“Adolescence” comes from Latin adolescere, in Spanish, suffer, a verb that has two meanings: on the one hand, “to grow,” and on the other, “to have a certain imperfection or defect.” Aren’t both meanings appropriate ways to characterize this stage of life? Adolescents are halfway between puberty and adulthood, but at the same time, this vital instance is more complex than just a period of transition. This is a stage of great changes in the body itself; but also, of transformations at a psychological and social level.
One of the most notable transformations in this last area is the construction of one’s own identity based on the formation of new social groups, which requires that the adolescent be willing to socialize with his peers and separate himself from the wing of his caregivers. For some adolescents, this process may be spontaneous, resulting from the personal need to acquire greater autonomy, while for others it is more difficult to bond with their peers in the spaces they pass through daily, such as school, institute or sports club. For this reason, in this article we will reflect on the importance of forging personal connections and socializing during adolescence
Adolescence is synonymous with change or mutation; some authors directly refer to it as a “metamorphosis.” The adolescent is faced with the challenge of reworking the knowledge he has about his own body, identity and environment, while at the same time breaking away from some conceptions that he had built during childhood and puberty. We can take the shedding of a snake’s skin as a metaphor for the animal world to think about this process, since the snake, as well as the preadolescent, begins to carry out the “skin change” when it is preparing to grow.
However, when a boy or girl grows up, there is a skin that they do without, something that they leave behind from childhood, a series of beliefs and behaviors that you lose to continue developing Several authors have delved into the losses or grief that a child faces as they enter adolescence. In general terms, they tend to agree that there are three major losses that occur: the loss of the child’s role—that place lacking responsibilities and guardianship, under the protection of parents—; the loss of the child’s body—despite their psychological immaturity, the body of boys and girls changes, hair appears all over the body, genital organs grow, they gain weight, they have a “growth spurt,” among others—; and finally, the loss of childhood parents.
This loss is interesting for us to analyze with the aim of directing us towards the importance of socializing during adolescence. The loss of childhood parents implies that, although in the strict sense the parents remain the same, they are conceived by the adolescent in a very different way. It is common for adolescents to adopt attitudes of opposition, criticism or judgment towards their parents, their ways of upbringing and the values they promulgate. In adolescence there is a loss of parental omnipotence and excessive admiration for caregivers. Instead, it is replaced by the need to admire others, equally or more significant than parents: peers, friends.
The leading role of the group of friends in adolescence
In this way, the close and intimate relationships that the child reserves for the members of his family begin to lose weight during adolescence in favor of strengthening friendship relationships. Friends become the new confidants and form intense and idealized bonds.
Furthermore, it is friends who dictate what is right and what is wrong; Friendships promote a new system of rules that may be different or completely contrary to what parents taught. This implies the adolescent’s openness to other realities, to other possibilities of configuring one’s own identity. We could say that thanks to friends, adolescents begin to notice that they are able to decide who they are and who they want to become.
Why is it important to socialize during adolescence?
All these modifications in socialization are possible thanks to the formation of groups Research on the subject demonstrates that social support is crucial for individual well-being and to minimize the adverse effects that stressful situations in life can cause; while the dissolution of support networks is a determining factor for the development of psychosocial problems.
Throughout the last century, various doctors, psychologists and educators studied the formation of groups as a milestone of adolescence. In general terms, the school or institute was taken as the favorite areas for meetings between peers, specifically, dismissal or recess time. However, although it is still possible and common for adolescents to make friends in these areas, socialization through another means is increasingly common: social networks.
Socialization among adolescents in the digital age
Today’s teenagers are not the same as they were thirty years ago (or even fifteen years ago) Mass access to the Internet led to the configuration of adolescent identities necessarily tied to digital media. In other words, today’s teenagers identify as teenagers because of digital culture; for the video games they play to have fun and talk with their friends; by the profiles they create on their social networks, and by the content they produce and consume online.
It is understandable that many parents believe that their children spend too much time in front of the screens of the various electronic devices at home. The most likely thing is that, in fact, both adolescents and adults spend an excessive number of hours using cell phones. However, this is not a reason to deny adolescents access to social networks or consider them a waste of time.
It is important to regulate the actions that adolescents carry out while on the web, but at the same time, it is also necessary to give them the freedom to have a virtual profile, to shape it to their liking and to connect responsibly with their peers via this half. Beyond resistance, a large part of socialization in adolescence takes place on the digital level in virtual worlds, in possible worlds.
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