Reframing Adolescent Development: Identifying Communications Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Understanding Americans’ deeply held and widely shared assumptions about adolescents and their development can reveal key opportunities and challenges for developmental science communicators. Twenty‐nine in‐depth interviews were conducted with adolescents and adults about adolescence. We analyzed the cultural models the public use to make meaning about what adolescence is, what development involves, what adolescents need, and how adolescents can be supported. The analysis revealed several cultural models that may impede public engagement around youth issues. These dominant ways of thinking include a strong focus on the vulnerability of adolescence and a narrow understanding of how environments affect adolescent development. The findings have important implications for communicators seeking to expand and deepen public thinking about adolescence.

Typicality and trajectories of problematic and positive behaviors over adolescence in eight countries

“…In other words, developmental increases alone do not mean a behavior becomes normative. Similarly, there might be positive characteristics that characterize adolescence, but that have been neglected or overlooked in the Western focus on problems ( Buchanan and Bruton, 2016 ; Busso et al, 2018 ). Longstanding ethnographic and anthropological research point to alternative and more positive characterizations of adolescence, often based on qualitative data from non-Western societies (e.g., Schlegel and Barry, 1991 ; Dasen, 2000 ).…”

“…As the titles of the online articles imply ( 8 Stereotypes of Teenagers that We Need to Get Rid Of; Dangers of Teenage Stereotypes; How Stereotypes of Teens Harm Families ), their aim is often to dispel the negative narrative, illuminating the detrimental impact such assumptions can have for teenagers and their families. Such stereotypes are prevalent in U.S. cultural models of adolescence ( Busso et al, 2018 ). The stereotypes have roots in psychological theory dominated by a Western perspective that promoted a storm and stress characterization of adolescence ( Hall, 1904 ; Arnett, 1999 ).…”