...affects the married couple but the entire family will now live a new life. In this paper I will attempt to refute the claim that an amicable divorce has a less traumatic effect on an adolescent’s development, behavior, social life/relationships, and academics. Key Words: Adolescent, Relationships, Divorce, Resilience, Development, Behavior INTRODUCTION It is estimated that forty percent of all marriages in the United States ended in divorce in 2011 (CDC, 2011). Of the forty percent, more than half of those divorces involved children and/or adolescents (Amato, 2000). Adolescence is a confusing time filled with body changes, the challenge of no longer being a child, but not quite ready for adulthood, and the need to establish their own identity. When a teenager’s parents make the decision to divorce it complicates the teenagers life and interrupts the stability that they need during adolescence. DEVELOPMENTAL EFFECTS The adolescent years are a time when children become teenagers on their journey towards eventually becoming adults. A major developmental shift happens between the ages of twelve and eighteen as teenagers begin to develop their identity. These adolescents have the task of discovering their purpose and place in the world. They are attempting to limit their reliance on their parents although they are not completely ready for independence. Teenagers are attempting to establish their own life through friendships, social networking and activities while they are expected...
Words: 1289 - Pages: 6
...similar to a visual perception. It can change our moods and how we think about ourselves creating low self esteem or high self esteem. During a teenager’s life, we think we are judged by every little action we do or any decision we make. Some are affected more than this than others and this is due to society and the way they think things should be. We can be influenced and pressured by many visual sources such as magazines, T.V., and the main one, the Internet. During the rapid progression of technology, we can do and manipulate things quicker and easier than ever to make them look perfect when in real life it isn’t like that. There is a vast range of new visual images available in this century. What I will focus on today is the way the social visual images in the media influences girls to dress they way they dress, choose the decisions they make and how social pressures affects them. We all know of the media sights like Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on and how we can manipulate photos so it looks like our eyes are as big as a dolls and perfect, or how we can make our skin flawless and glowing. With the help and assistance of make-up and plastic surgery, we can change our whole look. From being pale with small eyes and big nose and small boobs to looking like we live on the beach and have naturally looking doll eyes and a perfect body that seems like it was just given to us. Take this photo for instance. Many people believed in was just the use of...
Words: 818 - Pages: 4
...phrases spit at the parent, who in most cases is hurt or outrages at their child's behavior. But sometimes parents don't realize that their “child” is not a “child” anymore. That their 16 or 17 or even 18 year old needs to be treated like a young adult. This doesn't mean that the teenager should be given unlimited freedom; it just means that the teenager's point of view, opinion and idea should be accounted for. Teenager's also need to see through the eyes of their parents and why they tell them to do thing a certain way. Such as Irene Lebedies who is a family coach and states, “Although teenagers will make their own choices, a good home life can increase the odds that kids will avoid many of the pitfalls of adolescence. Particularly, a kind, warm, solid relationship with parents who demonstrate respect for their children, an interest in their children's activities, and set firm boundaries for those activities may directly or indirectly deter criminal activity, illegal drugs and alcohol use, negative peer pressure, delinquency, sexual promiscuity, and low self-esteem.” (Parenting Teens, 2008) Many parents believe working through the teen years of their child is difficult, but the truth is it is just as hard for the teen as it for the parent. The once cute, cuddly and sweet children suddenly become rebellious, moody teenagers as their parents are left helplessly alone. But it's not only rough on the parents, the teenager is facing a time of confusion, emotions and maybe even...
