A science-based understanding of adolescent development can help us create policies and programs that more effectively help young people thrive. STEPS for Youth helps you bring developmental science into your policy or program design sessions with insights from the science of adolescent development, curated by the experts at UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent.
Decades of research shows that adolescence–approximately ages 10 to 25–is a period of remarkable opportunity. The cognitive, physical, and psychological changes that take place during these years help adolescents to learn from the environments, experiences, and relationships that surround them in ways that can profoundly shape their trajectories and prepare them to succeed in adulthood.
Unfortunately, the policies and social systems that serve youth during this developmentally sensitive period are often not aligned with the developmental needs of the adolescent years.
Actionable insights from research into adolescent brain and social development offer policymakers, community leaders, and youth-serving practitioners a tremendous opportunity to help shape positive development during these critical years.
The science of adolescent development is just one of many important inputs into designing effective policy and practices for youth. We hope that policymakers and youth-serving practitioners can use this research-based information as a first step as they partner with their communities to help all youth thrive.
The UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent offers the STEPS Check In as a tool to help policymakers and youth-serving organizations review their understanding of the core developmental needs of adolescents, update their knowledge with new insights from ongoing research, and consider ideas for applying further research-based approaches within policy and practice settings.
The science-informed questions posed in this Check In are offered to spark conversations and provide additional ideas for enhancing existing policies and programs for youth. When this research-based Check In is used at the start of policy discussions, it may enhance the insights of community members, policymakers, and practitioners as they consider policy options.
Does your policy or program…
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Learn more about the importance of contribution to positive development.
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Learn more about building skills for decision making and emotional regulation in adolescence.
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Learn more about the importance of support from caring adults during adolescence.
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Learn more about how we develop a positive sense of identity during adolescence.
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Learn more about the role of sleep in youth mental health and well-being.
The concepts outlined in the STEPS for Youth Check In and in the resource library, below, are a starting point.
Understanding the developmental science of adolescence can help generate new ways of thinking about the challenges and opportunities our youth face and ultimately advance science-inspired solutions, systems, and support.
For more specific examples of policies and programs that draw from developmental science, along with a list of external resources on existing programs and practices relevant to adolescents, read A Developmental Path to Policy and Programs.
Additional resources within STEPS for Youth are a complement to this checklist and tailor the expertise of the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent to the needs of policy and practice settings.
Contact us with any questions that arise as you engage with these resources.
To learn more about the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent, visit developingadolescent.org.
Browse through the library below for more content on the core needs of adolescent development, deeper dives into some of the specific issues that affect young people, and additional resources including reports from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence (NSCA).
Research Roundup | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination
This roundup provides an overview of recent research about adolescent development that examined the importance of parents’ ethnic-racial identity, the benefits of a mindfulness intervention, the link between agency and sense of purpose, the association between brain development and resilience to stress, and the link between heart rate variability and mental health.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research about adolescent development that examined the importance of parents’ ethnic-racial identity, the benefits of a mindfulness intervention, the link between agency and sense of purpose, the association between brain development and resilience to stress, and the link between heart rate variability and mental health.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing CDA@psych.ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
(Nature Communications, July 2024)
In this study, Meike Hettwer and colleagues examined whether resilience to adversity during adolescence relates to ongoing development of brain regions that support emotion regulation and cognitive control. In a longitudinal study of 141 adolescents ranging from 14 to 26 years old, the researchers measured mental health and environmental stressors (including dysfunctional family environments, significant adverse life events, and low socioeconomic status) at two timepoints, one to two years apart. The researchers quantified the extent to which each adolescent was susceptible or resilient to stress — that is, whether the youth demonstrated worse-than-expected or better-than-expected mental health given their stressful life experiences. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at each timepoint, they examined whether resilience to adversity related to myelination, the process by which a protective, insulating layer called myelin develops around neurons, allowing for efficient communication throughout networks in the brain.
The researchers found that adolescents who demonstrated increasing resilience to stress over time also exhibited greater myelination within the anterolateral prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain that supports emotion regulation and cognitive control. Together, these findings suggest that efficient maturation of prefrontal networks helps adolescents effectively regulate their emotions and flexibly adapt to environmental stressors.
Why this matters: These findings suggest that myelination, a critical part of adolescent brain development, may promote resilience in the face of adversity during adolescence by enabling efficient functioning of still-developing emotion regulation networks. Interventions that help build resilience during adolescence, like strong social support, could contribute to these critical connections in the developing adolescent brain.
(American Psychologist, November 2024)
In this study, Juan del Toro and colleagues explored whether parents reduce the risk of early pubertal development in young adolescents who experience ethnic-racial discrimination. Using data from the ABCD study, the researchers analyzed survey data from 1,651 adolescent siblings (average age = 11.49 years) and their parents. Based on prior work demonstrating that chronic stress, including ethnic–racial discrimination, can accelerate biological aging, they tested whether adolescents who reported greater ethnic-racial discrimination also exhibited advanced pubertal development for their age. They found that adolescents who self-reported greater ethnic-racial discrimination than their siblings showed more advanced pubertal development. However, they also found that parents’ own ethnic-racial identities might play a protective role: The relationship between discrimination and pubertal maturation was weakened in households with parents who reported a greater sense of belonging and commitment to their ethnic-racial group. This suggests that parents’ own ethnic-racial identities can help confer resilience to the negative consequences of discrimination in adolescents.
Why this is important: This study showcases the powerful role that parents can play in promoting resilience in adolescents experiencing ethnic-racial discrimination.
(Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, December 2024)
Research has shown that higher heart rate variability is associated with an increased ability to respond adaptively to stress and effectively regulate emotions. To test this idea, Gillian Debra and colleagues examined whether the association between rumination (repetitive thinking about one’s problems) and negative emotions was reduced in adolescents with higher resting heart rate variability. In a sample of 235 adolescents (average age = 13.48 years), researchers measured adolescents’ heart rate variability while they watched a five-minute video depicting natural landscapes. Then, over fourteen days, participants received five smartphone surveys each day. In each survey, they rated their current negative emotions (sad, angry, anxious, uncertain, and stressed) and indicated how much they had been ruminating about their negative emotions. The researchers found that adolescents with higher heart rate variability showed less of a link between rumination and negative emotions.
Why this is important: This research demonstrates that higher heart rate variability may benefit adolescent mental health in everyday life and suggests that interventions focused on increasing heart rate variability could promote adolescent wellbeing.
(Frontiers in Psychology, August 2024)
In this study, Olga Tymofiyeva, Benjamin Sipes, and colleagues tested the efficacy of a mindfulness intervention in 14-to 18-year-old adolescents. A group of 100 adolescents were randomly assigned to an intervention group or waitlist-control group. Adolescents assigned to the Training for Awareness, Resilience, and Action (TARA) intervention completed a 12-week training program of remote, weekly sessions and at-home practice. During the training, participants learned about topics including stress responses and strategies to regulate emotions and practiced mindfulness techniques including breathing exercises, yoga sequences, and meditation. The researchers assessed brain connectivity, sleep, and emotional well-being before and after the program. Adolescents who completed the TARA intervention, but not those in the control group, reported significantly improved sleep following the program. The researchers also found that the intervention led to increased connectivity within brain networks that support interoception, or awareness of internal bodily sensations, which has been linked to positive mental health.
Why this is important: This research provides evidence that a remote mindfulness intervention may benefit adolescent wellbeing by improving sleep and modifying “interoceptive networks,” the brain circuitry that enables adolescents to tune in to the physical sensations within their own bodies and is related to emotional well-being.
(Child Development, November 2024)
In this study, Kaylin Ratner and colleagues assessed whether adolescents who participated in a self-driven learning program experienced increases in their daily sense of purpose. During the program, 321 under-resourced adolescents between 14- and 19-year-olds explored a self-identified passion (e.g., software development, animal therapy, criminal justice) for about 10 weeks. Participants were provided with a stipend and were matched with a supportive adult to check in with during the program. For each day of the program, adolescents reported their daily sense of purpose (“How purposeful do you feel today?”), and researchers analyzed how each adolescent’s answer to this question changed over the course of the program. On average, adolescents in the program reported high and relatively stable senses of purpose over time. Adolescents who reported a greater sense of agency — measured by their self-reported motivation and ability to pursue and achieve personal goals — at baseline were more likely to experience increases in their sense of purpose. The authors suggest that interventions that increase one’s sense of agency could help adolescents benefit more from out-of-school opportunities.
Why this is important: These results suggest that increasing young people’s sense of agency during adolescence could provide youth with a greater sense of purpose and make out-of-school learning opportunities even more rewarding.
Council Report | Education | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Digital Tech
This council report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence provides research-informed recommendations for middle-school and other early-adolescent educators to help promote mental health.
Early adolescence—roughly ages 10 to 13, or the middle school years—is a unique time in development. During these first few years of adolescence, young people experience accelerated physical changes related to puberty, rapid brain development, changes in self-image, and more intense peer relationships. These changes make young adolescents particularly sensitive to the relationships and experiences around them, creating a window of opportunity to support youth to build positive mental health.
Middle school educators can be a crucial first line in promoting each young person’s well-being. Teachers are not mental health professionals, but the time they spend with their students during this pivotal period of development puts them in a position to help youth build positive mental health and reduce the likelihood that mental health challenges become more severe over time.
This report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence offers recommendations and resources for educators to support students based on four key areas that are especially important to positive development during early adolescence:
For more information, visit the resources called out within this brief:
In this online panel discussion, report authors Jennifer Pfeifer, Leslie Leve, Rhonda Boyd, and Joanna Williams, discuss with sleep expert, Ariel A. Williamson, what the research says on how we can effectively promote positive mental health during early adolescence.
Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Out-of-School Time | Digital Tech | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination
This fact sheet reviews research that explains why adolescents are more motivated to take risks, why that’s important to learning and development, and how policies and practices could support healthy risk taking to promote positive development.
When policies and programs support adolescents to explore their world and take positive risks, it leads to healthier, more connected communities.
Being able and willing to take risks and try new things is a part of our natural tendency to explore the world during adolescence. It’s a fundamental aspect of learning that helps us develop our skills, discover who we are, and ultimately expand our worlds beyond the familiarity of home.
Research on adolescent brain development helps explain why we’re more motivated to approach things that feel uncertain or scary during these years, and why these risks are so important to learning and development. It also provides insights into how policies and practices could recognize this drive for new and exciting experiences and provide opportunities for healthy versions of risk taking that can support positive development.
Brain development during adolescence encourages exploration. The increase in hormones at the beginning of puberty launches changes in the “reward center” of our brain. Heightened activity in this area of our brain during adolescence, compared to early in childhood or adulthood, makes us more sensitive to the rewards and good feelings that come from surprises and new experiences. This increases our motivation to explore the world, take risks, and learn from the results.
This enthusiasm to try new things is important: new experiences cause new neural connections to form and, with repeated use, strengthen within our brain. When we have opportunities to safely try new things and to learn from mistakes along the way, we build connections that support learning.
Exploration and risk taking are an important part of healthy development during adolescence. Research has shown that adolescents are more willing than adults to lean into uncertainty and explore situations in which there is a potential for a reward (in whatever form) but the outcome is not assured, and this exploration can lead to a more positive mood.
This tolerance for ambiguous outcomes is essential to learning and development during adolescence. Anything that runs the risk of failure or rejection—like attempting to learn a new skill, running for student government, trying out for a team or school play, asking someone out, or standing up for a friend—can feel uncertain or even scary, especially during adolescence when most of us are trying these things in new ways or for the first time. Adult support can help young people to take on new challenges, even those that seem intimidating.
Racism and other forms of discrimination curtail opportunities for healthy risk taking. Unfortunately, opportunities to learn from exploration and risk taking are not equally available to all of us during adolescence. A history of racial and economic inequities has led to fewer resources for organized activities in schools and neighborhoods with higher populations of youth of color.
Racism and bias, such as Black and other ethnic minority youth sometimes being perceived as more adult-like than their same-aged White peers, often result in harsher consequences (such as suspension, expulsion, arrest, or incarceration) for mistakes that might be labeled “learning experiences” when made by White adolescents.
Adolescents need healthy outlets to channel their motivation to take risks. Although not all adolescents are comfortable with risks, our reward system during these years is generally more excited by risks than at other times in our lives. Without healthy outlets, the attraction of risk and novelty can make us more vulnerable to unhealthy behaviors, such as reckless driving or drug and alcohol misuse.
Avenues to channel this motivation for new experiences into positive exploration include:
Policies and programs can provide outlets for healthy risk-taking to support the developmental need to explore during these years and direct the desire for new experiences toward positive activities such as trying a new sport, engaging in activism, or making new friends.
➢ Secondary schools and college admissions processes should encourage adolescents to take academic risks. For example, high schools could provide broad access to advanced classes and new subjects for all interested students—and college admissions offices could value attempts at challenging coursework that may result in lower letter grades.
➢ Identify and counter racism and other forms of discrimination that ultimately result in young people from different backgrounds facing disparate consequences for taking risks. Recognize that racism and bias can cause adults to perceive Black and other minority youth as more adult-like than their same-aged White peers.
➢ Fund and support an array of opportunities for youth to try new activities at school, at home, in the community, and in the digital world.
Science Spotlight | Education | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time
This spotlight provides research-based insights into how opportunities to contribute and to have those contributions recognized can build autonomy, agency, and a healthy sense of purpose during adolescence.
Adolescence is an important time for contributing to others. During the developmental period between childhood and adulthood, we forge our sense of who we are and how we want to contribute to the world. Throughout our adolescent years, our physical, cognitive, and emotional capabilities mature in ways that allow us to contribute to our friends, family, schools, and broader community in deeper, more meaningful ways than when we were younger.
Opportunities to contribute, to reflect on the meaning of our contributions, and to have our contributions recognized can build our autonomy, agency, and identity and support our sense of purpose—the forward-looking feeling that our lives are directed and significant. All of these are important to positive development during adolescence, helping us navigate adversity and set and achieve goals in ways that can impact us into adulthood.
One of the important developmental tasks of our adolescent years is learning who we are and how we can contribute to the world around us. Contribution becomes especially important during our adolescent years—the beginning of puberty, around 9 or 10 years old, initiates a series of interacting changes in our bodies, social lives, and within our brains that make us particularly sensitive to our social environments as we continue to build and refine our cognitive and social abilities.
During adolescence, our sensitivity to social interactions increases and combines with other developmental changes including a growing ability to consider the needs and perspectives of others, motivation to explore and pursue new experiences,6 and a new desire to create meaningful relationships and feel respected by others.
Research has highlighted a network of brain regions that support our emotional and social responses when we contribute to others.
The ventral striatum, which is active in how we process rewards, matures relatively early in adolescence. High levels of activity in the ventral striatum are associated with greater tendency for contributing behavior and a heightened ability to understand the perspectives of others. The temporoparietal junction and the medial prefrontal cortex, which continue to develop into our early 20s, are also involved in contributing to others, supporting cognitive functions such as memory and attention as well as sociability.
Creating opportunities for adolescents to engage with and contribute to the broader community can help foster social and emotional skills, cultivate positive relationships, shape identity, promote civic engagement, and impact well-being across physical, cognitive, social, and emotional domains.
Research suggests that contribution, service to others, and other prosocial activities play an important role in adolescents’ social and emotional development. Opportunities to contribute and to see contribution modeled by others can increase young people’s empathy and compassion, two essential skills for building positive and meaningful social relationships. Indeed, adolescents who engage in helping behaviors more frequently tend to have stronger relationships with their peers and are also more likely to be accepted and popular among their peers.
Research has linked contributing in adolescence to lower rates of depression as well as to decreases in depressive symptoms over time. For example, one study found that young people tend to experience higher positive moods on days they engage in helping activities. Another study showed that an intervention that assigned youth to perform acts of kindness for others increased positive affect and decreased stress in adolescents who tend to be more altruistic.
Contributing may also support physical health. Volunteering and other forms of contribution have been linked to lower inflammatory markers, cholesterol levels, and body mass index, and may reduce the negative effects of stress on health outcomes.
Adolescents with higher levels of depression show especially strong associations between prosocial (positive or helpful) behavior and positive mood, suggesting that interventions that support contributing might be especially effective for adolescents who are depressed. The positive impact of volunteering on adolescents’ depressive symptoms has even spurred experts to argue that volunteering should be incorporated into existing treatments for adolescent depression.
Contributing within a community involves navigating new social environments and working with diverse groups of people towards a common goal. This process can help young people gain a deeper understanding of their role in society. Recognizing (and being recognized for) the impact of their actions on others can help young people feel a sense of purpose and self-efficacy, improve self-esteem, and boost a positive sense of identity.
Contribution can also help youth feel a sense of belonging and connectedness, increasing their motivation to improve society and enhancing their sense of civic responsibility. Research suggests that the skills young people learn from contributing support academic and career success, as contribution has been linked to better academic performance in adolescents. In addition, more civic engagement (including volunteering, voting, and activism) in adolescence is linked to higher income and education level in adulthood.
Incorporating contribution into classrooms and school curricula can help support positive development in adolescence. For example, a school-based intervention for middle school students that provides activities, conversations, and lessons about prosocial behavior was shown to increase helping behavior and decrease aggression40 and increase students’ grades by the end of middle school.
INSIGHT: Adolescents with higher levels of depression show especially strong associations between prosocial (positive or helpful) behavior and positive mood, suggesting that interventions that support contributing might be especially effective for adolescents who are depressed. The positive impact of volunteering on adolescents’ depressive symptoms has even spurred experts to argue that volunteering should be incorporated into existing treatments for adolescent depression.
An after-school program called Youth Empowerment Solutions (YES) was designed to promote middle school students’ positive behaviors despite institutional disadvantages (such as racism) they might have faced. The goals of the program included providing students with opportunities to learn about African history and African-American contributions to U.S. history, and to work to prevent youth violence and make other positive changes in their community. After completing the YES program, the young people involved were more likely to show helping behaviors toward others and less likely to engage in verbal or physical aggression. These benefits continued over the following year and were especially strong for Black youth, highlighting the potential for fostering positive youth development through programs that help youth develop confidence in themselves, think critically about their community, and become involved in community change efforts.
Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Foster Care | Juvenile Justice
This fact sheet gives a summary of six key developmental needs that research tells us are critical to healthy development during our adolescent years.
Research into adolescent development points to core developmental needs during our adolescent years. These key developmental needs of adolescence include:
Heightened activity in the “reward center” of our brain during adolescence increases our motivation to try new things and explore the world, which help us discover who we are, expand our skills, and ultimately leave the familiarity of home. Policies and programs that provide opportunities for healthy risk taking help youth channel these tendencies in ways that support positive development.
During adolescence, we’re increasingly able to support others in deeper, more meaningful ways than when we were younger. Experiences in which we make a positive difference help us develop a sense of meaning and purpose, which support wellbeing, academic success, and resilience. Policies and programs should ensure all young people have opportunities to contribute.
Our cognitive and emotional abilities mature during adolescence in ways that help us develop new skills related to making good decisions and navigating our emotions. We continue to build these skills as we practice in real-world situations with support to make and learn from mistakes. Supportive adults should provide them with opportunities for increasing agency in decisions that impact their lives.
Secure and supportive relationships with caring adults when we’re adolescents are essential to our physical and mental health, helping us build resilience, develop a positive sense of self, and form a positive racial and ethnic identity. Programs and policies can help prioritize strong family bonds and provide mentors for youth.
During adolescence, our relationships, experiences, and the messages we receive about our racial, gender, and other identities help us form a positive sense of identity and belonging. Policies and programs that provide opportunities to explore roles and activities can help youth discover what they value, who they are, and who they want to become.
Changes in our brain and our social settings during adolescence increase our social awareness and motivate us to learn the skills we need for the more complex social demands of adulthood. These changes also amplify the impact of discrimination. Policies and programs can ensure that all young people have ample positive pathways to gain respect.
Extensive research shows that healthy development, learning, and positive mental health during our adolescent years all require healthy, restful sleep. Schools, employers, youth-serving programs, and youth-focused residential settings should prioritize providing young people with schedules and conditions that promote quality sleep.
