Psychology problems facing adolescents in the 21st century

Psychology

The idea of beauty is changing with each generation. The physical events of adolescence have always been the same. Since the dawn of Hollywood and pop culture, there has been a trend developing amongst early adolescents and teens. "Beauty" is approaching a new level of competitiveness with plastic surgery and computer enhancement. These "perfect bodies" have confused young Americans experiencing adolescence toward climatic problems. This trend is that with each generation body image is becoming more of a determining factor for self-esteem. It may originate from the American obsession with beauty. There are many physical changes that occur during adolescence, which are discussed in detail. In the 21st century, body image's grasp on self-esteem and has become problematic and detrimental toward social development. Taking the proper steps to prevent these problems and many other that come with adolescence is also mentioned.

The physical changes that occur during adolescence are so numerous that they are accredited with transforming boys to men and girls to women. They usually start at the age of thirteen and continue to about age eighteen with no two adolescents experiencing the exact same transformation. It is difficult to consider what comes first or at what time any change will occur during an adolescent's development. Therefore, a list of commonly occurring events will be displayed and explained with details exemplifying distinct characteristics of a physical or social change happening in these young adults ("Development in Adolescence").

Adolescence is renowned for the physical changes that occur. The most common starters to adolescences involve signs of puberty. For young girls this may mean menstruation happens for the first time, for boys it may be hair growing in places it never grew before. Once adolescence begins, a roller coaster ride of changes starts involving emotional, physical, and sexual development. Usually a change in voice is very noticeable during the early stages of adolescence. Growth spurts, developing breasts, and muscular development are all important physical changes with serious impacts on the emotional and sexual development because they involve body image and self-esteem ("Development in Adolescence").

The specific details of what emotional and sexual developments happen during adolescence are not available. According to the Child Development Institute, everyone has problems understanding young adults even psychologists and teachers ("Adolescent stages of Development"). It is important to understand certain developments for the sake of grasping how and why body image and self-esteem are being influenced by the 21st century culture. Ego-identity and gender role are the two most influential aspects of adolescence development and both are tremendously affected by body image along with self-esteem.

There are exact definitions for these two concepts but analogies explained them well too. Ego-identity is analogous to expert in a career field. Regardless of the profession each expert knows where they belong and understand how the environment surrounding them behaves. When this does not develop properly during adolescence, it transforms the expert into a lost puppy. It does not know better than to follow the food supply until it runs out. It ends up bouncing from one group to the next like a teenager suffering from role diffusion or role switching. Gender role plays into ego-identity like drawing a winning card in poker but without proper ego-identity it does not. If an adolescent becomes confused with these choices he or she may suffer in the ability to develop properly both emotionally and sexually.

Even though physical and mental developments occur separately, they form a close relationship during adolescence. According to authors Currie and Williams body image has a huge impact on how adolescents develop self-esteem. They collected showing a direct correlation between early physical developments to improved self-esteem. They suggest no mediation for this data. They opposite was true too according to their data, less development showed less self-esteem (Currie and Williams).

The suggested mediation for this correlation between body image and self-esteem during adolescence is the media and pop culture. In the 21st century, it is no longer acceptable to be ugly or fat. Everyone should be beautiful and skinny according to the media. The body image of a young adult seems to dictate self-esteem. The problem here of course is that not everyone is capable of perfection. Yet other qualities of the human being are negligible even though they are what helped mankind survive the test of time. Traits like learning quickly, being responsible, and loving unconditionally are all second best traits to outer beauty portrayed by today's media and pop culture. This detrimental world view is accepted by most American adolescents. It is the source of the problem between body image and self-esteem. This hinders adolescent's judgments, development, and passage into adulthood significantly ("Body Image: A Pep").