| Influences on Emotional Development in Adolescents From the time of conception until the time of death a human goes through different stages and different kinds of development. The stages and kinds of development that a human goes through, and how they go through them, can have a dramatic effect on who that human will be in society. The choices we make and the choices made for us play an important role in who and what we will become when we are released into society. One of the most crucial and critical forms of development that we as humans go through is our emotional development. Emotional development spans the continuum from birth until death and is forever changing. However, the time when this development is most critical, it can be argued, is from about eleven years old to nineteen years old, otherwise known as adolescence. It is during this stage in a human's life, that the wrong choice could very easily make or break the entire future for a single individual. It is not necessarily a wrong choice either. For example it could be an insult from a loved one here, or even a lack of attention from someone important there that could dramatically affect an adolescent's emotional development. The every day interactions or non-interactions with other people during adolescence can and will very likely have an impact on who and or what a person will become when they reach adulthood. During adolescence a child will typically spend anywhere from fifty to seventy-five percent of their week at a school in the presence of educators, other adolescents, and administrators. This is a very large portion of time and a direct relationship can be drawn between the amount of time spent in a type of atmosphere, in this case at school, and the either positive or negative outcome of the time spent overall. Because there is such a strong relationship between these two things, it seems only logical that we should want to study them and how one affects the other. The goal of this term paper is to show this correlation through the use of the research that is out there, and prove that the emotional development of an adolescent is a critical part of human development. Monday through Friday from August until May students in the United States are in school from about eight in the morning till three or four in the afternoon. This of course varies from school to school and state to state, but in general it can be considered the average. While at school a student is surrounded by a multitude of stimuli that has the probability to have an affect on a student's emotional development. Teachers, peers, and advertisements, are among a few of the many stimuli that demand a student's attention. The way, in which these stimuli grab the student's attention and hold it, not to mention what they portray and or how they are portrayed can either have a positive influence or a negative influence on an adolescent. It can be argued that by carefully controlling the stimuli that would grab a child's attention, one can help to shape and mold that child into what they would be when released into society. Advertisements, we see them every day, multiple times a day, all of them portraying something a company wants us to buy or to know about. You see them on the highway, on television, video games, in the stores, even in schools. You can't escape from them, they beckon you, 'Come read me. See what I have to offer.' It is almost beyond ridiculous, when you think about it. With the multitude of advertisements out there, its can be quite time consuming and difficult to sort between the bad ones and the good. Obviously cigarette and beer ads are not what you want a child or adolescent to see, although sometimes it can't be helped. Thanks to the FCC though, the content of said ads and others has been regulated. Some of the good ads would be 'The More You Know' ads from television back in the early nineties when celebrities would encourage kids to stay in school and not do drugs and alcohol. These short commercial like ads are seen as beneficial in that, although they grab the attention of the child, they portray a good clean message. In contrast, the beer and cigarette ads, although aimed at adults, do not portray a good clean message. It is often argued that what a child sees is often imitated. Years ago, before the FCC enforced further restrictions on ads, Joe Camel, an icon for Camel cigarettes, was seen as cool by many adolescents. Joe Camel was cool because he smoked Camel cigarettes and upon seeing ads such as these over and over again, adolescents would want to be cool as well and try to imitate what they saw by smoking Camel cigarettes. |