Science Spotlight | Education | Community Engagement | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination
This spotlight highlights adolescent development research aimed to help school leaders and policymakers more equitably meet the needs of adolescent learners and enhance their attachment to school.
Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. We know from extensive research about adolescent brain development that these are critical years for learning and development. In addition to academic learning, the social and emotional learning that occurs through lessons, experiences, and relationships within school settings are important for youth to thrive, making chronic absenteeism particularly concerning among middle and high school students.
High rates of chronic absenteeism–a measure that describes the number of students who miss, for any reason, at least 10 percent of school days in an academic year–have persisted since in-person schooling was first curtailed by COVID-19. School districts that served students from neighborhoods with high levels of poverty tended to see the highest rates of chronic absenteeism prior to the pandemic and the rate of chronically absent students significantly increased in these districts following the pandemic, raising urgent questions about how best to mitigate a trend that contributes to historical inequity.
Research indicates that there are multiple underlying causes of chronic absenteeism ranging from structural conditions, such as poor transportation infrastructure and teacher shortages, to student-level factors, such as students’ health, home responsibilities, and feeling of connectedness to supportive adults., Initial efforts to understand the continuing effects of the pandemic-specific spike in chronic absenteeism indicate that these causes remain relevant today.
For example, in spring of 2023, Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) conducted a series of statewide interviews to investigate the root causes of student absenteeism and a range of societal, family, and school-related factors emerged. PACE also noted student-level factors, including inconsistent access to basic needs, uncertainty about safety, lack of a sense of belonging and connection, and inability to experience “competence, independence, and freedom” within school settings.
Approaches to addressing these underlying challenges at the middle and high school levels should be responsive to the developmental needs of adolescents, which can be distinct from those of younger learners. School leaders and policymakers can leverage insights from decades of research in the developmental science of adolescence to help navigate a path toward more equitably meeting the needs of adolescent learners and enhancing their attachment to school.
Adolescents are motivated to explore, discover, and connect with the world around them. Regions in the brain responsible for motivation, learning, and feelings of reward become more active and responsive to social experience during adolescence. Connections between these regions and the networks responsible for planning and social cognition are strengthened and refined in response to experiences and relationships throughout the years between childhood and adulthood, providing new capacities for learning, emotional development, and social behavior.
Together, these changes create unique opportunities for adolescent learning and development. Youth are more likely to take risks to learn about the world around them. They also are more tolerant of uncertainty and more likely to update their prior knowledge in response to new environments or making errors. Adolescents are driven to understand the world and their place in it, both among their peers in school as well as broader society. Conversations with youth about their future goals can help them cultivate a sense of purpose and encourage a desire to have an impact upon their worlds. Understanding these unique capacities for learning can help spark ideas about how to ensure that schools can best engage adolescent learners as an attempt to address at least one contributing factor to chronic absenteeism.
There is no universal solution to chronic absenteeism, and experts in education suggest that districts will need to develop strategies tailored to their local settings. As leaders partner with young people and their communities to create and test new approaches to restore attendance, they should aim to close the gap between the developmental needs of adolescents and the school-based settings young people encounter. Specifically, they can:
➢ Provide compelling and supported ways for middle and high school students to explore and learn from experience. Thoughtfully designed efforts both inside the classroom (such as project-based learning) and after school (for example, interest-based clubs and activities) leverage the natural inclination to explore and learn from experience during adolescence.
➢ Incorporate ways for students to contribute to others at school and in their broader communities. Longstanding research on classroom environments points to the ways in which incorporating student participation in decision-making promotes motivation and achievement. Similarly, extracurricular programs that encourage adolescents’ contributions to their school, teams, and communities enhance students’ attachment to school.
➢ Build supportive relationships between adolescents and caring adults in their schools and communities. Having these relationships at home and in the school and community is predictive of virtually every aspect of healthy adolescent development, including engagement with school.
➢ Identify and eliminate inequities in the availability and quality of adolescents’ opportunities to have these vital experiences and relationships. Ensure that all youth, including those impacted by racial, ethnic, or other forms of discrimination as well as those facing challenges related to poverty or financial instability, can meaningfully access opportunities to explore, contribute, and form strong relationships with trusted adults.
Science Spotlight | Education | Mental Health | Foster Care | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination | Juvenile Justice
This spotlight offers examples of policies and programs that take a research-informed, developmental approach to supporting adolescents.
Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity, both for young people, who are learning and growing rapidly during these years, and for our broader society as we choose how to support young people on their path to adulthood. By aligning policies and programs with insights from developmental science, policymakers and youth-serving organizations can find ways to more effectively meet the distinct needs of adolescents and support youth to become healthy, thriving adults who can contribute to their families, communities, and the wider world.
In the last several decades, research on adolescent development has dramatically increased our understanding of how young people ages 10 to 25 develop psychologically, emotionally, and physically. Scientists with research expertise in neuroscience, psychology, biological sciences, sociology, education, and public health, among other disciplines, have contributed to our understanding of the core developmental needs of young people. Researchers, often in partnership with young people themselves, have also investigated how these needs might be met in settings that shape adolescents’ lives, such as school, home, the workplace, faith-based communities, and out-of-school activities. As a result of this work, we know more today than ever before about the types of experiences and relationships young people require during adolescence to advance toward healthy adulthood.
Understanding the developmental science of adolescence can help generate new ways of thinking about the challenges and opportunities our youth face and ultimately advance science-inspired solutions, systems, and support.
We offer below a few examples of policies and programs that draw inspiration from a developmental approach toward adolescence. In addition, the appendix included in the PDF highlights external clearinghouses that collect and assess evidence on existing programs and practices relevant to adolescents, which may be useful as you consider how to identify and support the core developmental needs of adolescents in your policy or program.
Research suggests that young people ages 18 to 25 who have committed moderate criminal offenses experience worse life outcomes and higher rates of recidivism when they are formally processed in the criminal justice system–that is, when they proceed through a standard series of court appearances and resultant sanctions, such as time in detention. This suggests a misalignment between the treatment of these young people in the adult criminal system and their developmental needs and capacities as adolescents.
One approach that several jurisdictions in the United States have implemented in response to the needs of older adolescents is to establish “young adult courts.” For example, in partnership with developmental scientists from the University of California, Irvine, the Orange County Superior Court in California launched a pilot Young Adult Court in 2018. Young men ages 18 to 25 who proceed through the Young Adult Court receive intensive case management, supervision from officials who have received training regarding adolescent development and behavior, and resources to “strengthen their health and wellness, life skills and employment, housing, and education.”
Upon completion of a minimum 18-month, court-supervised program, a judge may dismiss or reduce a young person’s felony charge. Structured as a randomized controlled trial, the Young Adult Court in Orange County will allow researchers at the University of California, Irvine to investigate the relationship between participation in this court and young people’s short- and long-term outcomes across several areas, including health, behavior, education, and career.
In 2019, California passed legislation requiring non-rural middle and high schools to begin the school day no earlier than 8:00 and 8:30 a.m., respectively. During the legislative process, the bill’s author noted that this shift aligns with research about the importance of sleep during adolescence. Indeed, studies have shown that later school start times make a difference for young people. In 2016, the Seattle School District shifted its school start times from 7:50 to 8:45 a.m., and a before-and-after study found that rather than simply staying up later, students slept an average of 30+ minutes more at night. Other research links later school start times to improved moods, better class attendance, and fewer car crashes among 17- and 18-year-old drivers.
The earliest design of the child welfare system in the United States responded to the needs of physically abused infants and toddlers and prioritized protection and caregiver permanency for young children. As a system, it was not aligned with the unique developmental needs of adolescents, who can increasingly exert agency in their own lives as they practice reasoned decision-making and who may look to a variety of supportive adults and peers to help build resilience and a positive sense of identity.
One notable example of adapting this youth-serving system to better align with our understanding of adolescent development is the series of major federal policy reforms in the last 25 years that noted and aimed to address the needs of older adolescents with foster care experience and paved the way for state-level action. In general, these reforms have expanded the opportunities for young people beyond the age of 18 to receive services and establish or deepen connections with supportive adults.
Today, in approximately 48 states, the District of Columbia, and American Samoa, young people may elect to remain in extended foster care past the age of 18 and receive supportive resources. Although extended foster care services vary by jurisdiction, they might include a range of resources that align with the capacities and needs of older adolescents as they learn to navigate life choices related to healthcare, housing, education, and employment with appropriate support from caring adults.
The Treatment Foster Care Oregon program is a research-informed alternative to placing youth with severe emotional or behavioral disorders in residential group care settings. First developed in 1983, Treatment Foster Care Oregon today offers separate programs for (defined by TFCO as 7 to 11, which encompasses early adolescence) and adolescence (defined by TFCO as 12 to 17) that prioritize family settings and effective parenting over approximately nine months.
The program involves weekly meetings for foster parents that teach positive parenting strategies, crisis support and respite care for foster parents, one-to-one mentorship for youth with a young adult to promote social skill building, and family and individual therapy for caregivers and youth. The program’s design explicitly takes into account the unique developmental needs of middle childhood and adolescence. In fact, the program’s effectiveness seems to be related to the support it provides for some important developmental needs of the adolescent years, including by tapping into youths’ need to find a respected place among peers and to maintain secure relationships with supportive adults.
In randomized control trials, this program has been shown to cut in half the arrest rate of both boys and girls. In addition, girls in the Treatment Foster Care Program experienced half the rate of depressive symptoms, a third less drug use in their early to mid-20s, and about half as many teen pregnancies.
Strong African American Families (SAAF) is a family-centered program for rural, Black families designed to strengthen early adolescents’ relationships with their caregivers and prevent unhealthy risk taking. The University of Georgia’s Center for Family Research created the program expressly to apply key research insights about healthy adolescent development, including the importance of developing a positive sense of self and racial identity as well as maintaining relationships with supportive adults.
While participating in SAAF, youth ages 10 to 14 and their caregivers attend weekly program sessions over a seven-week period. Through interactive games, discussions, and role playing activities, youth work through topics such as setting goals, developing their sense of identity, understanding their values, and handling peer pressure. Parents complete separate sessions focused on developing communication skills and discussing ways to support their children’s development. Adolescents and their parents also attend joint sessions focused on working together, staying connected, and supporting youths’ goals.
The program reduced risky sexual behavior, substance use, and behavioral problems, and increased positive racial identity. In addition, a recent analysis suggests that SAAF participation may reduce negative mental health effects in adolescents caused by experiencing racial discrimination.
Young people have the ability to make well-reasoned decisions about their well-being when given the time and information to consider their options. Including young people in the design of policies and programs that impact their lives can benefit both adolescents and their communities.
The approach taken by the California HOPE for Children Trust Account Program (the “HOPE Program”) is one example of intentionally engaging young people in the earliest stages of policy development. In 2022, the California legislature created the HOPE Program to provide financial trust accounts for youth from low-income families who lost a parent or guardian due to COVID-19 and young people who have spent at least 18 months in the foster care system. The legislature required a Board to oversee the program, advised by a working group of subject matter experts. These groups recognized “that the HOPE program could not be designed without significant direction from a set of youth who were most likely to be beneficiaries of the program.”
As a result, the groups sought assistance to assemble a Youth Panel of Experts. These 12 young people ages 15 to 21 had experiences that mirrored the qualifying criteria for a HOPE account and were compensated for their participation in the HOPE Program’s design. The HOPE Program’s 2024 report to the state legislature outlines an implementation plan for the program and other critical administrative choices that reflect the contributions and collaboration of the Youth Panel of Experts. The report also outlines an ongoing role for the Youth Panel of Experts, who will provide insights into future public outreach and educational materials for young people eligible for the program and their families.
Science Spotlight | Education | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Digital Tech
This spotlight provides research-based recommendations for ensuring that digital technology used by early adolescents promotes healthy development while keeping young people safe online.
The science of early adolescence—roughly ages 10 to 13—tells us this is a key time of exploration, discovery, rapid learning, and social and emotional change. As youth transition from childhood into the early stages of puberty, they develop their identities, learn about interpersonal relationships, and navigate novel and complex social contexts. What does this mean for adolescents growing up in the digital age?
Over the past 20 years, developmental scientists have begun to understand how young people are using digital technologies and the impact that doing so has on them. While we still have much to learn as young people’s use of digital platforms evolves, digital technologies change, and new online spaces are introduced, current research tells us that digital technology has both benefits and risks for young people, and during early adolescence, its effects can be amplified. We also know from research on brain and social development and on the impacts of technology during these years that we must craft standards and regulations for digital tech used by adolescents that can support and protect our young people. Specifically, we must craft policies and programs that:
Developmental scientists have identified many core aspects of positive development that occur in adolescence and during the transition into adolescence, including exploration and risk-taking, decision-making and emotional regulation, and a heightened focus on respect and social status. In today’s world, early adolescents are increasingly approaching these developmental milestones in online spaces and benefiting from the new opportunities afforded by these spaces. The design, regulation, and use of digital technology should be focused on promoting the positive development of these core developmental milestones.
During the transition to adolescence, young people experience an acceleration of pubertal and sexual changes, rapid brain development, changes in self image, intensification of peer relationships, and more diversity in the sources of information and social interaction that they seek out. Young adolescents are going through an immense period of learning, independently reasoning through complex social situations, exploring new social interactions, and testing adult limits. Questions of identity also become central as youth think about who they are and their place in the world. This development of identity subsequently influences attitudes, motivations, and behaviors.
Early adolescence in particular is a time of profound change when these key milestones of development are happening simultaneously. As they go through these changes, young adolescents are especially sensitive to external social and emotional influences, and compared to older adolescents, they are not as able to regulate their responses to these influences. The sheer degree of change during this time means that both healthy and potentially harmful influences abound, and supports that promote positive development and limit harm are especially important.
➢ Options to avoid sleep disruptions, time limits on particular applications (perhaps depending on the educational or wellness value of the app), and tools to limit or discourage use at times when digital technology might interfere with other activities (such as during school or after bedtime) should be built into platforms and applications.
➢ Default settings could also include auto-shutoff features that further promote health, safety, and well-being (such as shut off features on non-academic platforms during class time). These protections should all be automatic unless youth and their parents elect to change their default settings.
Currently, the digital technologies that are heavily used by young adolescents are not required to submit to any standardized regulations or oversight. So as young users explore, discover, take risks, and connect with peers in positive ways online, they must also contend with limited control or assurances related to their own safety and privacy. Youth development experts have identified specific types of data sharing that promote youth safety and positive development.
While the threshold for risk is lower for some adolescents, for example, those with existing mental health problems, those who are more sensitive to social appraisal and rejection, and those who may be already struggling with body image issues may experience more harm from digital technology.
The research also shows discrepancies in the online platforms that adults are familiar with and concerned about versus the ones that young people are actually using the most. Most digital technology platforms designed for adults are, at a minimum, lacking features that promote positive youth development. In many cases, they are inappropriate for youth consumption given current standards (or lack thereof) for consent, privacy, and targeted advertising. Experts in developmental science (researchers), experts that serve youth (including teachers, school counselors, and therapists), and experts in youth digital product design can provide critical insight into the creation of youth-centered digital programs and platforms.
➢ Default settings should protect the privacy of young users. Default profiles could be set to private and not allow sharing of any data collected from non-adult users.
➢ Targeted advertising should be limited for users below a certain age.
➢ Digital technology features that pose known risks for long-term consequences (including public sharing and storing of private data) should be highly regulated for early adolescent users.
The body of evidence related to early adolescent use of digital technology is continuing to grow and as additional evidence becomes available, researchers and digital technology companies should make educated decisions that reflect the evolution of the science.
Some companies have already taken positive steps to protect young users and make evidence-based resources for well-being more accessible. For example, YouTube has initiated an algorithm that applies an age rating to all content as well as supervised accounts for younger users. Similarly, Snapchat now provides suicide prevention information as part of their website support and provides a 24-hour crisis line and in-app, expert-based support when users search for mental health topics (such as those related to depression, anxiety, grieving, bullying, and body image).
➢ Digital technology companies should partner with researchers to evaluate and refine these efforts to support youth well-being.
All young adolescents should have reliable access to the level of digital connectivity and devices required to fully participate in their education and learning. Accessibility of devices, data plans, internet, and guidance about how to use digital technology differs for youth from different demographic groups.
For example, early adolescents who are economically disadvantaged may have less access to fee-based platforms and other technologies. In addition, some young adolescents with visual or hearing impairment may benefit from inclusionary measures like image and video captioning that are not typically built into the platforms they use.
➢ Policymakers and digital technology companies should ensure that all young people can benefit from positive opportunities available in age-appropriate online spaces.
Science Spotlight | Education | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Foster Care | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination | Juvenile Justice
This spotlight summarizes the impacts of early adversity on development and the interventions during adolescence that can help youth thrive.
Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. Throughout our lives, our brain changes and adapts to new experiences, but there are periods of development when our brain is especially responsive to input from our experiences and our environment. Adolescence—from about age 10 to age 25—is one of these windows.
During our adolescent years, connections between regions in our brains are strengthened and streamlined in response to our experiences, becoming more efficient and effective to support the skills we need for adulthood. Research has shown that crucial brain systems such as the prefrontal cortex develop rapidly during adolescence, and effects of environmental factors on this development are amplified. This makes adolescence a critical period for cognitive and social development. It also makes the adolescent years an important period of opportunity when research-informed interventions can address the impact of earlier adversity.
When we experience adversity—such as toxic stress, trauma, and neglect—early in life, the ways our brain and body adapt to these traumas can create steeper hills for us to climb toward positive behavioral development and healthy functioning in adolescence and adulthood.
Following are research-based insights about the impact of early adversity on adolescent development.
When we experience stress, our brain and body respond to prepare us to handle the stressor and its consequences. For example, if we lived in an unsafe environment as a child in which we were often exposed to significant threats, we might have a heightened attention and vigilance about potential threats, which could accelerate the maturing of neural emotion circuits in our brain. This vigilance could serve an adaptive purpose, by helping us protect ourselves and avoid danger. However, once we were no longer exposed to the stressful environment, these once adaptive changes could negatively impact our social, emotional, and cognitive functioning. Support through positive relationships and research-informed interventions can help us learn behaviors that would better serve our health and wellbeing.
As adults who want to support young people, we need to understand how early adversity affects development and apply evidence-based interventions and developmentally appropriate support to address these negative impacts and help these young people thrive.
These impacts on development can create steeper paths for youth who have faced earlier adversity. Adolescence offers a window when targeted support from adults could help these youth to navigate their way to a thriving adulthood.
The adaptability of our brain to our experiences and relationships during adolescence make these years a time when targeted interventions may have significant impacts on brain and behavioral development, leading to long-term positive effects on development and life outcomes.
The effectiveness of an intervention can vary based on individual differences in trauma response, the nature of the adversity, and the quality of support and resources available to an individual. There are many forms of early adversity, so it is important to focus closely on the nature of the adversity a young person has experienced as well as the unique needs of a specific youth to design the most effective and targeted intervention strategy.
Successful interventions also require adequate resources and support to ensure that youth can access these resources. Programs that increase access to resources and build supportive environments for young people who have experienced adversity are crucial for reducing inequalities and supporting healthy brain and behavioral development for all young people. For example, state-level programs such as cash benefits for low-income families have been shown to mitigate the negative effects of low income on brain development and mental health.
Following are examples of interventions that may be effective for adolescents who experienced early life adversity.
➢ Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is a therapeutic approach that focuses on identifying and changing negative thought patterns and behaviors. CBT can help youth who were exposed to trauma regulate their emotions and respond to stress. Trauma-focused CBT that is specifically tailored to address negative responses to childhood trauma and adversity have been shown to be especially effective for treating PTSD in youth who have experienced adversity.
➢ Mindfulness and meditation can be effective in adolescents who have experienced various forms of early adversity and have been shown to support cognitive abilities, mental and physical health, and academic performance. Meditation treatment can help improve attention and academic performance by strengthened communication between frontal brain systems in adolescents who experienced early childhood neglect. Such findings suggest that mindfulness-based interventions may impact adolescents’ regulatory neural systems.