Words: 2142 - Pages: 9
...Being a teenager is an exciting, scary, and overall stressful time in one’s life. Many changes occur physically and mentally and one can experience a new range of different emotions. A teen is also influenced by surrounding environmental factors then they used to be. Teenagers dream of doing cool things away from their parents and gaining a whole new level of independence that all begins when they turn about 13. That is actually a naïve view of what becoming a teenager is really all about. When an adolescent enters their teenage years, puberty begins. The body goes through major growth spurts that affects the body and mind. Boys will shoot up in height and develop a deeper-toned voice leaving them to feel like a man. A girl’s body will fill out as they develop breasts, pubic hair, and begin their menstrual cycle. The increase of hormones comes into play and mentally alters a girl's perception and attitude. Also, their voice will change too, but it will not be as dramatic as it is for a young boy. This stage of adolescence is very awkward and embarrassing for most kids because they aren't sure how to react to all that is changing within their own person, and that is understandable. Now aside from all that going on, they enter the middle and high school years. Those years are hands down the most judgmental, tough, self-discovering years a human will go through. When becoming a teenager, social life starts to really form....
Words: 1644 - Pages: 7
...A Close Up Into John Green’s Looking For Alaska “I may die young,” she said. “But at least I’ll die young” (Green 50). I didn’t have to think twice when I was thinking about which book was my top favorite to read this semester. Looking for Alaska by: John Green was by far my favorite book of all time! Looking for Alaska is about a guy named Miles, otherwise known as Pudge, is fascinated by famous last words, and he’s tired of being at home all the time. So he leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the “Great Perhaps.” Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed-up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps. Looking for Alaska shows a...
Words: 693 - Pages: 3
...advancement of technology. Starting from 1990s, the majority of our population did not have cable, teenagers back then relied more on news papers, magazines as internet was considered a luxury for the ordinary population at that time. With the passage of time, trends changed. Technological advancements and an economic boom have lead to increases in the standard of living. Teenagers have been exposed to media like never before. Cable networks and internet that were once luxuries have now become necessities. Media has a great influence in the development of a teenager’s personality and character. “The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses,” said the American black militant leader Malcolm X (qtd. in Krishna). The power or influence of media can easily alter or change a teenager’s opinion. This means that media can depict an ordinary thing so negatively that it may compel people to believe or act in quite the opposite way. So it is necessary to analyze the effects of media on teenagers because of the influence it has on them. Media can be both helpful and harmful to teenagers. But the negative effects of Media on teenagers clearly outweigh the positive ones which is becoming a great worry for the society. The amount of excessive violence in media – be it the television, movies or the video games, tends to increase aggressive tendencies...
Words: 2508 - Pages: 11
...attributed to students nearing the end of high school and college, whose symptoms include laziness, procrastination and apathy toward schoolwork. Towards the end of the senior year of high school, many seniors have already been accepted into colleges, have plans to study a certain area or will already have jobs lined up for them when they graduate high school. Many are so focused on the future that the present is no longer important to them. English class doesn’t hold value to a future car mechanic. Biology is irrelevant to the senior pursuing the dream of being an artist. They have a strong desire to free themselves from the educational system that has held them there for 12 years. Although they have grown as a person and a student, in the eyes of a senior, the monotonous details of their school day have...
Words: 1207 - Pages: 5
...Sixteen years after a sixteen-year-old wrote this book, Francis Ford Coppola turned this novel into a movie. The book is a coming-of-age novel, but the movie focuses on the characters' loss of innocence. The movie follows the story line very closely. The reader is only told that this story takes place in the southwest, but the movie places it in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the year 1966. It also changes the conflict from the East Side versus the West side to the northside versus the southside. This minor directional change was probably made due to the relative time proximity to the musical West Side Story, which won the best picture Academy Award in l961. However, as with all movies, character insight that is critical to understanding the story is lost when the format goes from the written word to the screen. Ponyboy is telling us the story, the same as in the book, but the 91-minute film only glosses over many character relationships. <a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/CNSite/;navArea=CLIFFSNOTES2_LITERATURE;type=Lit_Note;kword=SE_Hinton;kword=The_Outsiders;contentItemId=139;tile=3;sz=300x250;ord=123456789?" target="_blank"><img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/CNSite/;navArea=CLIFFSNOTES2_LITERATURE;type=Lit_Note;kword=SE_Hinton;kword=The_Outsiders;contentItemId=139;tile=3;sz=300x250;ord=123456789?" width="300" height="250" border="0" alt="" /></a> With the exception of Ponyboy, the viewer misses out on knowing most of the novel's characters. Darry and Soda...
