Dilemmas Of Adolescents Research Articles

Adolescent Dilemmas About Viewing Pornography and Their Efforts to Resolve Them

Concerns have been raised about how viewing Sexually Explicit Internet Material (SEIM) shapes adolescents’ understanding of sexual relationships and has potentially negative impacts. However, research frequently takes a narrow view of adolescent SEIM use and excludes their understandings. The present study explored how 13 participants, aged 14 to 15 years, made sense of their experiences with SEIM. In-depth individual interviews were conducted, and five dominant dilemmas faced by participants were abstracted using interpretive analysis. We discuss how these dilemmas were negotiated by adolescents using various strategies. The analysis provides new understandings on how adolescents interpret their SEIM experiences and highlight the limitations of understanding SEIM use solely through risk models. On a practical level, these findings can inform youth, parents and caregivers, and professionals as to how they might understand and help young people navigate the complex area of SEIM.

“Do You Know How Much I Suffer?”: How Young People Negotiate the Tellability of Their Mental Health Disruption in Anonymous Distress Narratives on Social Media

ABSTRACT The emergence of mental distress presents significant difficulties and dilemmas for adolescents and early adults about being open with their troubles and emotions. To better understand the communication practices and challenges that reflect the lived realities of marginalized youth struggling with mental health disruption, this study examines 136 anonymous personal stories disclosing self-harm behaviors or suicidal thoughts on a Facebook “secrets” page for Hong Kong students. The narrative analysis unveils young people’s anecdotal accounts of hidden grievances and struggles around their mental distress, hitherto untold not because they are too difficult to tell but because they are too negative to be heard. Extending the concept of tellability, this study illustrates how anonymous distress storytelling on social media enables silenced and isolated distressed youth to resist the denial – invisibility, discredit, and mischaracterization – of their suffering by turning their disruptive experiences into stories worth telling through disclosure, clarification, and testimony. This study further clarifies the salient interpretive frameworks that shape young people’s experience and communication of mental distress: the tyranny of happiness depicted to engender distress and languages of suffering used to resist culpability and plead for social respite. It highlights the disconnection in interpretations regarding the transitory nature of distress and its controllability as a major source of communication gap and interpersonal communication breakdowns. The findings call on health communication practices around mental health promotion to refrain from highlighting individual deficiencies or messages of positivity and speak out on the structural inconsistencies and communication denial that perpetuate and silence youth distress.

Dilemmas of Adolescents: Dark Triad and Relational Aggression, Moderated by Economic Status

Objective of the present study was to find out the relationship between dark triad and relational aggression among adolescents. A sample of 612 adolescent students with age range 12-19 were selected from different educational institute of Gujrat, Pakistan. Dark triad personality scale short version and the Urdu version of diverse adolescent relational aggression scale were used to measure relational aggression. The findings of the current study revealed significant predictive relation of machiavellianism with relational aggression [R2 =. 220; F (1, 607) = 171.340, p<.01], narcissism with relational aggression [R2 =.189; F (1, 607) = 141.753, p<.01] and psychopathy with relational aggression [R2 =.265; F (1, 607) = 218.635, p<.01]. Conclusion: The present study supported the predictive relationship of dark triad with relational aggression. These findings may have implication in the future intervention and prevention procedure for adolescents.

Critical Memories

This autoethnographic performance life piece captures my early adolescent dilemmas with my Black-queer-Christian identities. Told through five flashbacks, I conjure critical moments turned critical memories to explore and unpack my struggle with the dichotomy of secular versus sacred and the holy versus profane. Ultimately, this life piece seeks to excavate the remnants of my humanity that are buried deep within my memories to tease out what it means to live forever between oppression and liberation.