➢ Reward-based therapies can be effective, because adolescents tend to show heightened sensitivity to rewards (including social, monetary, or even sweet-tasting rewards) that provide incentives for engaging in positive behaviors. Research shows that rewards—which can range from delicious food to fun or relaxing activities with friends—may help encourage adolescents to participate in treatment and seek out enjoyable and rewarding activities. Therapies focused on positive reinforcement may be especially effective for improving mood and reducing stress reactivity in vulnerable individuals.
➢ Safety signal learning helps adolescents learn to identify cues that a situation is safe and reduce the perception of threat, which counteracts the hyperarousal and hypervigilance that can develop following trauma exposure. Identifying safety signals can help youth regulate their emotions and decrease their physical and cognitive reactivity to stress when faced with stressors or trauma-related triggers. Safety signal learning may be effective even if other approaches, such as standard exposure therapy, are unsuccessful.
➢ Positive relationships with supportive adults and peers during adolescence are critical for promoting healthy emotional development after a young person has faced earlier adversity. These kinds of developmental relationships can occur through connections with peers, parents, or other caring adults such as teachers or coaches, and can nourish young people and support their healthy development and growth, like a root system supporting a tree.
Research suggests that adolescents who live in high-quality caregiving environments in which their emotional and physical needs are met experience lower levels of anxiety and depression and are better able to plan ahead and meet goals, display self-control, follow multiple-step directions even when interrupted, and stay focused despite distractions—even if they were originally raised in caregiving environments that did not meet their emotional or physical needs, such as institutions. Given the benefits of high-quality caregiving for adolescent resilience, therapies focusing on improving caregiver-adolescent relationships can be useful for promoting positive mental health outcomes in adolescence.
Peer relationships and friendships also play an important role in helping young people process and regulate their emotions. Group therapy sessions and peer support groups can be especially effective and help adolescents connect with other young people with similar lived experiences. Connecting with peers also helps foster a sense of belonging by providing social support and strengthening social networks.
➢ Psychoeducation can help adolescents feel a sense of agency over their situation by providing information about how their experiences may have impacted their brain and behavior. Learning about the effects of early experiences can help empower youth to understand more about themselves and seek appropriate support. Combining psychoeducation with interventions that promote self-awareness, self-esteem, and a positive self-concept can counteract effects of early adversity and promote a positive sense of identity. Interventions that target growth mindset—or the belief that personal characteristics are changeable—may be especially impactful for successfully improving academic performance and mental health.
Similarly, recognizing and uplifting an adolescent’s cultural background can help build a positive
➢ Academic support such as tutoring and educational programs can help young people exposed to adversity catch up academically and develop a sense of self-efficacy if they have experienced negative impacts on academic and cognitive functioning.
➢ Extracurricular activities, hobbies, and/or volunteering are also promising avenues for helping adolescents develop a
Science Spotlight | Education | Digital Tech | Foster Care | Juvenile Justice
This spotlight summarizes research about the importance of sleep for young people and describes how policies and programs can support this critical adolescent need.
Adolescence is a period of remarkable growth and opportunity. The cognitive, physical, and psychological changes that take place during these years both help and motivate us to learn from the environments, experiences, and relationships that surround us in ways that can profoundly shape our trajectories and prepare us to succeed in adulthood. Extensive research shows that healthy development, learning, and positive mental health during adolescence all require healthy, restful sleep. Most adolescents do not get the sleep they need, yet sleep is often overlooked in conversations about adolescent well-being.
Following is a summary of research about the importance of sleep for young people and how policies and programs can support this critical adolescent need.
The National Sleep Foundation’s recommendations decrease with age throughout adolescence:
It’s not just time in bed that matters, but the quality of sleep—the number and duration of nighttime awakenings—an adolescent is getting. Using a comfortable pillow and bedding, minimizing light in the room, and reducing noise-emitting distractions like text messages and social media alerts can all improve sleep quality.
Although it may seem logical to pack in as many hours of sleep as possible on the weekends, “catching up” on Saturdays and Sundays by sleeping until noon creates its own problems. No one is expected to go to bed at exactly the same time, but wild swings from night to night make it difficult for the body to set its circadian rhythm in a predictable fashion. Such severe schedule changes result in a “chronically jet-lagged state” that adolescents’ circadian system cannot adjust to.
The most significant evidence on the importance of sleep for adolescents relates to mental health. Quality sleep can reduce depressive symptoms, even for adolescents facing family-related stressful events such as job loss or the death of a family member. Insufficient sleep is associated with depression and anxiety and increases emotional reactivity and impulsivity.
Most alarming is the relationship between lack of sleep and suicide. Compared to high school students who reported sleeping eight hours per night, those who slept less than six hours were three times as likely to consider or attempt suicide, and four times as likely to attempt suicide resulting in treatment.
Insufficient or inconsistent amounts of sleep across the week during adolescence are associated with short- and long-term effects on health. Sleep deprivation has also been linked to obesity and diabetes as well as impaired immune function.
The amount of sleep an adolescent gets, the quality of that sleep, and the consistency of nightly sleep all appear to directly affect brain functioning in regions crucial for self-control, learning, emotional reactivity, and reward processing.
Changes in the adolescent brain associated with puberty and maturation push adolescents’ circadian rhythm toward more of a “night owl” preference, and slow the buildup of sleep pressure (a biological response that makes us feel sleepy and helps us fall asleep) that makes us more and more tired as the day progresses.
Meanwhile, just as adolescent brains are shifting to a later natural bedtime anyway, they are also becoming more sensitive to external factors, such as blue lights from digital screens, that can further shift them toward later nights.
The effect of these changes is that the late night/early morning schedule many adolescents maintain during the school year becomes increasingly unhealthy.
Even as adolescents become more independent, their families still impact their sleep habits. In general, more positive family relationships are associated with longer and better quality sleep.
Parents should know that adolescents are not too old for a bedtime. Research has shown that adolescents with parent-set bedtimes went to bed earlier (an average of 23 minutes) and got about 20 minutes more sleep per night than their peers without bedtimes. This 20-minute difference in sleep resulted in less fatigue and less trouble staying awake. The timing of the parent-set bedtime also matters. Adolescents with parent-set bedtimes of midnight or later were 24 percent more likely to suffer from depression and 20 percent more likely to have suicidal ideation than adolescents whose parents set bedtimes at 10:00 p.m. or earlier.
The effect on sleep is the most well-established negative effect of digital technology on adolescents. Electronic devices emit blue light that “tricks” the already light-sensitive adolescent brain into thinking it should be awake, alert, and ready for daylight.
In addition, the dynamic social exchanges and judgments required from social media lead to longer times to fall asleep. Other energizing interactions such as bullying, sexting, and arguments are also more likely to happen late at night. Adolescents who spend the most time on social media have twice the risk of disturbed sleep than those who spent less time on social media.
Many middle and high schools start earlier than elementary schools. Extended travel times to school require even earlier wake-up times, which mean even less sleep.
Early school start times are a major issue, given adolescents’ natural shift toward later sleep and wake times. Shifting school start times later has been proven to make a difference. After the Seattle School District delayed the start of their public high schools by nearly an hour, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m., students’ daily median sleep time increased by 34 minutes a day, and grades increased 4.5 percent.
As school and other activities begin to start earlier in middle and high school, homework and extracurricular activities also increase, pushing bedtimes later. This can create more challenges because staying up later to study actually has a negative effect on learning. Sleep is not simply rest, but an active process where learning is internalized within the brain. In fact, when a high school student sacrifices sleep to study more hours than usual, that student can end up increasing academic problems—such as struggling on an assignment or a test—the next day.
There is no doubt that sleep is a public health issue for all adolescents. But the burden of insufficient sleep appears to weigh heavier on adolescents from racial minority groups and families of low socio-economic status. One study of 250 high school students from low- to middle-income communities showed that while insufficient sleep was a problem for most students, Black male students slept less than any other group. Ethnic and racial discrimination is also associated with shorter sleep duration and worse sleep quality, largely due to loneliness and stress.
Students from families experiencing economic hardship may face additional obstacles to sleep, such as longer commute times to school (requiring earlier wake-up times), less “optimal” sleep contexts, and after-school jobs.
Given the grave importance of sleep to mental and physical health and learning, the sleep deficits faced by youth who have been impacted by the effects of racial discrimination or economic hardship represent another impediment to equal opportunities for success. Sleep inequality may be a pathway through which social disparities impact health and well-being across the lifespan.
➢ Given that sleep is habitual, establishing healthy sleep routines and providing interventions when necessary during the early years of adolescence could be particularly impactful across the lifespan.
➢ Settings that are entrusted with adolescents’ residential environments–such as foster homes, juvenile justice facilities, and independent living placements for youth transitioning from systems of care into adulthood–should prioritize providing young people with conditions that promote quality sleep. Because some factors that influence sleep quality are unique to each individual–such as preferences in bedding and pillows–young people themselves should provide input on what works best for them whenever possible.
➢ Schools, employers, and youth-serving programs should structure schedules to help adolescents prioritize healthy sleep. This could include delaying school start times, limiting the hours that adolescents can work or drive on school nights, or avoiding early-morning or late-evening meetings or practice times.
➢ Technology companies should be partners in promoting healthy sleep habits in adolescence. For example, social media platforms and apps could include settings that promote better sleep such as automatic “do-not-disturb” periods or minimization of blue light at certain times of day.
➢ What happens at home is crucial. Fund programs that support parents’ and caregivers’ ability to identify and promote healthy sleep habits in the home, such as quiet times before bed or limitations on technology use at night.
Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Out-of-School Time | Foster Care | Juvenile Justice
This fact sheet provides insights from developmental science about our need to feel respected in adolescence, and how programs and interventions that meet this need can help support positive development.
Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. From about age 10 to age 25, our maturing brains and changing hormones increase our attention to social status and make positive attention feel more rewarding. These changes motivate us to tune into the social world in ways that help us learn skills to navigate adulthood.
Physical, cognitive, and social changes in adolescence combine to make us more sensitive to feelings of status and respect and to where we belong in our social worlds. This sensitivity is developmentally important. It motivates us to pay attention to our social environments in ways that help us learn to adapt to the more complex social demands of adulthood.
It also amplifies the impact of feeling disrespected, excluded, or given messages that we don’t belong—including through experiences of racism, bias, and other forms of discrimination or harassment.
As adolescents, we’re motivated to find a respected place and role among our peers. To ensure youth can channel this motivation in healthy directions, adults need to give young people ample positive pathways to gain respect and approval from the adults and peers around them.
At the beginning of puberty, around 10 to 13 years old, levels of testosterone increase in both boys and girls and heighten our attention to social status. Around the same time, maturational processes in the brain help us understand the perspectives of others in ways that build empathy, but also increase self-consciousness when we think we’re being socially evaluated. Feeling rewarded from positive attention appears to peak in adolescence, motivating us to find ways to earn approval from those around us.
Youth-serving programs that incorporate opportunities to earn respect and status appear to be more effective than others during our adolescent years. Relationships and environments that provide empathy, support, and positive pathways to earn status can improve academic motivation and increase the effectiveness of health interventions aimed at young people.
The flip side of our increased sensitivity to social reward is the pain of being disrespected or socially rejected. Research indicates that when we feel as though we are being excluded by peers, we report greater distress and show greater activity in a brain region associated with higher levels of depression in general.
Experiences that make us feel disrespected or treated as though we don’t belong thus become powerful social threats. The negative effects of racism, discrimination, and other forms of exclusion are amplified when we’re adolescents,—making efforts to eliminate or at least mitigate exposure to racism and bias for youth especially important.
➢ Preliminary evidence suggests that programs that support adolescents’ desire for autonomy and respect are more effective in delivering their messages. For example, one program found that when middle school students felt program facilitators listened to what they had to say and treated them like competent, independent individuals, they showed greater benefits from the program, including reduced number of suspensions and lower pregnancy rates.
➢ Incorporating respect for adolescents’ values and desire for social status into program messaging can be a way to boost program effectiveness. As one example, a healthy eating intervention for eighth graders that respected young people’s agency by replacing lectures with articles exposing deceptive marketing practices of food organizations and conveyed that higher-status (that is, older) students were choosing to eat healthier was effective in reducing unhealthy snacking—and the results persisted for boys even three months after the intervention.
➢ Youth-led participatory action research (YPAR) programs can directly promote adolescents’ sense of agency and their feeling of being respected within their communities. In these programs, youth identify an issue within their school or community, collaborate with researchers to collect data, and use their findings to suggest potential solutions and advocate for change.
➢ Engaging youth as partners, rather than subjects, in policy and program development and evaluation must be undertaken thoughtfully to maximize the benefits that accrue to youth and to the resultant policy or program. Engaging youth as partners helps young people feel like they are being taken seriously and gives them a sense of ownership over developing, evaluating, or improving a policy or program. However, adolescents are keenly aware when their input is not being taken seriously. Therefore, it is essential that offices and organizations that wish to partner with youth prepare in advance to maximize the potential for effective youth engagement while minimizing the potential for tokenism and the reinforcement of youth-adult power imbalances.
Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Foster Care | Juvenile Justice
This fact sheet offers insights from research about the critical role of adult support in our healthy development during adolescence and how policies and programs can ensure all young people have a caring adult in their corner.
Policies and programs that prioritize adolescents’ positive connections with supportive adults lead to healthier and more connected communities.
Adults in our families and communities continue to play a critical role in our healthy development during adolescence, even as we become less dependent on caregivers as we explore and expand our social world. Secure and supportive relationships with parents and other adults can help us build resilience, develop a positive sense of self, and navigate challenges. Circumstances that disrupt these connections can negatively impact our health and well-being during adolescence and into adulthood.
During adolescence, adult support remains essential to helping young people thrive. Youth need programs and policies that build on the strengths of families—including families who are facing challenges—and that ensure all young people have a caring adult in their corner.
Research shows that relationships with our parents during adolescence affect both our physical and mental health. Secure and supportive relationships with our parents during adolescence can promote well-being, prevent negative outcomes, and help us develop a clear sense of self and identity. Positive parenting behaviors—caring, validating, affectionate, or humorous interactions—affect the growth of brain regions involved in processing rewards and helping us regulate our emotions.
We’re not only affected by what our families do for us, but also by how we contribute to our families. Contributing to the family can be an important source of belonging and identity. Helping our families can also increase our levels of happiness. A strong sense of obligation to family also appears to alter brain regions involved in reward sensitivity and cognitive control in ways that can help us develop the skills and motivation to avoid unhealthy risk taking.
These positive relationships can vary, with different benefits and outcomes among distinct cultural and social contexts. For example, young people from immigrant families might have more of a sense of interdependence and family obligation than youth in non-immigrant families. Families of youth of color, and of Black youth in particular, may also be a primary source of racial and ethnic socialization, cultural pride, and preparation for facing racism and discrimination. LGBT youth who are accepted by their families have higher self-esteem, social support, and general health than those without supportive families. Natural mentors—caring adults from a young person’s existing social circle—can play similarly positive roles, particularly sense of self and identity. Positive parenting behaviors—caring, validating, affectionate, or humorous interactions—affect the growth of brain regions involved in processing rewards and helping us regulate our emotions.
Because parents remain so important through the adolescent years, factors that disrupt these connections can have negative effects on development. For example, youth placed in foster care have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and eating disorders as well as substance misuse than young people who did not enter the system. Social inequities and biases can also interfere with positive family relationships, adding to stress in ways that affect the well-being of parents, in turn increasing depression and anxiety among youth.
Effective interventions can help reduce some of these challenges and bolster the essential connections we need. Research-informed, strength-based interventions that improve connections within families have been shown to improve mental health and reduce substance use. In addition, youth in the foster system can benefit from programs that offer foster parents training to support youth who have faced adversity and that help young people stay connected with their families.
➢ Programs and interventions that strengthen family bonds and give parents tools for communicating effectively with youth can support positive outcomes for young people. Learn more about one example, the Strong African American Families program.
➢ To meet the developmental needs of adolescents, policies and programs must also support the needs of the adults in their lives. Family-support programs can help support adolescent mental and behavioral health, either by treating mental health issues or preventing future mental health risks.
➢ Programs that connect young people with mentors who share their interests and advocate for their goals and ambitions can promote positive socioemotional, academic, and health outcomes. A review of formal mentoring programs for youth found positive benefits for adolescent development, including better academic performance, greater motivation, and fewer behavioral problems. Learn more about one example, the Big Brothers Big Sisters program.
➢ Research suggests that having a natural mentor—a caring adult from a young person’s existing social circles—can support youths’ mental and physical health. Sports, extracurricular activities, or community- or faith-based activities can help introduce youth to natural mentors. Learn more about one example, the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe Program.
➢ Due to the importance of relationships with supportive adults to the healthy development of adolescents, youth and families may benefit from extra support to help mitigate the effects when these relationships are disrupted. Disruptions exist in all communities and could include: the absence of a family member (for example, due to military deployment), illness or loss of a family member (for example, due to COVID-19 or substance use disorder), involvement in the criminal legal system of the adolescent or an adult family member, or relocations due to housing insecurity or job demands.
Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Out-of-School Time | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination
This fact sheet shares research about adolescent development that helps explain why adolescence is such an important window for building a sense of identity and how adults can support the process.
Policies and programs that support adolescents to explore and discover their values, goals, and a positive sense of identity lead to healthier, more connected communities.
Adolescence is an important period for exploring who we are, what we value, and who we want to be. Over the course of our adolescent years, we are developing a more integrated, stable sense of our identity that we carry with us into adulthood.
Healthy development in adolescence involves creating a positive sense of self and belonging based on our values and aspirations. This process can be challenging for youth facing racism, sexism, or other forms of bias and discrimination, which too often cause young people to be defined by others in ways that are grounded in negative or otherwise limiting stereotypes.
Research into development helps explain why adolescence is such an important window for building a sense of identity and how adults can support the process.
As our cognitive abilities mature, we’re able to think in more complex, abstract ways that help us engage in self-reflection on a deeper level. Regions in our brain associated with perspective taking, decision making, self-regulation, and values become more active when we’re evaluating ourselves in relation to others, especially in social contexts. In addition, we become more sensitive to social stimuli, increasing the effects of feedback from our family, peers, communities, and media on shaping our identity.
Our sense of identity is more than just who we are—it also affects what we do. Throughout adolescence, our sense of identity increasingly influences the decisions we make. Research suggests that we value behaviors more when they fit with our sense of identity. For example, if we feel strongly about our identity as a good student, we may choose to skip a party the night before a big test.
Healthy development involves creating a positive sense of self and belonging that includes our sense of racial, ethnic, and gender identity. Positive feelings about our racial and ethnic identity are associated with psychological well-being and even serve as a buffer against external stressors. For youth of color, positive identity formation supports emotional adjustment, academic outcomes, and health. For sexual minority youth, a positive sense of identity is protective against depression and makes LGBTQ+ youth more likely to form supportive friendships with other sexual minority youth.,
Our increased motivation to explore and take risks during adolescence allows us to try out different interests, “selves,” and roles within our peer groups, families, and community. Inequities resulting from poverty as well as discrimination within systems and by adult “gatekeepers” can limit opportunities to safely explore and reduce options related to school and work.
During adolescence, we need agency to explore our place in the world, to set our own goals, and to determine how we want to be seen. We also need leeway to change these over time. The challenge for youth from historically stigmatized groups is that often they are being defined by others in ways that are grounded in negative stereotypes.
➢ Create equitable opportunities for youth to explore roles and activities that can help them determine what they value and who they want to become. These could occur throughout the contexts in which youth engage every day, such as at home with family, in the community, at vocational and career training programs, on sports teams, and in school or extended learning programs. Learn more about one example of an afterschool program that focuses on boosting leadership skills and embracing cultural identity, Youth Empowerment Solutions.
➢ Ensure access to images and messages that affirm and support pride in racial, gender, or other identities and provide space for young people to explore their identities.
➢ Develop opportunities for young people to forge identities as group or community members. Substantial research has connected extracurricular activities with positive youth development by contributing to young people’s sense of identity as a member of a group or community.
