Adolescent Development: Identity

The most significant aspect of adolescent development is identity; in fact, the developmental psychologist Erickson named his adolescent stage "Identity vs. Role Confusion." Erickson's stage theories focus on healthy versus unhealthy development, so the title of his adolescent stage implies that the healthy development of teens has a strong sense of identity and teens developing in an unhealthy manner are confused with their "role" or who they are in this world. Essentially, Erickson is saying that teens who are developing in a healthy way leave this stage with an "identity."  Isn't this what we desire for our teenagers?

From nearly 30 years working with adolescents, I wholeheartedly agree with this stage theory. Teenagers who are thriving in life are those with a confidence in their identity, i.e., who they are, where they belong, how they fit into the community.  They have an identity. 

Role Confusion and Negative Factors

The opposite is also true: teenagers who are struggling in life or who are not developing in a healthy manner are ones who don't have a confident sense of who they are, where they belong, and how they fit into the community. They have role confusion.

Psychologists and sociologists today are using the phrase "diseases of despair" (and ultimately "deaths of despair") to describe individuals (especially teenagers) who are struggling with alcohol and drug use/abuse/addiction and depression. These "deaths of despair" (especially among teens) have led to the national average age of mortality to drop over the past 3 years; contributing to that mortality rate is teen suicide and alcohol/drug overdoses or accidental deaths. While the factors leading to these "diseases of despair" are multi-faceted and complex, identity (or more accurately role confusion) is at the core of this epidemic of despair, especially during adolescence.

Teenagers today struggle with identity because of a variety of negative societal factors like family dysfunction, social media, our selfie culture, hyper-sexualized and unrealistic portrayals of beauty, parental pressures of success, culture of degrading humor and language, unchecked technology usage, and access to alcohol, marijuana, and drug. Each of these factors can be extrapolated to explain our current ethos of despair among teenagers. However, these negative factors can be overcome by positive and intentional identity development.

Who am I?

Adolescents have a deep desire to answer the question of "who am I?" Rather than focusing on the negative factors, parents and educators, in order to truly help teenagers develop their identity, must focus on the following positive areas: Strengths and Interdependence.

Strengths

One of my favorite units to teach in developmental psychology (at the high school level) is on strengths. Demonstrating their desire (and need) for identity, my students are fully engaged in learning about their personalities, strengths, and God-given gifts. Through this unit, students are able to identify and ultimately celebrate their strengths. The students begin by taking a number of different assessment tools, like CliftonStrengths for Students (minimal cost) or Values in Action Character Strengths (free), to find their strengths. In addition to identifying strengths, both of these instruments provide a plethora of resources to define and develop these character strengths. Of course, other tools can identify personality types (e.g. Myers Briggs or Enneagram), career/interests (e.g. Strong Interest Inventory), and spiritual gifts (e.g. SHAPE). Each of these tools can be used to help students get a clearer sense of who they are, but the important part is to challenge teenagers to exercise their gifts. The focus must always be on application: learning about, using, and developing their gifts/personality into strengths. Gifts and talents are not developed into strengths without effort.

Gifts + Effort/Application = Strengths

Working at a Christian school, I use Christ's parable of the talents to encourage and show the importance of using (not burying) the gifts they've been given (Matthew 25:14-30). I also tie the strengths unit into the biblical metaphor of the body of Christ (I Cor 12, Romans 12). This metaphor, primarily discussed by Paul, is a powerful picture of how each person is given unique gifts to be an essential part of the body; in order for the entire body to function well, each individual part must be developed in a healthy way and activated to serve the rest of the body. This leads to the next identity area: interdependence. 

Interdependence 

Like adolescence itself, the concept of interdependence sits beautifully between dependency and being independent. Clearly dependency has a negative connotation in our society; however, the American idol of independence also has a deleterious impact on adolescent development. It is healthy for teenagers to simultaneously rely on others and be needed by others, i.e., interdependence. Genuine community is wedded to interdependence, and teenagers need both for healthy identity development.

Important questions of identity are "where do I belong" and "how do I fit within a community." Both of these questions can only be answered within a community ... and can only happen if an individual believes he/she needs a community and, reciprocally, believes the community needs him/her. Helping students find and foster community should be a high priority for educators, parents, and youth pastors who desire healthy identity development.

Cultural and technological factors make this difficult. From an early age, children are celebrated for being independent; while this encourages a healthy transition to the next stage, our society implicitly communicates that we don't need to be in community. Technology exacerbates this. Our phones (an easy target, I know) are isolating and empowering (e.g. you don't have to ask a grandparent what it was like 50 years ago, you just "google" it); this finger tip knowledge promotes independence, but destroys any need for interdependence or community. This translates to teenagers not needing others and, most damaging to adolescent development, to the realization that they are not needed by others. 

Unfortunately, our interdependent community-enhancing groups (e.g. family, church, friends) are in decline. Families are broken, unconnected and not multi-generational; teens don't attend church (or if they do, it is not multi-generational or deeply relational); and friendships are fostered digitally which keeps them superficial. Additionally, teenage groups are temporary and performance-driven. They connect for a semester with classmates or a sport season with teammates, rather than having lifelong friends. This is also true for extended family; most teenagers are connected to their household family but disconnected from their extended family. Many families don't get together for Sunday dinner or reunions due to busy schedules or the lack of desire to work through dysfunctional relationships. Finally, churches separate teenagers from the rest of the congregation which sends a message that "we don't need you and you don't need us." These traditional pillars of identity development are letting teenagers down.

How do we reverse this trend? One way is to rethink and redesign church, family, and friendships with adolescent identity development in mind. Another way is to build additional interdependent communities, where teenagers feel needed. One of the most therapeutic, life-giving statements for anyone to hear (but especially for teenagers) is "I need your help." How can we build intentional community groups that genuinely say to teenagers, both explicitly and implicitly, "we need you." That powerful message will encourage healthy interdependence, and ultimately, identity. 

Identity is such an important part of healthy adolescent development that intentional actions need to be taken to help teenagers answer the questions of "who am I?" and "where do I belong?"  Hopefully, those individuals placed in the lives of teenagers can speak truth into their lives and encourage positive identity development during the adolescent years.