Late adolescence (ie, 16-20 years of age) is a period characterized by escalation of drinking and alcohol use problems for many and by the onset of an alcohol use disorder for some. This heightened ...period of vulnerability is a joint consequence of the continuity of risk from earlier developmental stages and the unique neurologic, cognitive, and social changes that occur in late adolescence. We review the normative neurologic, cognitive, and social changes that typically occur in late adolescence, and we discuss the evidence for the impact of these transitions on individual drinking trajectories. We also describe evidence linking alcohol abuse in late adolescence with neurologic damage and social impairments, and we discuss whether these are the bases for the association of adolescent drinking with increased risks of mental health, substance abuse, and social problems in adulthood. Finally, we discuss both the challenges and successes in the treatment and prevention of adolescent drinking problems.
Background
Family‐based assessments of risk factors for adolescent emotional, behavioral, and substance use problems can be used to identify adolescents who are at risk and intervene before problems ...cause clinically significant impairment. Expanding traditional methods for assessing risk, this study evaluates whether lability, referring to the degree to which parent–adolescent relationships and parenting fluctuate from day to day, might offer additional value to assessment protocols aimed at identifying precursor risk factors.
Methods
This study sampled 151 adolescents and caregivers, collecting data at a baseline assessment, a 21‐day daily diary protocol, and a 12‐month follow‐up assessment. Daily diary data were used to calculate within‐family lability scores in parenting practices, parent–adolescent connectedness, and parent–adolescent conflict.
Results
Regression analyses evaluated whether lability predicted adolescent's depression, anxiety, antisocial behavior (ASB), drunkenness, and marijuana use at 12‐month follow‐up. Lability in parent–adolescent connectedness, accounting for baseline levels, gender, age, and initial levels of outcomes, was associated with risk for depression, anxiety, ASB, drunkenness, and marijuana use. Lability in parenting practices also was associated with risk for depression, anxiety, and drunkenness. Baseline levels moderated some of these effects. Parent–adolescent conflict lability was only associated with depression.
Conclusions
These findings provide evidence for substantial value added when including dynamic assessments of family lability in predicting long‐term adolescent risk outcomes and call for integration of dynamic methods into assessment practices.
The AAP Healthy Development and Well-Child Support Chart provides pediatric health professionals with a quick and easy-to-use reference on some of the most important areas covered in the pediatric ...well-child visit.
Ample research has shown that low self-esteem increases the risk to develop depressive symptoms during adolescence. However, the mechanism underlying this association remains largely unknown, as well ...as how long adolescents with low self-esteem remain vulnerable to developing depressive symptoms. Insight into this mechanism may not only result in a better theoretical understanding but also provide directions for possible interventions. To address these gaps in knowledge, we investigated whether self-esteem in early adolescence predicted depressive symptoms in late adolescence and early adulthood. Moreover, we investigated a cascading mediational model, in which we focused on factors that are inherently related to self-esteem and the adolescent developmental period: approach and avoidance motivation and the social factors social contact, social problems, and social support. We used data from four waves of the TRAILS study (
N
= 2228, 51% girls): early adolescence (mean age 11 years), middle adolescence (mean age 14 years), late adolescence (mean age 16 years), and early adulthood (mean age 22 years). Path-analyses showed that low self-esteem is an enduring vulnerability for developing depressive symptoms. Self-esteem in early adolescence predicted depressive symptoms in late adolescence as well as early adulthood. This association was independently mediated by avoidance motivation and social problems, but not by approach motivation. The effect sizes were relatively small, indicating that having low self-esteem is a vulnerability factor, but does not necessarily predispose adolescents to developing depressive symptoms on their way to adulthood. Our study contributes to the understanding of the mechanisms underlying the association between self-esteem and depressive symptoms, and has identified avoidance motivation and social problems as possible targets for intervention.
The primary purpose of this study was to examine whether social relationship factors are associated with trajectories of depressive symptoms from adolescence into emerging adulthood. Specifically, ...adolescent-parent communication with mothers and fathers, peer support, and sibling warmth and hostility were examined in relation to depressive symptoms for girls and boys. Adolescents (N = 372; Mage = 16.09; SD = .69; 55% female) from the Mid-Atlantic United States completed surveys in the spring of 2007, 2008, and 2009 and again in the fall of 2014 when they were emerging adults. Growth curve modeling results suggested that communication with mothers and fathers and peer support predicted lower levels of depressive symptoms in adolescence for girls. For boys, peer support predicted lower whereas sibling hostility predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms in adolescence. Further, adolescent-mother communication for girls and adolescent-father communication for boys predicted the decline in depressive symptoms into emerging adulthood. Both sibling warmth and hostility for girls, whereas only sibling hostility for boys, predicted less steep declines in depressive symptoms over time. Findings draw attention to differences in experiences with depressive symptoms by sex and the importance of social relationship factors in the lives of adolescents and emerging adults. Implications for intervention and prevention are discussed.