Words: 2470 - Pages: 10
... 1 Making the Most Difficult Decision of My Life John G. Sumner American InterContinental University A Difficult Decision 2 Abstract This Essay will discuss, the history and all research I did online and in different books about Alzheimer’s Disease. Plus some facts that I have recently found on new Drugs and Nano Bio-Technology. Also a new Article that supports a theory of mine that I have had for years. The most difficult decision that I ever had to do, was to except that my dad had Alzheimer’s and put him in a Nursing Home. A Difficult Decision 3 Making the Most Difficult Decision of My Life This started back the fall of 1996, I started noticing dad forgetting a lot of simple things and getting upset & argue about them too. He thought people were moving things on him to make him go crazy. In fact he actually...
Words: 1506 - Pages: 7
...Holden Caulfield: Protector of Innocence The novel The Catcher in the Rye is a coming of age tale of a teenager’s journey into a mental breakdown. The main character, Holden Caulfield, sees the world as an extremely phony, cynical place that he wishes to escape from. As a result of this, he forms the idea that the only way to be free of the hypocrisy and cynicism of society is to maintain one’s childlike immaturity and innocence. Because of this idea, throughout the novel, Holden is trying desperately to hold on the shreds of innocence that he has left, all while trying to protect the innocence of those around him as well. Two minor characters mentioned in the novel that Holden tries to protect, Sunny and Phoebe, both display to the reader signs of developing maturity. Holden’s interactions with both Sunny and Phoebe provide prime examples of how even though Holden tries desperately to protect their innocence, growing up cannot be prevented. One of Holden’s most prominent traits throughout the novel is that he is has this urgent need to protect the people around him from losing their innocence like he did when his brother passed. Even though he constantly drinks, smokes, and curses, Holden’s main goal throughout the text is to make sure that innocence is maintained as long as possible before a person grows up and matures. “He struggles to preserve his own tenuous hold on youthful innocence-or as he sometimes puts it, ‘niceness’-and despairs when he finds that innocence lost...
Words: 1343 - Pages: 6
...abuse in teens is often not recognized when something can be easily done about it. Parents need to be more involved in their children’s lives and make them aware of what marijuana does to their body and the consequences of having/smoking it. In this paper I’m going to explain why teenagers use drugs and what the major consequences for using it are and also how it can affects a person life. What is marijuana? Marijuana is a green, brown or gray mixture of dried, shredded flowers and leaves of the hemp plant (Cannabis sativa). You may hear some people call it by street names such as Mary Jane, pot, weed, gangster, or chronic. Marijuana is used in many ways. The most common method is smoking it rolled into a cigarette called a “joint” or “nail”. It also can be use in a water pipe called a bong. One can even use it in tea or mix it with food. It was stated in a 2009 survey called Monitoring the Future, about 7 percent of 8th graders, 16 percent of 10th graders, and 21 percent 12th graders had used marijuana in the month before the survey. Marijuana use declined from the late 1990s through 2007, with a decrease in past-year use of more than 20 percent in all three grades combined from 2000 to 2007. I never knew how many teenagers are using these drugs and they and most are just entering high school. I feel that most teens lack confidence and give into peer pressure easily especially when it come to being accepted into certain groups or clicks in high school. Some teenagers...