Science Spotlight | Education | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Foster Care | Juvenile Justice
This spotlight presents four key insights from developmental science that suggest ways that adults can help young people build positive mental health.
As a result of decades of research into adolescent brain and social development, we know what helps adolescents build positive mental health. There is ample evidence that certain experiences and relationships support adolescents’ well-being. Adults can have a positive impact on young people’s lives by putting in place policies, programs, and practices to support their development during the important years between childhood and adulthood.
We can help more of our young people build positive mental health by drawing on these four key insights from developmental science:
Studies indicate that mental health during adolescence is particularly sensitive to sleep. There is a consistent link between sleep problems and most of the psychiatric disorders that are evident during this period, including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, anxiety, and depression. What’s more, recent studies in U.S. students aged 14 to 18 have shown both declines in mental health and reductions in the amount of sleep, although it is hard to show a causal link between the two.
While individual youth differ in the amount of sleep they need, most adolescents need between eight to 10 hours per night. Younger adolescents and those already experiencing mental health issues may require more sleep than the average.
Research (mainly in adults) has shown that regular, sufficient sleep is connected to learning and emotional regulation. For example, sleep-deprived people are more likely to have lapses in attention, deficits in memory, and slower learning in some situations than are control groups. Sleep deprivation also affects the reactivity of certain brain regions in response to experiences, which can lead to greater emotional response to stressors and an increased tendency toward risky behavior.
➢ Schools, employers, and youth-serving programs should structure schedules to help adolescents prioritize healthy sleep. This could include delaying school start times, limiting the hours that adolescents can work or drive on school nights, or avoiding early-morning or late-evening meetings or practice times.
➢ College admissions processes, secondary schools, and youth-serving programs should set realistic expectations of adolescents so that pressures to excel academically or build an extracurricular resume do not infringe on young people’s ability to get healthy sleep.
➢ Policymakers should fund programs that support family and caregivers’ ability to identify and promote healthy sleep habits in the home, such as quiet times before bed or limitations on technology use at night.
Exploration and risk taking are an important part of healthy development during adolescence. Numerous studies indicate that brain development during adolescence supports a crucial period of learning and discovery that appropriately entails more risk taking than earlier or later periods in our development. Our brain releases more dopamine during adolescence than during childhood or adulthood, so our reward system is more responsive to new experiences during these years than at any other time in our lives. Experimental studies from developmental psychology provide additional evidence that adolescents are more tolerant of uncertainty than adults and are also more likely than adults or younger children to actively explore new solutions when learning to perform a new task.
School-based extracurricular activities, special-interest clubs, sports, or community-based activities such as volunteering can all provide adolescents with healthy outlets for self-directed exploration. But to have the greatest impact, programs must be designed thoughtfully. For example, a 2014 meta-analysis showed,, that community service positively affected a range of measures in young people aged 12 to 20, including participants’ thoughts about themselves and their level of motivation in school. But this happened only if participants were also given an opportunity to process their experiences, such as through keeping a journal or in group discussions.
➢ Secondary schools and college admissions processes should encourage adolescents to take academic risks. For example, high schools could provide broad access to advanced classes and new subjects for all interested students and college admission offices could value earnest attempts at challenging coursework that may result in lower letter grades.
➢ Identify and eliminate racism and other forms of discrimination. In addition to other negative consequences for young people, such bias can result in young people from different backgrounds facing disparate consequences for taking risks that lead to mistakes. Recognize that racism and bias can cause adults to perceive Black and other minority youth as being more adult-like than their same-aged White peers.
➢ Fund and support an array of opportunities for youth to try new activities at school, at home, in the community, and in the digital world.
The network of areas in our brain that activates in social interactions matures rapidly during our adolescent years, deepening our understanding of the complex feelings, perspectives, and needs of other people. We become better able to determine who needs our help and what kind of help they might need.
Both survey work and experiments in developmental psychology show that adolescents become increasingly attuned to their position and role in the world as they age. This might manifest as a greater concern about their role among peers, or as an increased awareness of how factors such as ethnicity and economic background shape their standing in society. Adolescents also increasingly explore different ways to play a part in society through their jobs, families, and activities.
Work in behavioral psychology, contributing to others has been linked to adolescents having a greater sense of meaning and purpose—which can, in turn, promote better mental health, especially for youth from marginalized groups. Additionally, experimental interventions and surveys have shown that opportunities to contribute to others’ lives can have multiple effects on adolescent well-being. In a 2013 clinical trial, adolescents who spent two months volunteering with children aged 5 to 11 had lower levels of the pro-inflammatory cytokine interleukin-6 and cholesterol and were less likely to be overweight compared with a control group. Both body weight and biological markers of inflammation have been linked to depression and other mental health problems.
➢ Provide opportunities for young people to make meaningful contributions to their social groups and communities. Programs that support youth to contribute can have positive effects on their mental and physical health and support their academic success.
➢ Policies and programs should address inequities in adolescents’ opportunities to make meaningful contributions.
➢ Families are typically the first context where youth can contribute to others through common household chores. Youth from many lower-income, ethnic-minority, and immigrant families play significant roles in helping their families, and these contributions should be recognized by colleges and employers.
➢ Time-intensive caregiving can sometimes be a source of stress that negatively impacts mental health. Schools can support caregiving youth by offering flexible course schedules, community service hours for caregiving, and training for teachers and counselors to support these youth. Learn more about how to support caregiving youth.
Data show that adolescents who have secure and supportive relationships with their parents or other carers have lower levels of depression and a stronger sense of identity than do those with insecure relationships. Caring, affectionate and validating parenting behaviors—collectively known as positive parenting—have also been linked to the maturation of certain brain regions that are associated with the regulation of emotions. Despite common misperceptions, empirical research shows that parenting is often a stronger determinant of adolescent health and well-being than peer relationships.
Many studies have shown that interventions to improve relationships in families, introduced by public-health and psychology researchers over the past three decades, can reduce the use of substances and improve mental health in youth. Other studies, largely from behavioral psychology and education research, have shown that relationships with caring adults outside the family home can also be important in shaping the lives of young people. Moreover, studies examining the importance of role models suggest that formal mentoring programs, such as those involving a young adult in the community spending time with an adolescent, can positively affect the mental health of youth.
➢ Fund policies and programs that seek to strengthen relationships in families. Studies show promising interventions may include providing educational tools to increase parental or caregiver involvement in adolescents’ daily lives or guidance on how to improve communication between adolescents and their caregivers.
➢ Natural mentors—caring adults from youths’ existing social circles—can help support healthy development. Sports, extracurricular activities, and faith- or community-based activities can help introduce youth to natural mentors.
➢ Formal mentoring seems to be particularly important for adolescents who lack stable home environments, such as those who experience homelessness or are in the foster care system.
Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Out-of-School Time
This fact sheet explains how opportunities to contribute to others can build our autonomy, agency, and identity and can support our sense of purpose during adolescence.
Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. In the years between ages 10 and 25, changes in our brains and social environments increase both our ability to contribute to others and the positive feelings we get from kind and helpful behaviors toward others.
When policies and programs support adolescents to find ways to contribute and cultivate their sense of purpose, it leads to healthier, more connected communities.
Adolescence is an important time for contributing to others. During the developmental period between childhood and adulthood, we forge our sense of who we are and how we want to contribute to the world. Throughout our adolescent years, our physical, cognitive, and emotional capabilities mature in ways that allow us to contribute to our friends, family, schools, and broader community in deeper, more meaningful ways than when we were younger.
Opportunities to not only contribute, but to reflect on the meaning of our contributions and to have our contributions recognized, build our autonomy, agency, and identity and can support our sense of purpose—the forward-looking feeling that our lives are directed and significant. All of these are important to positive development during adolescence, helping us navigate adversity and achieve goals throughout adulthood.
Research on adolescent development helps explain how opportunities to contribute to others support well-being.
Brain development during adolescence supports our ability and motivation to contribute to others. The network of areas in our brain that activates in social interactions matures rapidly during our adolescent years, deepening our understanding of the complex feelings, perspectives, and needs of other people. We become better able to determine who needs our help and what kind of help they might need. In addition, brain regions associated with our sensitivity to rewards become more reactive during and after puberty, increasing the positive feelings we get from novel experiences as well as kind and helpful behaviors, such as contributing to others. Connections between these regions also improve during adolescence.
Our social environments—including families and peers—can motivate us to contribute to others. Socially, we become more motivated to find a valued place and role among our peers. Contributing is one way to feel valued: studies have shown that students who are helpful, cooperative, and sharing tend to be more appreciated and liked than those who use fear or intimidation to gain status. Young people from families and communities where contributing is a particular value seem to feel more of a sense of reward when helping.,
The right support can help young people who have been marginalized. Being marginalized as a result of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or religion can also motivate adolescents toward a sense of purpose to help others in their families, schools, or communities through activism or civic engagement. Family engagement, adult role models, connections through religious or other community groups, and support to process our experiences can all help young people cultivate a positive sense of purpose.
Contributing to others provides adolescents the experiences they need to succeed as adults. Supporting friends and family builds the intimacy we need to form positive, long-lasting relationships in adulthood. Seeing that our actions can have a positive effect on the world can help us build a sense of autonomy, agency, and identity. Contributing to others also supports a sense of meaning and purpose, which are associated with greater emotional well-being, academic success, and resilience, all of which can be powerful assets as we navigate adversity and achieve goals throughout adulthood.
The opportunity to reflect on the experience of volunteering might be essential to ensuring positive developmental impacts from the activity. Reflecting on service we perform during our adolescent years—which can take place through journaling, art, essay writing, or group discussion—can help us consider the broader impacts of our contribution and attach meaning to the experience.
➢ Provide opportunities for young people to make meaningful contributions to their social groups and communities. Programs that support youth to contribute can have positive effects on their mental and physical health, support their academic success, and give them opportunities to explore ways they can be a force for good in our society, now and in the future.
➢ Policies and programs should address inequities in adolescents’ opportunities to make meaningful contributions in their everyday lives by ensuring that all young people have a range of options to contribute and to have their contributions recognized.
➢ Families are typically the first context where youth can contribute to others through common household chores such as cooking or taking care of siblings. Youth from many lower-income, ethnic-minority, and immigrant families play significant instrumental roles in their families, and the value of these contributions and the skills they require should be recognized by colleges and employers.
➢ While helping family is a type of contribution that can benefit youth, time-intensive caregiving can sometimes be a source of stress that negatively impacts mental health. Schools can support caregiving youth by offering flexibility in course schedules, awarding community service hours for their caregiving, and educating teachers and counselors about the experience of these youth. Learn more about how to support caregiving youth here.
➢ Involving middle and high school students in decision making around classroom and school policies like seating arrangements, learning activities, or grading practices has been shown to increase students’ motivation and connection to the school community.
Education | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time
This fact sheet highlights what research tells us about how youth build good decision-making skills and navigate challenging emotions, and highlights how adults can help in this process.
Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. During these years, changes to the brain networks involved in processing emotions and guiding behavior—combined with the novelty of strong emotions like falling in love—can amplify the intensity of our emotions. This makes our middle and high school years a critical window to learn to navigate emotions.
Policies and programs that support adolescents to practice making decisions and regulating their emotions in real-world settings lead to healthier, more connected communities.
Learning to make good decisions and manage strong emotions in a positive way are fundamental skills to learn in our adolescent years. Fortunately, we’re developmentally primed to tackle these areas of learning during this period.
Throughout adolescence, our cognitive and emotional abilities mature in ways that help us more deeply consider the needs and perspectives of others, think abstractly, and analyze more complex issues compared to when we’re younger. These changes prepare us to develop the skills we need to make good decisions and navigate our emotions. And like every skill, we need opportunities to practice in real-world situations and to make and learn from mistakes.
Research on adolescent development highlights the ways that youth build the necessary skills to make good decisions and navigate challenging emotions and how adults can help.
Some of the most significant changes to the brain during adolescence affect the networks involved in processing emotions and guiding behavior. The amygdala—the part of the brain involved in processing and recognizing emotion—is highly sensitive to social cues during adolescence, helping us adapt to the nuances of social contexts in ways that help prepare us for the complexities of the adult world. This increased sensitivity, combined with the fact that we’re having many intense experiences for the first time (like falling in love or going through a breakup), contribute to emotions that can be more intensely expressed compared to adults.
Our heightened sensitivity to emotions associated with peer acceptance or rejection can influence our decision making during adolescence. On the one hand, we’re more likely to make risky decisions when we’re in situations that are emotionally charged, particularly in the presence of peers, which can sometimes be unhealthy. On the other hand, our friends can also motivate us to do good and to make prosocial choices—choices intended to benefit others—like sticking up for a friend.
Development during adolescence also increases our capability to navigate emotions, plan for the future to achieve a goal, and solve problems. Throughout adolescence, we build the cognitive and emotional abilities to consider the needs and perspectives of others and to assess complex issues. Given the time and space to deliberately weigh different options, many adolescents are capable of reasoning as well as adults when making decisions.
We build our emotional regulation and decision-making skills through real-world opportunities to practice and to learn from the outcomes. Experiences such as finding healthy ways to cope with disappointment and making choices about personal aspects of our lives help us learn how to respond during emotional situations and make smart decisions.
Programs and interventions that help us build emotion-regulation skills and reduce impulsive decision making can support us during this dynamic window of growth and learning. Learning to recognize emotions and adapt emotional responses in a way that is appropriate to the situation can be an important step in promoting healthy decision making.
➢ As adolescents build their decision-making skills, supportive adults should provide them with opportunities for increasing agency in decisions that impact their lives. This increased agency can occur in the many contexts of adolescents’ lives—at home with family, in school, at extracurricular activities, and in the community.
➢ When provided with the relevant information and time to consider the options, young people have the ability to make rational, well-reasoned decisions about their well-being. Adults who support adolescents faced with particularly consequential decisions, such as social workers, attorneys, and health care providers, should ensure young people have the time and information necessary to weigh their options.
➢ The natural inclination to evaluate and learn during adolescence makes it an ideal time to engage young people as partners in policy and program development and evaluation. When done well, youth engagement provides adolescents with skills and opportunities that align with the unique developmental needs of this stage of life.
Research Roundup | Education | Mental Health | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination
This roundup provides an overview of recent research about adolescent development that highlights the importance of support from parents and peers, the effects of neighborhood environments, the impact of racial and ethnic discrimination on sleep, and the trajectories of mental health and gender identity in youth.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research about adolescent development that highlights the importance of support from parents and peers, the effects of neighborhood environments, the impact of racial and ethnic discrimination on sleep, and the trajectories of mental health and gender identity in youth.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing meghanforder@ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
(Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, April 2024)
In this study, Jessica Buthmann and colleagues explored how neighborhood conditions and support from parents impact brain development and mental health in adolescence. They analyzed data from 224 adolescents over the ages of 9 to 18, looking for common patterns in trajectories of brain development–specifically related to white matter, nerve fibers in the brain (named for the white color of myelin, the fatty substance that insulates the fibers) that help the brain learn and function–and anxiety symptoms over time. They identified three distinct groups: a “low-risk” cluster (strong white matter pathways and low anxiety), a “high-risk” cluster (weaker white matter pathways and high anxiety), and a “resilient” cluster (weaker white matter pathways and low anxiety). Adolescents living in disadvantaged neighborhoods–characterized by qualities including higher rates of pollution, poverty, unemployment, and health problems–were more likely to be in the high-risk cluster if they reported low maternal warmth; however, if they reported high maternal warmth (comfort and understanding from their mother), they were more likely to be in the resilient cluster. This suggests that supportive and warm parental influence can help youth positively cope with and help protect against the negative impacts of challenging neighborhood conditions on adolescent mental health.
Why this is important: This study highlights the critical role of both family and community environments in shaping adolescent brain development and mental health.
(Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, June 2024)
In this study, Tianying Cai and colleagues explored how changes in neighborhood safety affect adolescent mental health, and how the sensitivity of adolescents’ brains in response to emotional information may influence this association. Using a large dataset of early adolescents from the ABCD study) measured at 9 or 10 years old and then at two other timepoints one year apart, researchers found that improvements in neighborhood safety were linked to fewer behavioral and emotional problems in adolescents over time. Interestingly, adolescents who showed higher brain activity in their right insula and ACC, areas of the brain that process emotional input, in response to positive emotional stimuli (in this case, images of happy facial expressions) were more affected by changes in neighborhood safety: adolescents with more sensitivity experienced greater mental health benefits when their neighborhood became safer but also suffered more when safety declined, while those with less sensitivity were less affected by these changes. These results suggest that neighborhood safety is crucial for adolescent development and that individual differences in brain function can influence how much neighborhood conditions impact mental health.
Why this is important: This research underscores the role of neighborhood safety for adolescent mental health, suggesting that improving neighborhood safety could be particularly beneficial for adolescents with heightened emotional sensitivity.
(Journal of Adolescent Health, April 2024)
In this study, Nandita Vijayakumar and colleagues examined how adolescents’ social environments influence associations between pubertal timing (when a young person undergoes puberty compared to their peers) and emotional and behavioral problems. In a large sample of 10- to 13-year-olds across the United States (using data from the ABCD study), boys and girls who started puberty earlier compared to their peers who also experienced more negative social influences (such as delinquent peers or high family conflict) exhibited more rule-breaking problems, and girls who started puberty earlier and experienced negative social influences showed more depressive symptoms. Importantly, early puberty did not have negative effects on mental health for adolescents who experienced more positive social influences (more prosocial peers, parental acceptance, and school engagement).Why this is important: These findings suggest that strong social support from family, peers, and the community is essential to support the behavioral and emotional wellbeing of adolescents who experience early puberty, highlighting the importance of fostering positive social environments to enhance mental health outcomes amongst these young people.
(Child Development Perspectives, April 2024)
In this review article, Tiffany Yip and colleagues discuss the connection between ethnic and racial discrimination and sleep disturbances in adolescents and young adults. They highlight how stress from discrimination can lead to sleep issues, which in turn exacerbate health disparities over time. Research consistently shows that discrimination is associated with poorer sleep quality and shorter sleep duration in adolescence. Additionally, sleep disturbances often explain why discrimination leads to negative health outcomes such as mental health problems. Discrimination and sleep can also interact, with poor sleep amplifying and good sleep protecting against the negative health effects of discrimination. Importantly, the authors argue that sleep interventions tailored to adolescents, such as school-based sleep education and cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia, could be effective strategies for improving sleep quality and helping to reduce the health impacts of discrimination.
Why this is important: This review underscores the pervasive harm of ethnic and racial discrimination in adolescence as well as the critical need to improve young people’s sleep quality to help reduce health inequities.
(JAMA Network Open, May 2024)
During adolescence, we form our sense of who we are, which includes our gender identity—our inner sense of being a man, woman, or some other feeling of gender such as nonbinary. In this longitudinal study led by André Gonzales Real and colleagues, researchers tracked gender identity and depressive symptoms reported over four years in 336 sexual and gender minority youth aged 15 to 21 living in two large U.S. cities. The researchers found that changes in gender identity were not uncommon–one in five participants reported changes in their gender identity over time, and a third of those changed gender identities more than once. Youth who transitioned to a transgender identity started with higher levels of depression compared to those who did not transition from their sex assigned at birth, but once these youths’ exposure to violence based on their sexual and gender identity was accounted for, there was no statistical difference between the groups. Youth who made more changes in their gender identity did not get more depressed after a change in gender identity.
Why this is important: This study highlights adolescence as a critical period for developing gender identity and underscores the importance of supporting the mental health of gender-diverse youth by eliminating violence and discrimination due to their LGBT identity as they navigate the social landscape of adolescence.
This fact sheet gives an overview of adolescent brain development and explains how access to resources, opportunities, and meaningful relationships during adolescence can build connections within our brains and with the world around us that support us into adulthood.
Brain development during adolescence is fundamentally a story of connections.
Around age 9 or 10, hormonal changes kick off a period of intense learning and development, when brain cells form, strengthen, and streamline connections in response to our experiences more rapidly than in any period of life after early childhood.
