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This chapter reviews current knowledge about the adolescent period from the perspective of evolutionary biology and the study of mammals, including humans. It highlights the universal characteristics of adolescence that make it both an exciting as well as potentially trying period in development, and presents hypotheses about the role of specific areas of the brain that might influence adolescent development. It shows that during adolescence, the brain is sculpted to transform the brain of the child into a more energy efficient brain of the adult. Some of these alterations are regressive, with a loss of a notable proportion of excitatory (glutaminergic) synapses and binding sites for both glutamate (NMDA-R) and dopamine (DA) in certain sites within the mesocorticolimbic system. Other alterations may involve possible ontogenetic shifts in the balance of activity among various cortical vs. subcortical forebrain regions.

This book is designed to help both readers and professionals understand adolescents better and to be better equipped to work with them. Drawing on a theoretical model called Dynamic Functional Interaction (DFI), it examines which adolescent behaviors are deviant and which are not or what the therapeutic task is. DFI is a theory of adolescent psychosocial development that sets the adolescent task as individuation and the core of adolescent behavior as flowing from responses to psychological interactions with peers. This book fills a gap in the professional literature on adolescents by offering insights into the adolescent's journey from puberty to psychological maturity: attaining psychological identity and reaching early adulthood. It also provides an adolescent group therapy model that professionals can use to deal with issues affecting adolescents. This introduction presents six relevant terms and concepts with revised definitions: conformity, importance, competition, separation, supports, and rebellion.

This chapter discusses sexually transmitted disease (STD) prevention programs for schools. One challenge to evidence-based STD prevention is opposition to curricula that discuss safer sex practices, such as condom use. The Street Smart program is a 10-session program that has demonstrated reductions in sexual risk-taking among runaway youth and can be adapted for use with other adolescents at risk of STDs and HIV.

The spectacular changes in the human body and brain during the period of adolescence have a huge influence on adolescents' behavior and their interest in media. This chapter considers these developmental processes in order to understand how best to appeal to younger and older adolescents. What, for example, interests young teens (ages 12–15) and how does this differ (or not) from what interests their older teenage peers (16–19)? What specific developmental characteristics typify these age groups, and how do these characteristics influence their media use and preferences? Why do teens enjoy sarcasm and fast-paced, humorous banter in media? Why do social media have such a “Pied Piper effect” on adolescents? And finally, how does teens' developing autonomy influence their media preferences?

This book has explored confusing adolescent behavior from a Peer Arena lens. Recognizing such behavior as primarily the result of psychological interactions and comparison with peers provides an opportunity to better understand adolescents' efforts to see themselves through the stressful period of individuation and of becoming their own person. The Peer Arena lens allows the professional to accept the fact that adolescents want to be together with other adolescents. Professionals who focus on the “conflict of the generations” and “rebellion” miss the essence of adolescence and the importance of the Peer Arena for adolescent development. This book has provided key insights into the theory and practice of working with adolescents by drawing on Peer Arena Retrospective (PAR) protocols and the Peer Arena Lens (PAL) group therapy.

Juvenile delinquents tend to engage in risk-taking behavior, which involves breaking the law. These offenses include underage drinking, truancy, drug use, and shoplifting. This chapter examines the problems associated with defining juvenile delinquency. It also discusses sources of data that provide information about the degree of adolescent criminal behavior.

This chapter examines how parental divorce influences adolescents' sexual behaviors and attitudes. Although a variety of parental family configurations exist, social scientists have concentrated their efforts on examining the influence of parental divorce and remarriage because these are the most common nontraditional family structures. Various family and psychological theories predict that parental divorce would increase the likelihood that the progeny, given their own nontraditional family background, would engage in behavior that would yield a nontraditional family structure. There is considerable evidence that people who have grown up in a nontraditional family structure are more likely than their counterparts from intact families to live in a nontraditional family structure themselves. Moreover, these same progeny living in nontraditional households are also more likely to maintain less traditional views about family structures and about engaging in sex outside of marriage than their counterparts from nondivorced families.

Historically, moral panics have often centered the possible impact of media on youth. It is not easy to disentangle the effects of sexual media in general from the effects of sexually explicit media on youth. However, this chapter argues that the bulk of the evidence on the influence of mainstream online pornography on youth suggests that there is, on average, a negative effect and that there may be particular reasons for concern in the absence of comprehensive sex education. The chapter provides statistical information on the prevalence of pornography use by youth, the age of first exposure, and sexting, as well as evidence-based information about risk factors for, and consequences of, use. The chapter argues that public health professionals need to safeguard underage youth from the potential harms of pornography while pushing back on nonscientific claims about its effects and promoting a sex-positive perspective on sex simultaneously.

Institutions are often viewed as moving targets for the media and other critics. This chapter summarizes some of the controversies surrounding U.S. institutions of higher learning. Future considerations are also examined along with a discussion of how risk management can help to deal with problems facing U.S. institutions of higher education.