The Impact of Technology and Social Environments Upon Adolescents

The Impact of Technology and Social Environments Upon Adolescents

Introduction

Undoubtedly, adolescence is one of life's most challenging and complex transitions in life. A combination of rapid physical, cognitive, and psychosocial growth represents a period of significant change. These changes bridge the transition from childhood to adulthood. Teenagers today live in a media-saturated society and they deal with a bouquet of formidable issues like sex, drugs, divorce, and gun violence. These conditions can become significant factors in an emerging personality (Doherty, 1997). How do these circumstances influence young people who are searching for the roles and values that will guide them all their lives?

The primary goal of this paper is to reveal the influences of technology and social environments experienced during early to middle adolescence that contribute to shaping adult personality.

Research Section

By the end of the high school years, young people have developed a unique mixture of characteristics that appear to have a profound influence on their adult personality (Doherty, 1997). How these life shaping individual characteristics come about, however, remains a central focus of developmental interest. Certainly, an individual?fs genetic endowment plays a significant role in personality development, but these genetic influences are not 100% determinant of adult personality traits (Doherty, 1997). A combination of rapid physical changes and early exposure to sexual and violent images is shrinking the time between childhood and adolescence.

It is widely accepted that a complex and subtle interplay between the growing adolescent?fs family, community, and social environments and the dispositional characteristics an adolescent brings to these environments, can be consequential to the emerging adult personality (Doherty, 1997). However, it should be noted that developing technologies, such as the Internet and video games are growing in their influence on emerging adult personalities too.

?g Over a very short period of time, there has been a dramatic truncation of childhood,?h says Mary Pipher, ?gThroughout history, this was always a time when children were free of the burdens and responsibilities of sexuality. Parents and society felt responsible to shelter children and provided close supervision and protective love....

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...l what they are missing.

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