Activity increases especially in the brain networks that propel us to explore the world, learn from our mistakes, and connect with others in new ways. In turn, these new experiences prompt our brain cells to connect with other neurons in ways that help us adapt to new events and new information. These neural connections become stronger the more we use them, while unused connections are pruned away, helping the brain become more efficient at acquiring and mastering new skills and new ways of thinking.
This brain-building learning happens through direct experiences in our environments and interactive, responsive relationships—with our families and peers, in our classrooms and neighborhoods, in community activities, and even online. The resources, opportunities, and experiences we as adults provide in and out of school can help young people’s brains build the extensive networks of connections that will manage the complex knowledge and behaviors needed to navigate adulthood.
One of the networks that changes significantly with the increase in hormones and dopamine at the beginning of puberty is the “reward system” in our brain. Heightened activity in this system increases the feeling of reward we get from exploring the world, taking risks, and learning from the results.
Meanwhile, the network of brain regions that make up the “social brain” also changes during adolescence. These changes help us tune into social and emotional cues, like facial expressions or social rejection and approval, and increase our desire to earn respect and contribute to others. It also enables us to learn the nuances of changing social contexts in ways that help prepare us for adult relationships.
The prefrontal cortex (the region of the brain that orchestrates critical thinking and behavioral control) undergoes its most rapid period of development during adolescence. It builds on many other systems within the brain to manage our responses to the flood of new information and intensifying emotions. Engaging with other people and our environment and learning from our successes and our mistakes, known as “action-based learning,” helps shape the prefrontal cortex by strengthening the connections within it and between it and other brain networks. We learn through repeated practice—which includes trying and sometimes failing—what is adaptive and appropriate in different situations and how to guide our behavior accordingly, in ways that equip us to pursue new forward-looking goals.
When adults provide youth with opportunities to try new things, to practice navigating emotions, and to learn from failures along the way, it helps build the brain connections that we all need to grow into healthy, thriving adults.
Although we can continue to learn new skills and behaviors as adults, the adaptability of the brain during adolescence means that these connections are much more likely to form quickly in response to experiences. The extent of these changes make the adolescent years a critical window when investments in the right policies and programs for youth can shape long-term positive development.
Likewise, this makes the adolescent years a time when negative experiences including racism, other forms of discrimination, poverty, or abuse can create steeper hills for young people to climb toward a healthy adulthood. When adults ensure that all young people, especially those who have experienced earlier adversity, have what they need along their journey, they can build the skills and capacities they need to thrive as adults. This includes opportunities to explore and take healthy risks, to connect with and contribute to those around us, to make decisions and learn from the outcomes, to develop a healthy sense of identity, and to rely on support from parents or other caring adults.
Understanding how and why the brain develops during adolescence lets us provide the support young people need to build healthy connections—in their world and within their brains—that will help our youth and our communities thrive.
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Research Roundup | Education | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination
This issue provides an overview of research showcasing the protective role of positive lifestyle factors for mental health, the benefits of continuing contribution, an effective intervention to support positive racial-ethnic identity exploration, synchronized brain activity between parents and youth, and the importance of timing in parental support.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research showcasing the protective role of positive lifestyle factors for mental health, the benefits of continuing contribution, an effective intervention to support positive racial-ethnic identity exploration, synchronized brain activity between parents and youth, and the importance of timing in parental support.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing meghanforder@ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
A recent study led by Raluca Petrican and colleagues investigated the interplay between positive lifestyle factors (friendships, parental warmth, school engagement, physical exercise, and healthy nutrition) and genetic risk for major depressive disorder, Alzheimer’s disease, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia.
Analyzing data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (a long-term study of brain development and youth health), the researchers found that genetic risk for disorders such as anxiety and depression increased the risk for mental health problems, while positive lifestyle factors decreased the risk for mental health problems later in adolescence. Both genetic vulnerability and positive lifestyle factors were associated with altered development of brain regions involved in cognitive control, emotion regulation, and attention later in adolescence. Importantly, the changes in brain development linked to positive lifestyle factors reduced the risk for psychiatric disorders—especially among adolescents who had experienced high levels of adversity (Biological Psychiatry, March 2024).
Why this is important: This study highlights the protective role of positive experiences on brain and emotional development in adolescence. It suggests that programs that enhance positive lifestyle factors (such as by improving school connectedness) could help protect against stressors and promote mental health, even among young people who have a genetic risk for psychiatric disorders.
In this study, Laura Wray-Lake and colleagues examined changes in community service engagement from adolescence into adulthood (ages 18 to 30) and the impact on adult health outcomes. The researchers analyzed data from over 10,000 participants from a range of high school graduation years (from 1976 to 2000). They tracked changes in participants’ levels of community service from ages 18 to 30, then looked at behavioral, physical, and psychological health outcomes at ages 35 and 40. The results revealed significant associations between community service involvement and adult health outcomes such that adolescents who continued engaging in community service in the transition from adolescence to adulthood reported lower substance use, healthier behaviors, and higher psychological well-being later in life (Journal of Research on Adolescence, February 2024).
Why this is important: This study shows the importance to health and well-being of promoting and supporting civic engagement opportunities as young people transition into adulthood.
In this study, Xinmei Deng and colleagues used a technique called electroencephalograph (EEG) hyperscanning to examine the brain functions underlying shared parent-adolescent experiences by simultaneously recording brain activity in 26 parent-adolescent pairs as they rated their feelings about several 10-second film clips.
They found that in pairs of parents and youth with high parental involvement (where parents show interest, caring, and warmth) there was greater synchronization in brain activity–that is, their brains were responding in similar ways at the same time–when they shared positive emotions. This kind of synchronization between parents and youth is believed to support adolescent social-emotional development, and is based on the strong emotional bonding and connection between the family members. In this context, it suggests that strong bonds with parents can enhance the way parents and adolescents connect emotionally—even on a brain level (Behavioral Brain Research, February 2024).
Why this is important: This study shows one way that parental involvement impacts the dynamics between parents and young people, highlighting the importance of fostering supportive, caring parent-adolescent relationships over the teenage years.
The Identity Project is an eight-session, school-based intervention that provides high school students with strategies and tools to learn about, explore, and reflect on ethnic-racial identity (ERI). The program has been shown to increase in ethnic-racial identity exploration and resolution in ways that support higher self-esteem, lower depressive symptoms, and better grades, among other positive outcomes, when delivered by researchers. In this study, Adriana Umaña-Taylor and her team sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the Identity Project when delivered by teachers themselves. In a group of 180 high school students from diverse backgrounds, the teacher-led Identity Project intervention increased ERI exploration over the course of the program. Further, the positive effects remained when accounting for factors such as ethnic-racial socialization within the family, student and teacher ethnic-racial identity, gender, immigrant status, and ethno-racial background, suggesting that this intervention is effective across diverse adolescent populations (Journal of Youth and Adolescence, February 2024)
Why this is important: These findings demonstrate that teachers, who are uniquely positioned to impact students, can be trained to effectively implement the Identity Project to help youth develop a positive ethnic-racial identity, which is essential to healthy social and emotional development during the adolescent years.
Exposure to chronic stress from experiences including poverty, bullying, and family turmoil during adolescence can impact mental and physical health–particularly in cardiometabolic issues such type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and stroke in adulthood. In a new study, Phoebe Lam and colleagues investigated a potential protective factor in the association between stress and health in adolescence: the nature and timing of parental support. Using data from 242 adolescents, the researchers found that youth who experienced higher levels of psychological stress over the past 6 months also showed higher levels of cardiometabolic risk (inflammation). Timely parental support—that is, an increase in support such as advice, comfort, and listening received on stressful days—acted as a buffer against the detrimental effects of stress on heart-related health. When adolescents received support from their parents on days when they experienced stress, the link between chronic stress and cardiovascular risk was weakened. Chronic stress was only linked with cardiovascular risk when youth did not receive support in response to days when they experienced stress. (Brain, Behavior, and Immunity, February 2024)
Why this is important: These findings highlight the importance of parental support provided at the time of stressful experiences to prevent the negative physical effects of stress during adolescence. This makes it clear that youth need support from their parents that is attuned to their experiences.
This issue provides an overview of research showcasing the effects of neighborhood environments on adolescent development, the benefits of culturally tailored interventions, the trajectory of executive function development, and links between rumination and neural response to social rejection.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research showcasing the effects of neighborhood environments on adolescent development, the benefits of culturally tailored interventions, the trajectory of executive function development, and links between rumination and neural response to social rejection.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing CDAinfo@mednet.ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
In this study, Despina Bolanis and colleagues explored whether exposure to residential greenspace (such as a tree-filled city park) in childhood relates to mental health outcomes in adolescence. Using longitudinal data from 742 participants, the authors found that youth who reported living in urban areas with more greenspace at age 10 had fewer inattention problems as reported by teachers in adolescence (ages 15 to 17 years). This association remained even when controlling for factors such as family and neighborhood socioeconomic status and prior mental health problems. (Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, October 2023).
Why this is important: These findings point to the impact of physical environments on development, suggesting that increasing greenspace in cities and urban areas may support the development of attentional capacities in adolescence.
Adolescence is a key period for the development of goal-directed cognitive abilities—commonly known as executive functions—that are crucial for healthy development and can be impacted in mental health disorders. Understanding the standard pattern of executive function development in adolescence can highlight critical periods for executive function development, which in turn can help identify shifts from these normative patterns that could indicate future difficulties and disorders. In this study, Brandon Tervo-Clemmens and colleagues combined data from multiple large datasets and across various cognitive assessments and tasks to explore the developmental trajectory of executive functions in a group of 10,766 individuals ages 8 to 35 years. The authors found rapid and significant development in executive function from late childhood to mid-adolescence (ages 10 to 15 years), with these complex cognitive abilities reaching their full potential in late adolescence (ages 18 to 20 years). (Nature Communications, October 2023)
Why this is important: This study maps how executive function develops over adolescence, suggesting that ages 10 to 15 are crucial years for executive function development–an understanding that can help inform developmentally appropriate interventions and policies for youth.
In this study, Stephen Kulis and colleagues tested the efficacy of a culturally tailored intervention designed to increase and improve parent-adolescent communication about sexual health in American Indian families. The intervention, called Parenting in 2 Worlds (P2W), combined core components of a traditional parenting program with cultural elements unique to American Indian families. Participants included 575 parents/guardians of American Indian adolescents between the ages of 10 to 17 years living in urban areas of Arizona. The program consisted of 10 lessons covering topics such as building supportive parenting communities, identifying cultural traditions, understanding adolescent development, and fostering communication skills. Importantly, the curriculum emphasized Indigenous cultural heritage as a foundation for raising healthy and resilient adolescents, incorporating values shared by diverse American Indian communities such as notions of kinship and the importance of ritual and traditional language. Compared to interventions not culturally tailored to Indigenous families, P2W produced greater increases in parent-adolescent communication about general sexual health and sexual decision-making. Increases in sexual health communication were strongest for cross-gender dyads (mother and son or father and daughter), while increases in communication about sexual decision-making were strongest for adolescent sons (regardless of parent’s gender). (Journal of Research on Adolescence, November 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates the efficacy of the P2W program for improving sexual health amongst American Indian adolescents, emphasizing the benefits of culturally informed interventions designed specifically for the communities they aim to serve.
In this study, Cleanthis Michael and colleagues examined how exposure to neighborhood poverty in childhood might impact the organization of brain networks in adolescence in a group of 538 twins over the ages of 6 to 19 years. The authors assessed two main aspects of functional brain network organization: network segregation (the degree to which the brain organizes into distinct, functionally specialized networks) and the balance between network segregation and integration (efficiency of information flow between brain networks). Both network segregation and balance increased during adolescence; however, these age-related associations were influenced by exposure to neighborhood poverty in childhood. Children who experienced greater neighborhood disadvantage showed reduced network segregation in adolescence. These effects were observed across various functional networks, emphasizing that neighborhood conditions in childhood may have enduring effects on the organization and development of the adolescent brain. (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, December 2023)
Why this is important: This study suggests that exposure to neighborhood poverty in childhood can impact functional brain development in adolescence, highlighting the importance of policies and programs aimed at increasing available resources within neighborhoods to support positive development for young people.
In this study, Leehyun Yoon and colleagues investigated the association between self-reported rumination—persistent negative thought patterns—and neural responding to social rejection in a group of 116 adolescent girls. Participants completed a social evaluation task during which they received (fabricated) feedback in the form of acceptance or rejection from peers they liked or disliked. When rejected by peers they liked, girls with higher rumination levels showed more neural activity in areas of the default mode network, a key brain network for self-related processing. They also showed reduced connectivity between the default mode network and the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), a region implicated in rumination. Higher rumination was linked to slower response times on the task following rejection, and this effect was explained by neural activity during rejection. (Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, December 2023)
Why this is important: These findings link rumination to neural and behavioral response during social rejection, indicating the importance of developing more effective interventions to support the mental health of adolescent girls with high rumination levels.
Council Report | Education | Community Engagement | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Digital Tech | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination
This council report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence looks at the importance of purpose during adolescence and how we can support youth to cultivate their own sense of purpose.
Helping youth develop a sense of purpose–a forward-looking life aim that guides actions and decisions–can build resilience, support mental health, reduce negative risk taking, and provide a sense of direction and motivation.
But adolescents do not just find their purpose as if it were an object already assembled. Rather they cultivate their purpose through a process of discovering and actively exploring their unique interests, skills, and values with support from those around them.
A new report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence (NSCA) reviews research about why a sense of purpose is so important during adolescence, and how adults, schools, and communities can help young people cultivate this internal resource.
To learn more, download the full report, Cultivating Purpose in Adolescence.
Report authors Anthony Burrow, Patrick Hill, and Leslie Leve are joined by NYS 4-H Civic Engagement Specialist Jamila Walida Simon to discuss purpose in adolescence in this online panel discussion moderated by NSCA Co-director Joanna Williams.
Health & Wellbeing | Education | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Digital Tech | Other Resources (News)
Our Co-Executive Directors, Adriana Galván and Andrew Fuligni, spoke with the PBS NewsHour’s William Brangham about why sleep is so important to youth mental health.
UCLA CDA Co-Executive Directors, Adriana Galván and Andrew Fuligni, spoke with PBS NewsHour’s William Brangham about why sleep is so important to youth mental health.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research showcasing the importance of support for positive identity development, the role of family and peers in mental health and emotion regulation, and the impacts of educational settings.
In this issue of our quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research showcasing the importance of support for positive identity development, the role of family and peers in mental health and emotion regulation, and the impacts of educational settings.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing CDA@psych.ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
Adolescence is a key period for exploring and developing our sense of who we are. This includes our social identity, such as our ethnic-racial or sexual identity. In this paper, Adam Hoffman and Adriana Umaña-Taylor argue that the importance of social identity during adolescence can be an opportunity to promote positive adjustment—especially for youth with marginalized social identities. The authors highlight two specific interventions that effectively targeted social identity development and improved adolescent adjustment: the Identity project and the PRIDE project.
The Identity project was a weekly, school-based intervention in which mid-adolescent (about 15 years old) youth explored their ethnic-racial identity, with the opportunity to teach each other, reflect, and discuss. The program increased exploration of and clarity in the students’ ethnic-racial identity, which was in turn associated with higher levels of self-esteem, better academic outcomes, and lower symptoms of depression a year later. The PRIDE project was a short intervention aimed at affirming marginalized social identities amongst 9th graders, a transition year for many youth when self-esteem often begins to decline. The intervention–three sessions throughout the year for youth to write about one of their social identities, what they liked about it, and why–buffered against this developmental decline in self-esteem. By the end of the year, youth in the program showed higher self-esteem than their peers once the program was completed. (Child Development Perspectives, September 2023)
Why this is important: This paper draws upon successful real-world interventions to highlight the value of programs that support social identity exploration and affirmation in adolescence, especially for youth with marginalized social identities.
Gender nonconformity—gender expression that differs from stereotypes based on sex assigned at birth—has been associated with elevated risk of emotional and behavioral health problems in youth due to higher rates of peer victimization and rejection by parents and peers. In a sample of 10,000+ 10- and 11-year-olds, Hannah Loso and colleagues examined how family conflict and perceptions of the school environment (that is, how safe and/or supported an individual feels at their school) might contribute to the association between gender nonconformity and emotional and behavioral health problems in youth. Youth with gender nonconforming presentations reported higher levels of conflict amongst family members, as well as poorer perceptions of their school environments; even further, family conflict and negative perceptions of the school environment partially explained the associations between gender nonconformity and mental and behavioral health problems amongst these youth. (Journal of Adolescent Health, June 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates how gender nonconforming youth often face family and school conflict at a detriment to their mental and behavioral health, highlighting the potential value of school and family-based interventions such as anti-discrimination policies for schools or education and resources for parents to support their gender nonconforming children.
Family cultural values—such as those that emphasize family support, attachment, loyalty, respect, and obligation—can shape the home environment and influence emotional development. In this study, Gianna Rea-Sandin and colleagues examined whether family cultural values impact mental health and behavior in adolescence. In 10,000+ children and adolescents and their parents, greater parent- and youth-reported family cultural values at age 11 to 12 predicted fewer internalizing symptoms (such as anxiety and depression) and externalizing symptoms (such as rule-breaking behavior or aggression) at ages 12 to 13. In a subset of the sample that included 1,042 twin pairs, the authors found that shared and unshared environmental influences, but not genetic factors, accounted for the variance in internalizing symptoms over adolescence. Interestingly, higher levels of family cultural values decreased the role of unshared environment influences on internalizing symptoms amongst the twins, indicating the important role that supportive family environments can play in shaping healthy emotional development in adolescence. (Behavior Genetics, September 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates that family cultural values such as respect and loyalty towards family can be a protective factor for mental health problems such as anxiety and depression in adolescence.
During adolescence, we are especially sensitive to our social environment. Feedback from those around us shapes how we process and regulate our emotions. Although friends become increasingly important in adolescence, parents are still key to emotional development during this time. In this study, Juan Wang and colleagues explored how feedback from friends, mothers, and fathers can facilitate or impede emotion regulation abilities in a group of 438 young adolescents (around 11 to 12 years old).
More supportive responses from friends were associated with better emotion regulation abilities a year later for both boys and girls, while parents’ responses showed uniquely strong effects in girls. Mothers’ supportive responses (such as asking why the child is unhappy or assuring them they don’t have to worry) explained additional emotion regulation abilities beyond friends’ responses, and fathers’ unsupportive responses (such as ignoring the child’s unhappiness or punishing the child) moderated the predictive power of friends’ responses on emotion regulation abilities a year later. This suggests that both parents and peers are important for regulating emotions in adolescence; further, parental support may enhance or decrease the positive effects of peer support, suggesting that even if adolescents rely on peers over parents for emotion regulation, parents can shape the influence of peer support on their child’s emotional development. (Journal of Youth and Adolescence, September 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates that social relationships with both parents and peers are important for emotion processing and regulation in adolescence and underscores the value of both forms of social support for adolescent emotional development.
Exclusionary school discipline (suspension and expulsion) can break down social bonds, decrease school connectedness, and disrupt academic progress, which can increase the risk of problematic substance use and exposure to the criminal legal system. In this study, Seth Prins and colleagues examined associations between substance use and exclusionary school discipline in a group of 20,000+ high school students who were interviewed in the 1990s and early 2000s, when exclusionary discipline practices and school-based arrests increased sharply in the United States. The authors also tested how adolescent substance use and exclusionary school discipline predicted likelihood of being arrested in adulthood (ages 24 to 32 years old).
Students who reported substance use were more likely to experience school discipline over the following years, and students who reported exclusionary school discipline were more likely to report substance use in the following years. Youth who reported substance use and exclusionary school discipline in adolescence were also more likely to use substances and to be arrested as adults. (Drug and Alcohol Dependence, October 2023)
Why this is important: This study demonstrates that exclusionary school discipline practices can contribute to substance use and future entrance into the criminal legal system, highlighting schools as crucial contexts for investment in interventions to support healthy outcomes instead of exclusionary punishments.
