful. Some cultures accept youth who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (the census in India asks people to identify as male, female, or Hijra [transgender]). Other cultures criminalize them (as do 38 of the 53 African nations), sometimes even killing them (Uganda).

Worldwide, many gay youths date members of the other sex to hide their orientation; deception puts them at risk for binge drinking, suicidal thoughts, and drug use. Those hazards are less common in cultures where same-sex partnerships are accepted (see Figure 10.3), especially when parents affirm their offspring’s sexuality.

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At least in the United States, adolescents have similar difficulties and strengths whether they are gay or straight (Saewyc, 2011). However, lesbian, gay, transsexual, and bisexual youth are at greater risk of depression and anxiety, for reasons from every level of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological approach (Mustanski et al., 2014).

Sexual orientation is surprisingly fluid during the teen years. Girls often recognize their orientation only after their first sexual experiences; many adult lesbians had other-sex relationships in adolescence (Saewyc, 2011).

In one detailed study, 10 percent of sexually active teenagers had had same-sex partners, but more than one-third of that 10 percent nonetheless identified themselves as heterosexual (Pathela & Schillinger, 2010). In that study, those most at risk of sexual violence and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) were those who had partners of both sexes. This specific finding is confirmed by more general studies (e.g., Russell et al., 2014).

SEX EDUCATION Many adolescents have strong sexual urges but minimal logic about pregnancy and disease, as might be expected from the ten-year interval between maturation of the body and of the brain. Millions of teenagers worry that they are oversexed, undersexed, or deviant, unaware that thousands, maybe millions, of people are just like them.

As a result, “students seem to waffle their way through sexually relevant encounters driven both by the allure of reward and the fear of negative consequences” (Wagner, 2011, p. 193). They have much to learn. Where do they learn it?

Many adolescents learn about sex from the media. The Internet is a common source. Unfortunately, Web sites are often frightening (featuring pictures of diseased sexual organs) or mesmerizing (containing pornography), and young adolescents are particularly naive. Further, adolescents tend to focus on what is funny or odd, not on what is accurate, because, as one young man explained, “no one wants to get a lecture whilst they are online and trying to be doing their social thing” (quoted in Evers et al., 2013, p. 269).

Media consumption peaks at puberty. The TV shows most watched by teenagers include sexual content almost seven times per hour (Steinberg & Monahan, 2011). That content is alluring: Almost never does a television character develop an STI, deal with an unwanted pregnancy, or mention (much less use) a condom.

Music and magazines may be worse. One study found that men’s magazines convince teenage boys that maleness means sexual conquests (Ward et al., 2011).

Adolescents with intense exposure to sexual content on the screen and in music are more often sexually active, but the direction of this correlation is controversial. Are teenagers drawn to sexy images because they are sexually active, or does the media cause them to be sexually involved? One analysis concludes that “the most important influences on adolescents’ sexual behavior may be closer to home than to Hollywood” (Sternberg & Monahan, 2011, p. 575).

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As that quote implies, sex education begins within the family. Every study finds that parental communication influences adolescents’ behavior, and many programs of sex education explicitly require parental participation (Silk & Romero, 2014; J. Grossman et al., 2014). However, some parents wait too long and are uninformed about current STIs and contraception.

Parents often express clichés and generalities, unaware of their adolescents’ sexuality, and adolescents conclude that parents know nothing about sex. Embarrassment, silence, and ignorance are common. An attempt to combat that is a program of sex education for parents of adolescents, which increased conversation as well as information (Colarossi et al., 2014).

It is not unusual for parents to think their own child is not sexually active while fearing that the child’s social connections are far too sexual (Elliott, 2012). One study makes the point: Parents of 12-year-old girls were asked whether their daughters had hugged or kissed a boy “for a long time” or hung out with older boys (signs that sex information is urgently needed). Only 5 percent of the parents said yes, as did 38 percent of the girls (O’Donnell et al., 2008).

What should parents say? That is the wrong question, according to a longitudinal study of thousands of adolescents. Teens who were most likely to risk an STI had parents who warned them to stay away from sex.

In contrast, adolescents were more likely to remain virgins if their relationship with their parents was good. Specific information was less important than open communication (Deptula et al., 2010). Parents should not avoid talking about sex, but honest conversation provides better protection than specifics (Hicks et al., 2013).

Especially when parents are silent, forbidding, or vague, adolescent sexual behavior is strongly influenced by peers. Boys learn about sex from other boys (Henry et al., 2012), girls from other girls, with the strongest influence being what peers say they have done, not something abstract or moral (Choukas-Bradley et al., 2014).

Partners also teach each other. However, their lessons are more about pleasure than consequences: Most U.S. adolescent couples do not decide together before they have sex how they will prevent pregnancy and disease, and what they will do if their prevention efforts fail. Adolescents were asked with whom they discussed sexual issues. Friends were the most common confidants, then parents, and last of all dating partners. Indeed, only half of them had ever discussed anything about sex with their romantic partner (Widman et al., 2014).

Most parents of pre-adolescent children would like some sex education in school, a sentiment almost universally held by parents of adolescents. This would not only save the parents from seeming ignorant (contraception and STIs are not what they were two decades ago) but would also protect against misinformation from peers and the media. However, often sex education in schools is very limited. On this an international perspective is useful (Schalet, 2011).

Teachers in most northern European middle schools discuss masturbation, same-sex romance, oral and anal sex, abortion, and various methods of contraception. Although most students in the United States have some sex education, especially on the dire consequences of STIs, topics routinely covered in Scandinavian schools are rarely covered in the United States, even in high school.

Rates of teenage pregnancy in European nations are less than half those in the United States. Perhaps curriculum is the reason, although schools are affected by society, and cultural differences regarding sexual values and behavior are vast. Nonetheless, in non-European nations as well, students who learn about sexual activity in school are less likely to have early, unprotected sex than students in nations without sex education (Fonner et al., 2014).

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