Paradox of Parental Involvement in Sexual Health and Induced Abortions Among In-school Female Adolescents in Southwest Nigeria

Prevalent early sexual initiation and unprotected sex involvement with various partners create dilemmas for adolescents and their parents. This article explores parents' involvement in their adolescents’ sexual and reproductive health, particularly with respect to terminating unintended pregnancies. This was done to gain an understanding of the dynamics of parental involvement in resolving anxieties concerning unintended pregnancy and the reasons for seeking induced abortions. The study used a mixed method approach, and 460 female students aged 13–20 years completed the self-administered questionnaire. Thirty-three parents who had an adolescent daughter in school and 31 female adolescents participated in eight different focus group discussion sessions, respectively. A quarter of the respondents had been pregnant at least once. All the females who had ever become pregnant had tried to terminate the pregnancy. Few (9 %) had used contraception at their last sexual intercourse. Twenty nine percent of the respondents had discussed sexual matters with their parents and 82 % preferred discussing such matters with their mothers. In the qualitative findings, some of the parents reported not having been involved in or supportive of terminating their daughter's pregnancy, but confirmed that some mothers had reasons to support induced abortions. Major reasons for mothers' involvement in their daughters' induced abortions were to avoid the social stigma, disruption of schooling and financial stress associated with unintended pregnancy. Resolving conflicting parental interests and values concerning adolescent sexuality and induced abortions is essential for promoting adolescent sexual health in Nigeria.

“This Strange Disease”: Adolescent Transference and the Analyst’s sExual Orientation

The treatment of adolescents by gay analysts is uncharted territory regarding the impact of the analyst's sexuality on the analytic process. Since a core challenge of adolescence involves the integration of the adult sexual body, gender role, and reproductive capacities into evolving identity, and since adolescents seek objects in their environment to facilitate both identity formation and the establishment of autonomy from primary objects, the analyst's sexual orientation is arguably a potent influence on the outcome of adolescent development. However, because sexual orientation is a less visible characteristic of the analyst than gender, race, or age, for example, the line between reality and fantasy is less clearly demarcated. This brings up special considerations regarding discovery and disclosure in the treatment. To explore these issues, the case of a late adolescent girl in treatment with a gay male analyst is presented. In this treatment, the question of the analyst's sexual orientation, and the demand by the patient for the analyst's self-disclosure, became a transference nucleus around which the patient's individual dynamics and adolescent dilemmas could be explored and clarified.

Growing up with congenital heart disease: the dilemmas of adolescents and young adults

Advances in diagnosis, medical management and surgical intervention have improved the longevity and quality of life for children with congenital heart disease. Despite this, research studies specifically examining the psychosocial concerns of adolescents and young adults with congenital heart disease are few. To explore the subjective experiences and dilemmas of this population during the transition from adolescence to young adulthood, we interviewed, using a semi-structured protocol, a convenience sample of nine adolescents and young adults. Using analytic procedures inherent in Grounded Theory methodology, seven themes were identified: the dilemma of normality; dilemmas in disclosure; dilemmas in strategies for management of illness; the challenge of social integration versus social isolation; the challenge of dependence versus independence; the challenge of uncertainty; and strategies for coping. An understanding of these experiences by health professionals can be beneficial in helping this clinical population as they grow up and face the challenges of an uncertain, yet promising, future.

Adolescent Dilemmas of Landscape, Place, and Religious Experience in a Suffolk Parish

Geographers have traditionally discussed adolescence as an experience of turmoil and anxiety, which is often class and gender-specific. Almost invariably, that analysis has focused on the manifestations and interactions of rebellion, violent conflict, and social disadvantage. In this paper, however, elements of stability and less dramatic activity, as well as themes of change and anxiety within adolescence, are emphasised. The experience of dilemma within adolescence is shown to accommodate a plurality of influences and expressions beyond the relatively narrow experiences of violence and aggression. In order to examine these nuances of adolescent dilemmas, I will pursue a critical discourse analysis of data drawn from an extended programme of indigenous ethnography. The central theme of this analysis will consider the ways in which dilemmas within individual religious experience can inform, and remain informed by, the landscape and place interpretations of ten adolescents living in a Suffolk Parish. These interpretations include references to Christian ecumenical festivals. Consequently, this paper may be of interest to social and cultural geographers, particularly those interested in religio-geographical problems, as well as religious leaders and their lay assistants who arc involved in the instigation and organisation of festivals and similar religious events attended by adolescent people.