In this study, Jennifer Symonds and colleagues used data from 13,135 individuals studied over 40 years of life to investigate how school engagement in adolescence relates to educational and employment outcomes in adulthood. Students were interviewed at age 16 regarding their level of school engagement—measured by how much they enjoyed school, felt school was a good use of time, and were willing to help and participate at school. Over a decade later, at ages 34 and 46, these same individuals were interviewed regarding their employment outcomes. Higher levels of school engagement at age 16 predicted higher educational achievement and income levels in adulthood, even when controlling for relevant demographics such as childhood socioeconomic status and cognitive ability. (Developmental Psychology, March 2023)
Why this is important: This study shows that engagement in school and school activities in adolescence can have a persistent, positive impact on adult outcomes, highlighting the importance of fostering engagement in schools for healthy adolescent development.
In this quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research into the adolescent years, showcasing the interactions between adolescent brain development and our environments, social connections, and sense of identity.
In this quarterly Research Roundup, we provide an overview of some recent research into the adolescent years, showcasing the interactions between adolescent brain development and our environments, social connections, and sense of identity.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing CDA@psych.ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
Environments & Brain Development
Relationships & Social Connection
Identity Development
In a study of 1,033 youth ages 8 to 23, Valerie Sydnor and colleagues assessed the development of neural plasticity–our brains’ ability to grow and change in response to our experiences–by tracking changes in brain activity across ages as well as the influence of youths’ neighborhood socioeconomic environment. Results showed that the plasticity of brain systems involved in learning and emotional development peaked around 15 years old and declined from there, suggesting a sensitive period during which our brains are primed for adapting and changing in response to our environment. The effects of the socioeconomic environment on brain function also peaked in mid-adolescence and were strongest in areas such as the prefrontal cortex, indicating that the regions that showed greater plasticity in adolescence were also those most susceptible to environmental influence. (Nature, March 2023)
Why this is important: By showing that brain systems involved in learning and emotional development are sensitive to environmental influence in adolescence, this paper highlights the opportunity for targeted interventions focused on enriching the neighborhood environment, such as by increasing access to physical and educational resources, to be especially effective during this developmental period.
In this study, David Weissman and colleagues explored associations between socioeconomic status, brain development, and internalizing symptoms (such as anxiety and depression) in a sample of 10,000+ youth ages 9 to 11 living across 17 different states. Youth with lower family income showed smaller volumes of the hippocampus, a region important for learning and memory, as well as higher levels of internalizing symptoms, particularly for those young people living in states with a high cost of living. However, in high-cost-of-living states that provided more generous benefits for low-income families, the differences in hippocampal volumes and mental health issues were reduced, with more generous cash benefits lessening the associations between low income and brain and behavioral effects. (Nature, May 2023)
Why this is important: This paper suggests that state-level anti-poverty programs aimed at aiding and protecting adolescents in low-income families can reduce the negative effects of socioeconomic disparities in brain development and mental health in adolescents.
In a sample of 11,000+ youth (ages 9 to 11 at baseline) assessed over three time points, Linhao Zhang and colleagues tested whether sleep problems explained the link between stressful environments and later impulsivity. They also tested how connectivity in the default mode network (DMN) of the brain (involved in behavioral control, stress regulation, and sleep patterns in adolescents) affected this link. Stressful environments were shown to be related to later higher impulsivity largely due to their impact on adolescent sleep. Further, youth who began the study with greater connectivity within the DMN showed a stronger link between sleep duration and later impulsivity, suggesting that heightened within-DMN connectivity may be a risk factor for sleep-related effects on impulsivity later in adolescence. (Sleep Health, June 2023)
Why this is important: These findings suggest that lack of sleep may explain the link between stressful environments and increased impulsivity in adolescence, highlighting the potential of sleep interventions to support healthy behavioral development.
In this study of 73 12-year-olds, Christina Driver and colleagues explored how social connectedness—an adolescent’s sense of closeness to and belonging with others—is reflected in structural connectivity of the brain as measured through white matter, the network of fibers that allow the exchange of information between brain regions. Young people who were more socially connected showed greater brain connectivity across numerous long-range white matter pathways. Youth who reported less social connectedness showed less structural connectivity. Other factors, including gender and levels of psychological distress, did not appear to affect the relationships between social connectedness and structural connectivity in the brain. (Behavioral Brain Research, February 2023)
Why this is important: This study highlights the importance of social connectedness for brain and behavioral functioning in adolescence.
In this study, Nandita Vijayakumar and colleagues examined the connection between early pubertal timing and mental health problems by looking at connections between brain regions involved in emotional reactivity and regulation (called “corticolimbic connectivity”). In a sample of 10,000+ children and adolescents ages 9 to 14 , the authors found that youth who underwent puberty earlier than their peers showed less connectivity between the limbic system–involved in processing basic emotions–and a range of other brain networks, partly explaining the link between earlier pubertal timing and symptoms of depression. Importantly, the study also found that youth who experience higher levels of acceptance from their parents were less likely to experience these changes in corticolimbic connectivity, suggesting that a positive family environment can reduce the negative effects of earlier pubertal timing. (Psychological Medicine, June 2023)
Why this is important: This study suggests how early pubertal timing may lead to mental health problems and highlights the potential for positive family environments to help protect against these problems.
In this longitudinal study of 189 10- to 24-year-olds, Renske van der Cruijsen and colleagues examined how youths’ own opinions of themselves, what they believed their peers thought about them, and related activity in the brain changes over adolescence. Youth evaluated themselves in the areas of academics, physical appearance, and prosocial behavior (such as helping others) from their own and their peers’ perspectives while undergoing a brain scan across three time points. In the brain, activity of the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC)—a crucial region for self-identity—was more responsive to self-evaluation than to perceived peers’ opinions, peaking in mid-to-late adolescence and leveling out in young adulthood. Activity in the temporal parietal junction (TPJ)—an important region for understanding the mental state of oneself or others—was stronger for perceived peers’ evaluations, and increased by age. Youth with more positive self-evaluations showed more stable self-concept and less fear of negative evaluation by others one to two years later. (Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, January 2023)
Why this is important: This study shows that brain regions involved in self-identity are especially sensitive to self-evaluation in adolescence and highlights the importance of developing positive self-concept during this window of development.
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In our first quarterly Research Roundup, we review recent research that highlights the importance of exploration, the impact of school and neighborhood environments, charitable giving, and the positive influence of peers during our adolescent years.
We are excited to introduce our first quarterly Research Roundup–an overview of some of the recent research that highlights the important learning and growth of our adolescent years, and how adults can support positive development.
You can suggest research articles for future roundups by emailing CDA@psych.ucla.edu or sign up to receive the quarterly research roundup in your inbox.
Natalie Saragosa-Harris and co-authors examined adolescent risk taking by using geolocation tracking to record the amount of exploration–visiting new places or taking new routes–in daily movement patterns of about 60 adolescents and adults (ages 13 to 27) over a three-month period in New York City. Older adolescents, ages 18 to 21, were most likely to explore, meaning that their movements around the city varied the most over the course of the day. Both adolescents and adults felt better on days when they explored more, and more exploration was linked to larger social networks. Interestingly, adolescents also showed a link between real-world exploration and self-reported risk-taking behaviors. (Psychological Science, September 2022)
Divyangana Rakesh and colleagues explored associations between how adolescents rated their school environment—based on factors such as availability of extracurricular activities, how supported and safe they feel, and their relationships with teachers—and brain development in more than 10,000 early adolescents, ages 9 to 10. School environment ratings were related to connectivity in higher-brain networks that are important for cognition and attention. The patterns of connectivity within these networks were associated with adolescent mental health. Factors including extracurricular activities and support of teachers showed the strongest associations with brain connectivity and positive mental health. (Biological Psychiatry, January 2023)
May Conley and colleagues examined the link between neighborhood threats, cognitive performance, and brain activity in more than 10,000 9- and 10-year-olds across the United States. Results showed that youth who reported high neighborhood threat or who reported high threat across the contexts of their neighborhood, family, and school performed worse on an emotional-cognitive task. (The task involved quickly indicating whether a neutral, happy, or fearful face matched a previously viewed image.)
In youth who reported high neighborhood threat, their low performance on the task was linked to lower activity in regions of the brain’s “executive network” that are important for cognition and self-control. This may be because in unsafe environments, the brain is working to assess potential threats, which makes it harder to perform well on cognitive tasks or engage in self-control. Results also suggested that the combination of neighborhood threats and less activity in the brain’s executive network contributes to risk for externalizing problems (negative feelings directed outward, such as aggression and delinquent behavior) in adolescence. (Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, January 2023)
Jochem Spaans and colleagues examined changes by age in donations to charity and in brain activity related to getting rewards for oneself or for a charity in a group of 10- to 22-year-olds. Participants played a digital game in which they saw gains for themselves or for a charity, and also decided whether to give to the charity or gain rewards for themselves. Older adolescents chose to donate to charity more often than younger adolescents and reported less enjoyment when receiving rewards overall. Across all participants, activity in the brain regions involved in processing rewards was higher when receiving rewards for self than for charity. However, this difference decreased with age–older participants’ brain activity was similar when receiving rewards for themselves as for charity, and was linked to their increase in charitable donations. (Journal of Research on Adolescence, November 2022)
In this study, Nicolette Sullivan and colleagues examined how 58 high school juniors and seniors responded to a digital game involving rewards that could benefit themselves, their friend, or both equally. When the adolescents were alone, they tended to allocate more money to themselves in the decision-making game. However, when their peer, a close friend, was present, adolescents were more likely to provide more rewards for that peer. Adolescents also responded more quickly to outcomes that benefited their friend when that friend was with them. This suggests that adolescents are sensitive to outcomes that benefit others in the presence of a peer, and this effect is linked to more prosocial behavior. (Scientific Reports, August 2022)
Education | Mental Health | Out-of-School Time | Other Resources (Blog)
In this blog post, developmental psychologist Emma Armstrong-Carter highlights a form of contributing that many adolescents provide for their families—caregiving—and offers research-informed suggestions for schools to support caregiving students.
By Emma Armstrong-Carter, PhD, Assistant Professor at Tufts University in the Eliot-Pearson School of Child Study and Human Development
Adolescence is a key developmental period when youth can learn to contribute to the lives of others in meaningful ways. Our ability to consider the needs, concerns, and perspectives of others increases throughout our teenage years. We become better able to provide emotional and practical support to our friends, family, schools, and broader communities in deeper, more impactful ways than when we were younger.
Contributing to others has been shown to support positive development for youth, helping to cultivate meaning and purpose, enhancing autonomy and agency, and promoting positive identity development. And families are typically the first context where youth have the opportunity to contribute to others, through common household chores such as cooking or taking care of animals.
But many middle and high school students are doing more than a few household chores. In an article for the Hechinger report, developmental psychologist Emma Armstrong-Carter highlights a form of contributing that many youth provide for their families, in addition to completing chores around the house—caregiving.
“Caregiving youth are young people below age 18 who provide ongoing, time-intensive care at home to family members who have aging-related needs or are chronically ill, such as grandparents, parents, and disabled siblings,” Emma explains.
While caregiving can have benefits for youth (young people can gain self-confidence, resilience, and close relationships), being responsible for someone’s physical or mental well-being can also be taxing in ways that negatively impact mental health and academic achievement. The experience of providing care can be stressful for youth as they are trying to go to school, develop friendships, or participate in afterschool activities, while also caregiving for their loved one by doing tasks such as administering medicine, washing, feeding, or helping with other activities of daily living. Because the responsibilities can be taxing, caregiving adolescents often report missing class, struggling to study and complete homework and feeling worried, fatigued, and isolated.
Caregiving youth need support from adults to ensure they meet their key developmental needs, and the first step is to identify caregiving youth. “Currently, caregiving students are ‘hidden’ from educational systems in the U.S. because they are not formally counted or supported,” Emma explains.
One way to identify caregiving students is by including a survey item in the mandated statewide, school-based behavioral studies which are already conducted in public schools in the U.S. As an example, Emma partnered with the Rhode Island Department of Education to survey 48,500 public middle and high school students across the state about their experiences providing care to their families. The survey helped bring national attention to caregiving youth, and revealed that 29 percent of middle and high school students reported caring for family part of the day, and 7 percent said they were doing so most of the day.
Once schools have identified caregiving adolescents, they can find ways to help youth feel less likely to have to choose between caregiving and school activities. For example, after recognizing that one in three students in Rhode Island take care of a family member for part or most of the day, the Rhode Island Department of Education is beginning to develop solutions for supporting caregiving youth in schools across the state. Currently, the department requires every public middle and high school in the state to develop flexibility and supports for caregiving students.
Together, Emma Armstrong-Carter and the Rhode Island Department of Education suggest five ways that schools can provide additional support for caregiving youth:
Although contributing can be good for youth, too much responsibility for others can interfere with young caregivers’ health and wellbeing. Adults must ensure that all youth are able to meet their key developmental needs. By having targeted support systems in place, adults can promote positive development for all students, including caregiving youth, so they have what they need to thrive.
Education | Mental Health | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination | Other Resources (Blog)
Guest bloggers Estelle Berger, Camille Cioffi, and Leslie Leve offer research-based recommendations for supporting youth and their parents in treatment for opioid use disorder.
Authors: Estelle Berger is a PhD student at the Developmental Social Neuroscience Lab at the University of Oregon (UO). Camille Cioffi, PhD, is a Research assistant professor at the Prevention Science Institute at UO. Leslie Leve, PhD, is the Lorry Lokey Chair in Education, Head of the Department of Counseling Psychology and Human Services in the College of Education, and Scientist at the Prevention Science Institute, all at UO. These insights are from their recent working paper, Supporting parents in recovery from opioid use disorder: Lessons learned from developmental science on parenting and adolescence.
Rates of opioid use disorder (OUD) have continuously increased over the past decade, and more than half a million people with OUD are parents living with children. However, there is limited research on how to support parents in treatment for OUD, especially for those who are parenting adolescents.
To fill this gap, we were motivated to focus attention on how to support parents in treatment for OUD who are parenting adolescents, with the goal of alleviating parental concerns about the potential for intergenerational transmission of substance use disorders. We bring together what we know from research on adolescent development, parenting, and intergenerational transmission of substance use disorders to provide recommendations that support youth and their parents in treatment for OUD.
Adolescents are hard-wired to establish a sense of autonomy, clarify personal identity, build peer and intimate relationships, and cultivate meaning and purpose. Adolescence can also be a time of heightened risk-taking, in which teens might engage in healthy risks like adopting a new hobby or joining an unfamiliar club, or venture toward more health-threatening risks. When a parent is in treatment for OUD, these defining elements of adolescence can be both strengths and vulnerabilities; youth might pivot toward or away from maladaptive behaviors, such as substance use, depending on the caregiving environment and other contextual factors.
The children of parents with OUD are at risk of developing OUD themselves. This “intergenerational transmission” becomes particularly apparent during adolescence when young people have more opportunities to try substances. They are also sensitive to social norms, and parents who use substances might normalize or provide opportunities for teens to use substances themselves. However, we wish to underscore that intergenerational transmission of OUD is not an inevitability.
When a parent is engaged in treatment for OUD, parent-child dynamics take on additional complexity. For example, with swings in mood that often accompany substance use, parents might engage in particularly harsh parenting, which can lead to aggression, substance use behaviors, and similarly harsh parenting style in future generations. While engaged in treatment, parents might struggle to provide consistent warmth and may be over-reactive. These parental behavior patterns may make youth more vulnerable to behavior problems, depression, and challenges in school. Some adolescents who have parents with substance use disorders also experience “parentification” (i.e., parenting their parent) as they provide physical and emotional care to their parent(s). While these attributes and parent-child dynamics are not solely a result of substance use, they point to a potential vulnerability within this parenting population.
Importantly, researchers have identified four factors that can protect adolescents from developing OUD:
In general, a consistent and nurturing parent-child relationship can help youth establish independence and a stronger sense of self. However, tensions with parents emerge during adolescence as youth seek more autonomy and peer connections yet still require monitoring, help with managing conflicts, and open communication with their parents. Conflict is a healthy part of a parent-adolescent relationship when there is safe space for a wide range of emotions and flexibility–like being able to laugh with each other after a difficult conversation or argument–can create generative opportunities for adolescents to express and regulate their emotions. A positive parent-adolescent relationship is a balance of autonomy, harmony, and conflict. Parents in treatment may need additional support in achieving this balance, but in doing so they might disrupt established cycles of detrimental conflict and foster new and more supportive relationships.
When thinking about how best to support adolescents and their parents, we need to pay attention to context. OUD does not occur in isolation. For example, parents who are in treatment for OUD often struggle with mental health issues, depend on other substances, have limited parenting support from partners, and experience a lack of resources in their communities (Cioffi et al., 2019; Peisch et al., 2018; Dawe et al., 2003). Additionally, OUD can occur in the context of persistent racism, policing, and cultural stigma. For the parent, the child, and the family as a whole, all of these factors impact and inform opportunities for intervention to provide a robust system of community support. At each level there are opportunities to create a dynamic system which engages the parent with OUD and their adolescent to intervene on problematic parenting behaviors that predict risk and nurture existing parenting strengths that offset that risk.
In Table 1, we provide recommendations to help guide adolescents, their parents, treatment providers, policymakers, and educators. In general, we provide resources to help adolescents build self-advocacy and communication skills, and identify ways that parents can shift behavior patterns when engaging with their children. We also emphasize how practitioners can facilitate a more family-centered approach to treatment, point schools toward establishing SUD/OUD prevention programs, and urge policymakers to fund those programs. By creating supportive systems that help heal the parent-adolescent relationship, we can work towards reducing the prevalence of intergenerational transmission of substance use including OUD.
Adolescents are important players in their own development; this age is a period of opportunity when young people are strengthening their sense of agency and beginning to make decisions that will affect their adult lives. Even in the midst of challenges, adolescents can experience positive development when systems and communities work together to support parents in recovery. By investing in parents, we are simultaneously investing in adolescents and nurturing the future opportunities that they seek to create.
From Berger, E. L., Barrett, A.-M., Mendes, S., Leve, L. D., Pfeifer, J. H., & Cioffi, C. (2022) Supporting parents in recovery from opioid use disorder: Lessons learned from developmental science on parenting and adolescence. Working paper.
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Two guides, for practitioners and for funders, help organizations build and support effective, research-informed youth engagement programs that benefit young people and the groups they work with.
High-quality youth engagement within an organization can be an all-around win. Involving young people in research and evaluation improves the quality and relevance of both the research and ultimately the programs, policies, and organizations that serve young people. It also helps youth develop skills that they’ll need to thrive as contributing adults.
The challenge is to engage youth in research in ways that actually create meaningful and effective youth engagement that truly integrates young people’s perspectives and capabilities. This requires planning, appropriate resources, skills, and capacities from the adults facilitating the program.
We recently worked with The Annie E. Casey Foundation to create two guides to help youth-serving organizations and those who fund them to invest in and build the type of meaningful, effective youth engagement programs that help young people and those who work with them succeed.
Including youth as partners in program evaluation is one way to give them voice and increase opportunities for equity. This guide is designed to help organizations partner with young people to evaluate and improve their programs, policies, and services. Young people may also find this guide useful if they have ideas about ways to improve things but don’t know how to get their input heard.
Effective, strategic, meaningful youth engagement has the greatest potential for success. Funders and youth allies who engage in the necessary planning prior to implementation have the greatest chance of working with youth in a way that best serves young people, programs, and organizations, and maximizes the potential for meaningful social change. This guide provides a tool to evaluate the developmental appropriateness of youth-engaged research and evaluation strategies.
In this online panel discussion, the creators of UCLA CDA’s recently released youth-engagement guides discussed how funders and youth-serving organizations can invest in and build youth-engagement programs that help young people and those who work with them succeed.
This council report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence offers research-based suggestions for policymakers and technology companies to ensure that digital tech used by middle-school-aged youth promotes positive development and keeps young users safe online.
Early adolescence—roughly ages 10 to 13—is a key time of exploration, discovery, rapid learning, and social and emotional change. It is also the point when many young people begin spending time in a larger online world.
Digital technology is not all good or all bad, but during early adolescence, its effects can be amplified. We now know enough from research on brain and social development and about the impacts of technology during these years that we can recommend standards and regulations for digital tech used by this age group that can support and protect our young people.