We investigated a unique way in which adolescent peer influence occurs on social media. We developed a novel functional MRI (fMRI) paradigm to simulate Instagram, a popular social photo-sharing tool, ...and measured adolescents' behavioral and neural responses to likes, a quantifiable form of social endorsement and potential source of peer influence. Adolescents underwent fMRI while viewing photos ostensibly submitted to Instagram. They were more likely to like photos depicted with many likes than photos with few likes; this finding showed the influence of virtual peer endorsement and held for both neutral photos and photos of risky behaviors (e.g., drinking, smoking). Viewing photos with many (compared with few) likes was associated with greater activity in neural regions implicated in reward processing, social cognition, imitation, and attention. Furthermore, when adolescents viewed risky photos (as opposed to neutral photos), activation in the cognitive-control network decreased. These findings highlight possible mechanisms underlying peer influence during adolescence.
We examined how the development of familism values from 5th to 10th grade relates to 12th-grade prosocial tendencies (after controlling for 10th-grade prosocial tendencies) using a stratified random ...sample of 749 Mexican American adolescents (M = 10.42 years of age at 5th grade; 48.9% girls) from 35 culturally and economically diverse neighborhoods. Most of the families (44.3%) were at or below $25,000 in annual income. A 2nd-order linear growth model represented adolescents' familism values at 5th grade (intercepts) and change in familism values from 5th to 10th grade (slopes), with the vast majority of slopes being negative. Higher intercepts predicted greater compliant and emotional prosocial tendencies, and higher (i.e., more positive or less negative) slopes predicted greater dire (female adolescents only) and public prosocial tendencies at 12th grade. The results underscore the important role of familism values in prosocial development among Mexican American adolescents.
Parents' actions and knowledge of adolescents' whereabouts play key roles in preventing risk behaviors in early adolescence, but what enables parents to know about their adolescents' activities and ...what links there are to adolescent risk behaviors, such as substance use and delinquent behavior, remain unclear. In this study, we investigated whether different aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship predict parental knowledge, and we examined the direct and indirect longitudinal associations between these aspects of the parent-adolescent relationship and adolescents' self-reported delinquent behavior and substance use. The participants were 550 parents and their adolescent children from two small and two midsized municipalities in Sweden. Parental data were collected when the adolescents were 13 years old (mean), and adolescent data on risk behaviors were collected on two occasions, when they were 13 and 14 years of age (mean). Structural path analyses revealed that adolescent disclosure, parental solicitation, and parental control predicted parental knowledge, with adolescent disclosure being the strongest source of parental knowledge and the strongest negative predictor of adolescent risk behaviors. Parenting competence and adolescents' connectedness to parents were indirectly, through adolescent disclosure and parental solicitation and parental control, associated with substance use and delinquent behavior. Some paths differed for boys and girls. In conclusion, confident parenting and a close parent-adolescent relationship in which adolescent disclosure is promoted, seem protective of adolescent engagement in risk behaviors.
Background
Psychopathology and risky behaviors increase during adolescence, and understanding which adolescents are most at risk informs prevention and intervention efforts. Pubertal timing relative ...to same‐sex, same‐age peers is a known correlate of adolescent outcomes among both boys and girls. However, it remains unclear whether this relation is better explained by a plausible causal process or unobserved familial liability.
Methods
We extended previous research by examining associations between pubertal timing in early adolescence (age 14) and outcomes in later adolescence (age 17) in a community sample of 2,510 twins (49% boys, 51% girls).
Results
Earlier pubertal timing was associated with more substance use, risk behavior, internalizing and externalizing problems, and peer problems in later adolescence; these effects were small, consistent with previous literature. Follow‐up co‐twin control analyses indicated that within‐twin‐pair differences in pubertal timing were not associated with within‐twin‐pair differences in most adolescent outcomes after accounting for shared familial liability, suggesting that earlier pubertal timing and adolescent outcomes both reflect familial risk factors. Biometric models indicated that associations between earlier pubertal timing and negative adolescent outcomes were largely attributable to shared genetic liability.
Conclusions
Although earlier pubertal timing was associated with negative adolescent outcomes, our results suggests that these associations did not appear to be caused by earlier pubertal timing but were likely caused by shared genetic influences.
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