Words: 1910 - Pages: 8
...World in Stitches “Jennifer Lopez”, “Kim Kardashian”, even “Barbie” are some of the people or things that people obsess over to look like, so they get plastic surgery to look like them. Cosmetic Surgery has been a growing fascination for many people over the last couple of decades, even though it has been around for centuries. The public eye has been watching movie stars and rock stars enhance their looks by getting breast implants, nose jobs, lip jobs etc. Shows on TV and images produced by the media will make people do almost anything to fit the world’s standards of the perfect body, perfect face and even the perfect toes. Plastic surgery offers a quick fix to help achieve this goal but no matter how much surgery nothing or no one will be perfect. With cosmetic surgery being made affordable to more people than ever before, more individuals are getting cosmetic surgery to look like the perfect person or the favorite celebrity. But then, there are some people who get plastic surgery not to just look like the famous celebrity but also because of the parents who pressure the child or teenager to get cosmetic surgery due to the child or teenager’s “abnormalities” and “low self-esteem”. Although cosmetic surgery can help with low-self esteem, images, shows produced by the media and even some parents are the problems that many Americans of all ages deal with to want to look like the perfect person or the famous A-list celebrity. From the beginning of time people of every race and...
Words: 1938 - Pages: 8
...What is social media? What comes into your mind when asked about social media? What is it about social media that attracted quite a lot of students in this new era? According to the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary, social media are “forms of electronic communication (as Web sites for social networking and micro-blogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (as videos)”. No wonder why students nowadays are so caught up in technology. If you would look around, you’d probably notice people looking down on their phones with their eyes locked on their screens. Social media is now a norm that today’s society has adjusted to from a conservative culture. It has become a common change for people referring to their social lives. In fact, basic personal human interaction is slowly becoming displaced by this new era of technology. Unlike in personal human interaction, social media provides the convenience and the essential communication for venturing into this changing world. However, personal human interaction also gives us opportunities to be more physically healthy; talking to people, and basically being more active outside compared to being silent and...
Words: 2153 - Pages: 9
...I. INTRODUCTION In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety. In general, sex is a sexual activity done by male and female to produce a new organism. Sex is used to express and to unite the love of two persons. In Indonesia, sex was a very sacred process that was only done by a marriage couple. The only reason to have sex is to have child. Nobody talks about relationships, about intimate feeling, moreover about sex. In Indonesia sex was taboo. As time pass by, Indonesia becoming a developing country. Which means it has to be more global so it can compete with other countries. By entering the globalization era, Indonesia enters a completely different world. It has to adjust its culture in a lot of aspects, such as language, education, entertainment, etc. Of course there's price to pay for a more modern country. Not only influenced by the good things, but also the bad things. The one example that we will discuss is about sex. Nowadays, people are becoming very familiar with the term sex. Most of people already understand what it is and what it is for. Which is good, but now the problem is, people start to have sex before they get married. We know that western culture allows sex before marriage. Not only that, 98% people there lost their virginity when they are around 15-17. For them, it is almost weird when somebody is still a virgin when they are in college. Which...
Words: 4269 - Pages: 18
...by an invisible intentional agent or the seeking and finding of confirmatory evidence for what we already believe. There are numerous conspiracies in America today, and many scholars have tried to prove or portray such conspiracies. However, a conspiracy that has been misinterpreted by the public eye is that of the Illuminati. The word Illuminati derives from the Latin word Illumine, which means, "To be enlightened”. According to dictionary.com, the illuminati is an organization of persons possessing, or claiming to possess, superior enlightenment (Dictionary). The organizations ultimate goal is to create a one-world government, known as the "New World Order", to control the word and the minds of people (Adam Weishaupt). The word “Illuminati” means “the brethren of the free spirit” or “the enlightened ones,” meaning these humans can do anything as long as their souls are above sin (Browne 133). In order words, through this secret organization, humans can do anything through sin and Satan. The Illuminati was founded in 1776 in Bavaria by a scholar named, Adam Weishaupt, who was a professor at Ingolstadt (“Illuminati,” Columbia). One of their means by achieving this goal exists through the mass media. Pop culture plays a tremendous role on depicting some of these instances, as many are said to mention the illuminati. How is the illuminati referenced in American pop culture and its function? Firstly, I will discuss what conspiracy theories are in general. Secondly I will talk about...
Words: 4848 - Pages: 20