A new report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence (NSCA) outlines the benefits and risks of digital technology during these years and offers specific suggestions for ways digital tech used by early adolescents can:
To learn more, download the full report, Engaging, Safe, and Evidence-Based: What Science Tells Us About How to Promote Positive Development and Decrease Risk in Online Spaces for Early Adolescents.
Report authors Nick Allen, Ron Dahl, Jacqueline Nesi, and Candice Odgers talk with report lead Jennifer Pfeifer about the benefits and risks of digital technology during early adolescence, and how research-informed standards and regulations could support and protect youth online.
Mental Health | Other Resources (News)
UCLA CDA Co-Executive Director Andrew Fuligni and FrameWorks Institute CEO Nat Kendall-Taylor explain why the persistent narrative of the “youth mental health crisis” may be inadvertently getting in the way of solutions to support young people.
Our Co-Executive Director Andrew Fuligni and FrameWorks Institute CEO Nat Kendall-Taylor explain why the crisis story of youth mental health may be backfiring. “Ultimately, we need stories about what facilitates mental health and wellbeing, not just what threatens it,” they write.
Mental Health | Foster Care | Juvenile Justice | Other Resources (Blog)
This blog post summarizes insights from Sixto Cancel, CEO of Think of Us, and Leslie Leve, researcher at the University of Oregon, about how the foster system can prioritize youth connections and relationships.
In our latest episode of Adaptivity, our podcast on the science of adolescence, we talked with Sixto Cancel and Dr. Leslie Leve, both experts on youth in child welfare system, about what that system could look like if it reflected what we know about developmental science.
Both guests zeroed in on the critical need for connections during our adolescent years.
“When we think about what makes healthy development for adolescents, it is rooted in connection,” Sixto told host Dr. Ron Dahl. “It’s rooted in experiences that allow for healthy risk-taking, like learning how to drive, learning how to cook, being able to get exposure to different cities, different experiences—and being in the foster care system, those things are restricted.”
Research is clear that our relationships with parents and other caring adults are as important to our healthy development in our adolescent years as when we were small. Secure and supportive relationships with parents and other supportive adults can help us build resilience, develop a positive sense of self, and navigate challenges.
“These connections are so critical,” Leslie agreed. “Especially when you consider the histories that many foster youth have experienced where they have been moved from home to home, from family to family, and had some of their really important connections severed multiple times in their development.”
Sixto and Leslie outlined several ways the foster system can prioritize these essential connections for youth:
Youth in the foster system have already had to navigate challenges that would be unimaginable for many young people. We need to prioritize connections with caring adults so they can heal from past trauma and go on to thrive.
“We now know enough about the neuroscience, the development of young people, enough about trauma and enough about healing,” says Sixto. “There’s such an opportunity to actually start to invent new programs based on the latest science that we know around healing, around development and around trauma.
The question now, says Sixto, is how do we connect the science even further?
To hear more about evidence based ways to support youth in the US foster care system, listen to this episode of Adaptivity, “Rooted in Connection: Reimagining the Foster System for Adolescents.” If you like it, rate us and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Mental Health | Foster Care | Other Resources (Podcasts)
Adaptivity podcast host Ron Dahl talks with experts Sixto Cancel and Leslie Leve about reimagining the foster care system in a way that aligns with science and supports positive adolescent development.
Ron Dahl Imagine you’re an adolescent, and a stranger tells you that you have to leave your home and go live somewhere else–and you enter the foster care system.
Sixto Cancel As a teenager who was couch surfing between 13 and 15 years old, the only way to survive was to rely on relationships.
Ron Dahl Everything gets upended…and most of the people you know–change or get left behind.
Sixto Cancel When we think about what makes healthy development for adolescents, it is rooted in connection. It’s rooted in experiences that allow for healthy risk-taking, like learning how to drive, learning how to cook, being able to get exposure to different cities, different experiences, and being in the foster care system, those things are restricted.
Ron Dahl Adolescents experience the foster care system at a critical time in their own development. It’s a window of opportunity and change, a time of exploration and learning, when social connections matter more than ever. But the foster care system was designed to protect infants and young children–in ways that can misalign with these developmental needs of adolescence. So, how can we bring a developmental lens to help inform this situation, to contribute to improving how the foster care system serves young people during this stage of life?
I’m Ron Dahl, founding director of the Center for the Developing Adolescent, and this is Adaptivity, where we explore the science of adolescence, untangling misconceptions about the years between childhood and adulthood.
We explore new insights into the rapid cognitive, emotional, and social changes that are happening during these years. And how the developing adolescent brain is primed to promote healthy and adaptive learning.
In this episode of Adaptivity, we’re going to talk about the foster care system, which, as of September 2020 serves more than 160,000 adolescents in the United States.
Clip from foster care PSA Every child needs someone who believes in him, encourages him, and stands by him, no matter what. Foster parents provide a safe and loving home where kids can grow physically, socially, emotionally and spiritually…
We’ll take a look at the system through the lens of developmental science and particularly through our need for connection–with parents, mentors, and peers–during our adolescent years.
Adolescence is a remarkable window of experiential learning, a time of trying new things, and having the freedom to discover the world around us through exploration. So much of this discovery is about social learning and connecting with people, forming relationships, deepening THOSE relationships, and figuring out who we are in the broader context of the people around us.
And while the goal of foster care is the safety of young people, it often fails to support our critical need for these connections during our adolescent years. This time is a window of opportunity, one that can be used to promote healthy development in ways that can help kids thrive not just now, but long after foster care, throughout their adult lives.
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My first guest is Sixto Cancel, founder and CEO of Think of Us, an organization devoted to reforming the foster care system. He speaks from personal experience, having been in foster care since he was 11 months old.
Sixto, your work has been an inspiration and you have such important insights in relation to development and the foster care system. In talking about foster care, you’ve made the point that the system is not designed to support development. Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean by that?
Sixto Cancel The system is not designed for development. When we think about what makes healthy development for adolescents, it is rooted in connection. It’s rooted in experiences that allow for healthy risk-taking, like learning how to drive, learning how to cook, being able to get exposure to different cities, different experiences and being in the foster care system. Those things are restricted. So instead of it being a system where you leave with more connections than when you came in, you actually leave the system with less connections than when you came into it.
Ron Dahl Yeah. So you’ve hit on some really important points already, this idea that so much of the experience in adolescence that’s important is this, not just learning, but experiential learning, trying things, stretching and having the freedom to be doing that is so fundamental. And it’s particularly important in social learning and connecting with people. And what you’re saying is that the foster care system is not serving older children and adolescents well in that way because it interferes with that natural, important set of developmental processes that are so important.
Sixto Cancel Not only does it interfere with some of those like natural set developmental processes, but there’s also what’s getting wired. So what young people are experiencing on top of the trauma that brought them to the attention of foster care is additional systemic induced trauma. So once you’re in foster care, if you don’t fit in, if you don’t behave, if you’re not the quote-quote right child, you find yourself in a new home. So what are we wiring in young people when we tell them that we love them? You’re part of the family. But if you don’t fit in too much, if you if you misbehave, you find yourself in a new situation, right? And so to me, it’s not just about the lack of developmental opportunities, but it’s about how the structure of the system itself is inducing trauma on young people.
Ron Dahl What would help the system be more sensitive and responsive to doing things to address these needs or to diminish the chances that these retraumatizing experiences are going to occur?
Sixto Cancel One of the things that helped me was having a mentor. and I went to a restaurant and ordered my first burger at a restaurant, and it was a funny experience because the waiter comes up to me and he asks me like, “Hey, how do you want your burger cooked?” And at that very moment, I had this feeling, this inclination like the waiter was making fun of me or something. And so I looked at him and I was like, “I want my burger cooked.” And my mentor was like, “Oh dear, no, he means, well, medium or rare.” And it’s these important life lessons that you usually get from family, whether it be a resume, learning how to drive, learning how to actually process your emotion, putting language to the discomfort you feel when you’re in conflict with a friend, right?
And it’s not unique to me. There’s so many young people who are in the foster care system who can say the same thing, which is having that connection to a mentor or to a family member who wasn’t directly a parent can play such a significant role in getting some of those normative experiences that other young people get.
Ron Dahl What are the aspects of that mentoring relationship that are so valuable and important, especially in the situations you’re describing?
Sixto Cancel Absolutely. For individuals who have experienced that trauma around consistently being disappointed in relationships, so that can look like multiple move placements that can look like a lot of disrupted relationships in your life because of your experience in foster care. One of the top qualities I would say in that scenario is someone who’s persistent and just shows up day in and day out. No matter how much you might test the relationship, push back a little bit if your home changes. If you have to go to a new school, having that person who is going to be connected with you and be able to show that they’re willing to stay in connection despite these things that might happen is so important. And then the second thing is someone who can really model and expose you to different experiences. You know, my mentor was able to take me literally outside of the city limits and to explore different type of cities, to be able to taste different type of foods, to talk and process things that were going on. And I think that is what makes the foundation of a good mentor. You don’t have to always know all of the answers but being able to be willing to listen and to continuously show up is critical.
Ron Dahl Yeah. So this reliability factor that this person is reliably there for you …It’s so simple. And yet it’s such a powerful and fundamental aspect of relationships—trust.
Sixto Cancel I think the ability to create trust is such a critical piece, not just for foster youth, but for all humans. But when it comes down to foster youth, there’s something about having the bravery to trust again. Once you’ve had that consistent disappointment in many cases. To give people context, you know, the average person spends about two years in foster care. But when you stay in foster care, you’re one of the young people who might age out. You’re not getting adopted, you’re not going back home. Your average placements can range between six to 13. So different placements. Just imagine how many times were you told you’re part of this family and you’re no longer part of that family, right? So trust is not an easy kind of thing that just comes easily for folks who have experienced a lot of the opposite of trust.
Ron Dahl The foster care system in many ways was designed for younger children and for short periods of time. And yet, as you and others have pointed out, and, and we have data, it’s increasingly affecting young people for much longer periods of time and well into adolescence. And in many ways, the system is not only not designed for adolescents, but is designed in a way that is such a disservice to all of the things that you are talking about. Can you talk a little bit more about how the system might be able to be more intentionally addressing adolescents and why that so rarely happens?
Sixto Cancel Originally, the child welfare system was about keeping children safe because there was a high death rate amongst babies and toddlers. Today we find a system that is made up of young people from zero all the way through 18. The two biggest groups are going to be preteenagers and babies. The thing to note here that’s very unique is that we think of the child protective, you know, system here as one that is rooted in protecting children from abusers. And we talk about this is the place where you report physical, sexual emotional abuse. But 64 percent of the children who are actually in the foster care system are here because of neglect. It’s poverty issues. And so we have criminalized poverty to the point where someone has made a judgment that has removed the child from their home and then placed them in a stranger’s homes, nine times out of 10 to then be in a situation where you know you are not living with biological family.
So if we’re to change the system to be more centered on the young person and their development and their healing, there are things that systems can do. One is prioritizing kin when a removal has to happen. Two is if there is a way to not remove that child and provide services to the family, i.e., you know, the water and electricity is out and the child has asthma, you have to have the lights and water on. Instead of bringing that child into foster care and spending months trying to get that child back home. How might we be able to pay those two things as a system to get that family up to date? So we’re starting to see the beginnings of new legislation that has been passed, new ways of using money that is starting to be able to provide flexibility so that we can shift to a more, a system that is rooted more in well-being.
Ron Dahl Right. Another thing you commented on is how many pre-teens are actively in foster care and having these experiences and that that period–the transition from childhood into adolescence–before people are actually teenagers is, as we understand scientifically, one of the most dynamic and pivotal periods of time. There’s just so many levels of change going on at that point of life. Can you talk about that window of development in the foster care system, maybe in terms of your experiences or the experiences of others? Some of the ways in which the foster care system challenges and problems are particularly salient at that point in life?
Sixto Cancel Absolutely. I think one of the very interesting things about being a preteen and going into your teenage years while in the foster care system is that you technically become eligible for some services that are called like Chafee services. There are life-skill classes, and for some reason we’ve packaged up the ability to learn life skills in like a nine-month course. And the idea that we can systematize kind of life skills and the coaching that requires to be self-sufficient, I believe, is flawed in and of itself that we actually need human beings who are with us on the journey all the way through to teach us those specific life skills to be able to know us enough to know how is it that we can go ahead and learn that self-regulation, that emotional thinking to actually practice not having impulse control, right like these are the things that we actually learn during adolescence. The problem is that we put these into kind of programs is number one.
Number two, the system provides you little space for actually being an adolescent. So adolescents are supposed to be impulsive. They are supposed to take healthy risks. Right. And when you don’t provide those opportunities, they don’t become healthy, risk-taking opportunities. And so the system then punishes you for that and you can find yourself in a group home. You can find yourself in, you know, in another system i.e probation, the justice system. And these are real realities of our young people every single day.
Ron Dahl I’m so glad you brought up that issue of the risk taking. And I think in a lot of people’s minds, they think risk taking is some negative behaviors or bad behaviors. But so many of the risks we take in that period of our lives are actually to experiment with social experiences and try new things. And, like you said, new foods and ways of doing things and how to interact with people in different ways and create new relationships. Those are such fundamentally, at the heart of the social learning that seems to be a special, sensitive period in early adolescence is about self and other and having experiential learning. And so not having the chance to take risks in those ways, and recognizing that they’re healthy, that’s how we learn, is really interfering in fundamental ways with that developmental period.
Sixto Cancel I could not agree more, and so when I think about the level of work that someone in the system has to do to have healthy risk opportunities. Healthy risk looks like getting on stage, right, like those were the things I just wasn’t encouraged to take part of, and I’m glad that I continue to push to be part of those things.
Ron Dahl That’s a great example. That kind of social threat of being on stage, having people stare at you, evaluating you, that is actually much more intensely arousing at that point in our lives than physical danger. You were involved in a musical theater group. That was in early adolescence. Was that a formative set of experiences for you?
Sixto Cancel Absolutely. I mean, being part of that experience, you know, today I spent a lot of time actually talking to groups of folks, in front of the room of groups of folks. And I have to say, you know, my first practice with those type of settings was in the performing arts. When I think about even my experience now around fundraising, these experiences shaped so much of how I run the organization even today.
Ron Dahl You know, another aspect of this is race. Can you talk about the role of race in this system?
Sixto Cancel You know, I think there are so many points where race touches in the child welfare system even at the inception of the system. So 53 percent of all Black families will experience a child protective investigation before their child is 18. 53 percent! And the reason I bring this up is because the first trauma is when someone knocks on your door and starts to investigate.
I mean, what we know about race in foster care is that especially for our teenagers and teenagers and young adolescents, is that you tend to age out more, less adoption. The system goal is to bring you back home. The system’s goal is to ensure that you extend your forever family through adoption, if that’s the situation. But when none of that happens, you don’t go back home. You’re not placed under another family relative. You’re not actually adopted. You turn 18 or 21 and you’re on your own. And disproportionately, it’s people of color who find themselves in that situation.
Ron Dahl When you feel hopeful, when you think about the magnitude of these challenges and how it’s affecting particularly individuals from poverty and racial discrimination and inequities in the system, when you feel hopeful, what do you imagine?
Sixto Cancel I think we’re at the very beginning of a new wave of child welfare. in 2018, there was some laws that were passed, and the laws are not perfect. However, what these laws did was it allowed the rules to change a bit. It allowed a new concept to emerge, which is preventative services. How do we prevent a young person in a family from having to totally get engaged in child welfare by experiencing a removal? We should be ensuring that kin, uncle, grandmother, aunt, cousin, have the same resources that we provide to foster parents to take in their child.
So instead of saying because you were not able to provide enough clothing, enough water, enough food for your family, that we’re going to take your child into the foster care system, well, we can much more affordably serve that family by keeping them together. So where we are at this new place between the rules changing, the pandemic inspiring people to think differently about what is the government’s role to be able to say, OK, how might we move forward?
Ron Dahl You wrote an op-ed in the New York Times about kinship care–where other relatives become caregivers instead of unrelated foster parents. How should the system be changed to help promote this?
Sixto Cancel I think that there’s a lot of shifting that needs to occur, a lot of shifting in thinking. We know for a fact that biological families taking in a relative, they need the same supports we provide a foster parent. They need that average of $800 that we provide foster parents. They need the health insurance, the supports of services, mental health services and coaching that foster parents get. And so we know that to be true. Some people do not believe that they should get the same things that foster parents do. And some people also have stigmas around the fact that if we remove a child from one family member, what’s not to say that the child is still not in danger with their extended family members? And what I would encourage is that we start to really understand differently, what does biological family have to offer, which in most cases is everything with the right support.
Ron Dahl And it comes back to the point you’ve emphasized a few times here about connection; there’s got to be real social connection. And so, how else might innovation and improvements in the system promote connection?
Sixto Cancel One: do not place young people in congregate care settings. Right now, there are states who are using group homes as the place for young people to live because unfortunately, they have not been able to license enough homes.
So the next thing I would say is to license enough homes by streamlining the process so that it doesn’t take months on end, but that it can take under 90 days and we’ve seen some states be able to do that. And how might we license the right type of foster parents who are actually called to do that work so that young people are being placed with families who can be meaningfully connected to them past a contractual agreement of their license?
Ron Dahl So Sixto, one of the things that comes up in this space, especially given how challenging many situations are for young people, is this concept of resilience. And certainly you seem by many, many measures and perspectives to be an incredibly resilient person. And despite all of the challenges, you somehow seem to have found connections at the key time over and over and over again. What are your thoughts about how that happened for you, how you were able to be resilient despite repeated and prolonged challenges and difficulties in these ways?
Sixto Cancel I think the reality is, is that, you know, as the teenager who was couch surfing between 13 and 15 years old, the only way to survive was to rely on relationships. I was fortunate enough that I didn’t have to spend not one night just sleeping out in the streets because of that network that I was connected to. Every negative interaction I had, I always had someone who was providing a positive reaction, right, helping me survive, helping me navigate the situation. And those folks who helped me survive and navigate the situation are the folks who kept me sane through it all. And I think that helped me not get so jaded in my view about the world. I do think that there is a bit of genetics that played into it for me because I’m an extreme extrovert and my form of expression is to be with people and to talk. And I think that if I would have identified as other than introverted uh, uh extroverted, then I think it might have been a little bit more difficult for me.
Ron Dahl What could help really create transformative change in this adolescent period of time, and in particular these ways you have deep insights about what’s so critically important?
Sixto Cancel I think that the number one thing that’s needed to create change is urgency. And the reason why I choose urgency is because we now know enough about the neuroscience, the development of young people, enough about trauma and enough about healing. We don’t know everything, but we now know enough to say, “Hmm, our current system doesn’t work.”
The challenge is that adolescents don’t have the same reputation as babies. The narrative around adolescence is kind of like helping yourself becoming more independent, and that narrative is counterproductive to actually what is needed. What’s actually needed based on what we’re learning here is that we need more interdependence. We need more people showing us and modeling for us. You know, how to build certain life skills, how to process, how to do X, Y and Z, and that the system is not structured to do that and it is causing harm. How much harm the system is actually doing is buried. And so it is not on people’s conscious.
Ron Dahl Many of our systems to support you with medical systems, protective systems are so focused on preventing harm that when there is a strong scientific basis for saying it’s not just the absence of negative things, it’s the presence of the critically important positive experiences at the right time. Because that’s the mission of the Center for the Developing Adolescent is to connect the best science, to policy, to improve the lives and opportunities of young people and their families. And this is a powerful example.
And I’m wondering if there are things that I haven’t asked, but as you reflect, seem relevant and connected to the themes of things we’re discussing that you might want to share.
Sixto Cancel I hope the listeners can cue in for like one thing that they can do is for those folks who are creating programs or who are thinking about how do you connect the science even further? It’s how do we create brand-new programs that have a very different model than traditional therapists to be able to do that work? Because I think that there’s such an opportunity to actually start to invent new programs based on the latest science that we know around healing, around development and around trauma.
Ron Dahl Well, Sixto, it has been such an honor, your understanding, insights and connecting many different levels between systems, and the science, and the real impact young people’s lives. It is really inspiring work. You’re an amazing leader and communicator, having insights about ways to make things better linking the science to policy and change. Thank you so much.
Sixto Cancel Thank you. The pleasure is mine.
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Ron Dahl Leslie Leve joins me now. She’s a professor at the University of Oregon in Counseling Psychology and Human Services, and also the Associate Director of the Prevention Science Institute at the University of Oregon. Professor Leve is also a member of the Center for the Developing Adolescent’s National Scientific Council.
And so I want to begin, Leslie, by inviting you to reflect a bit, given your research and expertise and your extensive work with youth in the foster care system. If you could pick one dimension of the system that could be improved to have a positive impact. What would it be and why?
Leslie Leve It’s hard to pick just one, but I would think I would pick the overarching theme of connections. They are so critical, especially at–during adolescence, when you know, youth are going through their identity development. And these connections are so critical both at the peer realm, so learning how to make connections with peers, but also with adults, especially when you consider the histories that many foster youth have experienced where they have been moved from home to home, from family to family, and had some of those, those really important connections severed multiple times in their development.
Ron Dahl Sixto was also talking about the importance of connections. What does the research tell us about how we can help youth in the foster care system make and keep connections?
Leslie Leve Well, one of the things that we know, if you look at programs that have been successful in terms of supporting positive development for adolescents in the foster care system, some of the kind of key ingredients that have that have been successful are partnering youth with mentors who can help them in the skill development realm, but also help them establish ways to interact with other peers or join a group at school, change schools, and meet new friends.
And secondly, having the connections with the parents in your life, whether those are your foster parents or your, your family of origin, your, your biological parents or other relatives, even other adults that are important in your life, they could be neighbors, they could be religious figures. So programs that work have established ways to coach youth, to pair them with mentors, to help build those skills so that they can both establish and, and maintain and grow those connections at the peer level and also at the supportive adult level as well.
Ron: What do you think are good targets for the foster system to improve the experience of young people?
Leslie Leve So even just the name of our system, you know, Children’s Protective Services, it doesn’t have an eye towards adolescent development or resilience. It’s focusing on protection. And what we know during adolescence is, yes, in some cases, children, youth do still need some protection, but they also need to have a space where they have these relationships with peers, with adults where they can explore their environments, take risks in a safe way. And that helps them understand the world better, helps them craft and, and create their own identities, and helps ultimately them be resilient and thrive as they move into young adulthood.
One strategy that’s been effective across a number of programs recently for adolescents in foster care is to work with both the youth and the foster parents around sort of what we think of as developmentally normative behavior. So what is typical adolescent development? And we know from national studies, for example, Monitoring the Future study, that by the time youth exit high school, most of them have experimented a little or some a lot with substances. Others have experimented with sexual behavior. And so being able to educate both the youth in terms of here’s what is typical for children adolescents of your age, as well as educate the foster parents and biological family of these norms, it can help, you know, kind of ground the youth behavior in a context where, OK, that actually is out of bounds in terms of what’s typical. We need to reel that in a little bit and set some limits versus, you know, you made a mistake here. Let’s talk through that, figure out how to avoid that in the future. But in a way that is not overly punitive, that still allows the youth to thrive and explore, but also provides coaching to, to promote healthy behavior going forward.
Ron Dahl Can you give some examples of the kinds of skill building that become more important and maybe even more powerfully influence development in early adolescence or early- to mid-adolescence for foster care youth?
Leslie Leve So in adolescence, as youth are really experimenting with developing their own identity and establishing their independence and goal setting, some of the things that programs that have been effective have done is have a mentor, you know, a young adult work with the youth, one on one, on a regular basis, maybe once or twice a week, and simply engage in ordinary activities in the community. So that could be watching a sporting event. It could be–or playing a sporting event–it could be doing an art or craft or theater type of example. Using those moments that are in ordinary community settings to have conversations, to be a safe place to talk and not be judged, but just to to talk in the context when you’re still engaging in routine behaviors in the community can be a really helpful way to both sort of provide examples essentially of role modeling of effective social skills and community behavior, but also provide some consistency so that the youth knows, “Every week I’m meeting with this–my mentor from 2 to 4 p.m. or after school and we’re going to do X, Y, or Z.” And that consistency can be super important to establish a foundation for being able to learn new skills during adolescence.
Ron Dahl Yeah. I’m remembering the example that Sixto used of being taken out and introduced to how to order at a restaurant, I mean, just the knowledge and skill to order at a restaurant was something that he reflected on as being so valuable from a mentor.
Leslie Leve That was a really profound example of Sixto’s, he’s not alone in that example; there are so many youth, so many foster youth who have similar stories. And so doing things like that, going to a sit-down restaurant to order or walking with a youth into a store that they’re interested in applying to and helping them ask if they’re, you know, if there are job openings, helping them to submit their resume online. These are things that some youth have not had prior experiences with.
I sometimes think of it like riding a bicycle or swimming, for example. For those of us who do know how to ride a bike or have swum, you know, we’ve had access to a bicycle, we’ve had access to a swimming pool or a body of water that’s safe to swim. If you haven’t had access to those things, you’re not going to learn how to ride a bike. You’re not going to learn how to swim. And the same thing goes for our social interactions. You need to have the opportunity in your context to practice that skill, to watch someone else doing that skill, and then you can gain that skill as well.
Ron Dahl And what about promoting knowledge and skills for parents and foster parents?
Leslie Leve Parents, just like adolescents, parents are coming into their role as parents or foster parents with a whole range of unique experiences. Maybe they haven’t learned some of those skills around how to communicate with adolescents, how to set limits without being overly punitive, but still having a boundary, how to provide effective supervision or monitoring of your adolescent, how to problem solve when issues come up that you can discuss with your adolescent. And so being able to provide those sets of skills to foster parents and to others in the youth’s family, maybe the biological parents or other aftercare resources, you’re not just providing those supports in the context of foster care, but the goal would…is that the youth will ultimately exit foster care and have a permanent placement or be reunified with their family and have those same connections already there and ongoing with those other adults in their lives.
Ron Dahl Yeah, thank you. There’s one other set of issues I do, I did want to get your thoughts on because Sixto talked about this a few times and that is the value of prioritizing kinship connections. I understand those are a complex set of issues, but I’d love to hear your thoughts about where might there be some opportunities in that space?
Leslie Leve What we do know is that, you know, kinship ties, family relationships are hugely important. We also know that during adolescence, when youth are exploring issues of identity, those connections become even more salient when they’re thinking about their extended family and their family history. And so the more that we can do in our foster programs, whether or not you’re placed with kin or with unrelated foster parents to help maintain some of those ties, and if that’s not possible, at least to help with the family history and educational piece of that, that can be very validating and rewarding for adolescents as they navigate their development.
Ron Dahl Are there situations where it would be a better use of resources to give families a stipend to help with financial hardships? If some situations that look like neglect are primarily the result of poverty and racism, then perhaps there could be a better outcome by helping the family directly. Your thoughts?
Leslie Leve I would love to be able to try it out. I think it has a lot of merit and it would be a matter of finding the right system or system leaders who are willing to, to take the risk, who have the courage to to try this. Because I think all of us recognize that there are truly unconscious, implicit biases that are going into these decisions by good people who are, who are trying to do good and and and support child wellbeing. But are…sometimes the wrong decision is made, and perhaps if resources were given, it really could have been a much better outcome for that child and family.
Ron Dahl How might we as a, as a society, as a country, as states, do a better job supporting these positive aspects of relationship building, parenting skills, peer mentoring? What might lead to real progress in improving these areas?
Leslie Leve The more that we can sort of infuse this developmental knowledge into our child welfare system and our school system, I think we have a real opportunity to provide these supports to youth at a time when it can really, it can really matter a lot, these transition points.
Ron Dahl Yes, those positive relationships are particularly powerful during this window of brain development. Do you have any insights as to how to provide more of these formative positive experiences for youth in the foster care system?
Leslie Leve You know, we know that what often draws parents’ attention, what often draws teachers attention, are these negative behaviors, right? The acting out behaviors or the moodiness that teenagers often experience. And at the same time, what we often forget is that the positive experiences have as much or greater impact in a person’s resilience and ability to thrive and transition successfully into adulthood. Programs that have been successful have really emphasized this aspect of essentially positive reinforcement, helping youth create positive experiences where they succeed and then giving them the positive feedback.
Ron Dahl Based on the research and your insights, what kinds of approaches may be effective at promoting resilience?
Leslie Leve I guess I would just keep coming back to this theme of connections. It’s this undercurrent essentially that undergirds all of these aspects that we know are helpful for promoting resilience. So in terms of the youth skill building or mentoring, really what we’re trying to do there is help youth establish connections and consistency in their relationships with others. Part of that is helping the foster parents and the youth establish a predictable connection with one another. And same for the connections between systems.
We can have this umbrella framework of connections and consistency. But then it needs to be tailored for the individual in terms of where their strengths are and their opportunities are.
Ron Dahl If you could wave a magic wand and had a large number of resources, how might you imagine a foster care system that could be truly more effective at promoting these kinds of connections?
Leslie Leve I think there is so much that we’ve learned from the developmental science that we can apply to the foster care system. The first and foremost, we need a system that’s developed developmentally oriented at its core and that, you know, even goes back to its name again. Child Protective Services is not a developmentally oriented term. We want something that’s, “Child Resilience Support,” and so infusing this developmental orientation into all aspects of our foster care system would be a giant step towards improving our current models. And so that can be infused across building these connections at the peer level because what a young adolescent and early adolescent is needing in terms of their peer connections and peer interactions is very different than a 16, 17, 18 year old.
It can be at the parent level. We know just providing parents with information about different developmental stages and what to expect from their adolescent is essential.
It can be at the coordinated services level, so helping systems understand the value of connections and consistency from system to system and and within the system helping those in the foster care system, whether they are supervisors or on-the-ground caseworkers, learn about the developmental needs and challenges of adolescence so that when they’re in the day-to-day activities of making decisions and providing support to foster youth and foster families, they have that knowledge behind them and can help course correct or adjust depending on the developmental needs of a youth.
This theme of connections that we’ve been talking about is just even more profound during our current time because of the pandemic, when many of us have had our connections severed or changed and certainly some of the in-person experiences more limited. It’s just a time when we know that these connections are incredibly important. And then you layer on a pandemic when typical opportunities for connections are limited, you might not be going to school or having face-to-face contact as much. And it’s just a time when the more we can do with our family environments, with the foster families, the youth, and the biological parents who are, who may be living in the home together to help build these connections and role modeling and how these experiences the better, because our opportunities have been cut short.
Ron Dahl That raises a really important set of points that I want to bring up, and that is that sometimes this work on early brain development and how formative the first three to five years of life are and how adversity can harm the brain leads people to think it’s too late. And I think there’s a lot of exciting science that’s been emerging over the last several years. I was thinking of some of Kate McLaughlin’s work, looking at the effects of early adversity and trauma on the brain, that the onset of adolescence is naturally a time for new social learning and identity development. So, so this idea that it could be a window of opportunity even among young people who have had so many negative experiences and trauma. I’d love to hear your thoughts about that perspective.
Leslie Leve I think all youth who’ve been in foster care have experienced some trauma, certainly being removed from your home and placed with a different family is a traumatic experience. What we know from the literature is that trauma has long lasting scars, essentially, on your brain systems, on your behavior, on the ways you interact with the world. And so allowing a space within the context of services to acknowledge that to have youth reflect on their history and their experiences and their loss is essential. And then at the same time, while providing that space for reflection and grieving and acknowledgement, using sort of a mindfulness approach to help them then acknowledge it and move forward and take their next steps so that you’re not sort of frozen or locked in into this cycle of negative emotions and and, and fear and trauma from your past experiences. But it’s validated, it’s acknowledged, it’s recognized. And then you move forward to help form these new relationships and do a reset, essentially in terms of your connections with others.
It’s never too late to, to change your path forward, and adolescence is a perfect opportunity for that, and I think Sixto is an outstanding and really inspirational example of that.
Ron Dahl Leslie, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation and we are very appreciative of your insights, wisdom and your ideas for having a positive impact.
Leslie Leve Well, thank you so much, Ron, it was a pleasure and honor to be here.
***
Ron Dahl The U.S. foster care system is huge and fragmented. It was designed to keep children safe–particularly younger children. But we know from decades of research that adolescents need more than safety. They need avenues to explore and discover, to learn from mistakes, and they need support to build connections with caring adults as well as peers.
As we’ve heard from our guests, Sixto Cancel and Leslie Leve, the foster care system is not currently designed to nurture positive adolescent development. But it could! We know that trauma affects young brains, but we also know that with the right support, adolescence offers windows of opportunity–particularly for social learning about self, others, and relationships.
During this window of intense social learning, relationships matter. Finding ways to create and maintain connection for adolescents in foster care is paramount to creating resilience, healthy development and trust. We often forget that adolescents still need caring adults. Youth in foster care can benefit hugely from warmth and firm but fair expectations from adults who set boundaries and also understand something about what adolescents need developmentally. Helping to create room for opportunities to take healthy risks, make mistakes, and sometimes push back on those set boundaries.
Sixto challenged us to think about how we can leverage the science to reimagine the current system and create new programs based on what we know about development. One way to do this is to focus on connections. Leslie’s research shows that foster care programs are more effective at promoting positive outcomes when they make connections with peers and mentors—by supporting not only the adolescents, but also their foster parents and biological parents as well. This support may include counseling, group learning, and skill building for everyone involved.
There’s still much work to be done, but thanks to people like Sixto Cancel and Leslie Leve, we have some pragmatic as well as inspiring ideas of where things need to go.
I’m Ron Dahl, thanks for joining us on Adaptivity. If you’d like to learn more about the science of adolescence, visit us at adaptivitypodcast.org or share your thoughts through the contact information at our website, or by using the hashtag #adaptivitypod.
Our podcast is produced at UC Berkeley for the Center for the Developing Adolescent. Our senior producer is Polly Stryker. Our producer is Meghan Lynch Forder. Our engineer is Rob Speight.
Education | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination | Other Resources (Podcasts)
Adaptivity podcast host Ron Dahl talks with Harvard physics major Jara Wilensky, high school math star Noor Harwell, and Dr. Joanna Lee Williams about their experiences of being Black women in science and how we form our identities in our adolescent years.
Ron Dahl During adolescence we start to form a deeper, more enduring sense of self—Who am I? Where do I fit in? And, what messages am I getting about who I should be?
Noor Harwell I’m sort of a bookworm, I’m a bit introverted, but I do like public speaking and being outspoken and joining things—so like in school, I do things like student council and I love theater.
Ron Dahl We also become aware of the contexts, experiences, and values that underpin the feelings of “This is who I am” or “This is ME.”
Jara Wilensky I would describe myself as someone who really values education. It’s just been something that has always been very important in my life. And I really just love the STEM subjects; I’ve always been interested in STEM.
Ron Dahl It’s also a time when we become sensitive to messages and signals—spoken and unspoken—about how others perceive us. And that’s when race and gender and other aspects of our identity gain new importance.
Noor Harwell I knew I was Black, and I knew my family was Black, but I didn’t identify as Black until like fifth grade, sixth grade, middle school.
Ron Dahl And racism, bias, and discrimination come into stark relief.
Jara Wilensky That was one of the few times where someone explicitly said, “I think you’re just here because of your race, and I just see you as kind of a placeholder to make sure, we’re not accused of not having Black people in the class.”
Ron Dahl I’m Ron Dahl, Founding Director of the Center for the Developing Adolescent, and this is Adaptivity, where we explore the science of adolescence, untangling misconceptions about the years between childhood and adulthood. We explore new insights into the rapid cognitive, emotional, and social changes that happen during these years, and how the developing adolescent brain is primed to promote healthy and adaptive learning.
On this episode of Adaptivity, we’re talking about our sense of identity.
During adolescence, we begin to develop a more complex understanding of who we are, where we belong, and how other people see us. Issues of race and ethnicity become especially salient, as we integrate our growing sense of self with the messages we get from parents, teachers, other kids and the media.
Healthy development in adolescence involves creating a positive sense of self and belonging. And this process can be challenging for young people facing racism and other forms of bias and discrimination. How youth feel about their race and ethnicity is an important part of identity formation—positive racial and ethnic identity is associated with better psychosocial outcomes, like reduced depression and higher self-esteem… even improved academic performance and reduced health risks.
In this episode, we’re specifically looking at the experiences of Black girls and young women—and the kinds of messages Black girls might get from parents, teachers, other kids, the news—and how these messages can impact a developing sense of self and identity.
We’ll start by talking with 19-year-old Jara Wilensky and 14-year-old Noor Harwell, two brilliant young women at the Alberta V. Scott Leadership Academy, a mentorship program run by the Association of Black Harvard Women serving Black high school girls in the Greater Boston area. Then we’ll loop in Professor Joanna Lee Williams from Rutgers University to talk about the research behind how we form our individual and group identities from the middle school years on.
***
Jara Wilensky Hi, I’m Jara, I’m a freshman, or—I just finished my freshman year at Harvard and I’m planning to concentrate in physics on the biophysics track and I’m also premed.
Noor Harwell And my name is Noor, I’m a freshman at Brookline High School. My interest is in math. That’s my favorite subject and coding too, so I really like STEM. And I joined AVS this fall the, excuse me, sorry. Alberta Scott Leadership Academy, and Jara was my mentor.
Ron Dahl Thank you both so much for being here. This episode, we’re talking about how we form our sense of identity during adolescence. So maybe you can start by saying a bit about yourselves—whatever comes to mind in terms of how you would describe yourself to help someone get a sense of who you are.
Jara Wilensky Well, I would describe myself as somebody who really values education. and I really just love the STEM subjects. I’ve always just been interested in STEM. As I grew to like math, I grew to like the physical sciences more. And that’s kind of when I realized, you know, I actually really like physics. It’s something that has always come relatively easily to myself. And, I also tutor. I tutor almost exclusively Black students in STEM. I enjoy doing that because I enjoy being a support system and encouraging people. Because a lot of the times, they actually understand what’s going on, but they doubt themselves.
Noor Harwell I’m sort of a bookworm, I’m a bit introverted, but I really like what I do, like public speaking and being outspoken and joining things. So, like in school, I do things like student council and I love theater and really just being out and about. That’s sort of me. Also for things I do outside of school, for coding, I actually help teach this coding class of third-to-fifth graders through this program called GB STEM—Greater Boston STEM.
Ron Dahl Jara, how and when did you first become interested in physics?
Jara Wilensky In my middle school, sixth grade is when we learned physics, and I don’t know, immediately I just kind of like took to it. It just made sense to me. Then I started reading books about like particle physics, even though I didn’t really understand any of it because I was in middle school. But I just wanted to know so badly more about physics and then also kind of to impress people because everyone was like, oh, wow, particle physics, that’s crazy. Especially things like string theory. I just read about it, not really understand it, but I kind of just love to read about it. I thought it was super interesting.
Ron Dahl At some point, did it start to feel like it was just a part of who you were, not just something you liked?
Jara Wilensky I kind of realized it when I started organizing my entire high school schedule in middle school, just around the fact that I wanted to be able to take quantum mechanics my senior year, and so I had to plan out my entire schedule just so I could be able to take all the prerequisites to get up to that point. And that’s when I realized, like, this is like a large part of my life.
Ron Dahl And how about for you, Noor, when did you first become interested in math?
Noor Harwell I feel like I’ve been interested in math since forever; I couldn’t even say a time. I remember I used to write in notebooks extra problems for myself just in my free time, just so I could get better at multiplication, better at addition.
Ron Dahl What made you realize this was taking root more deeply in your identity?
Noor Harwell Maybe when I started middle school. My mom moved me from my public school to an all-girls school, actually half because I liked math and she really wanted me in middle school, not to be pushed down as a girl and not to lose interest in STEM. And so going to a whole new school, being surrounded by girls and like having female math teachers and just being surrounded by people who were excited, sort of further pushed my excitement. So. Right about middle school.
Ron Dahl How do people react when you talk about your passion for physics and math?
Jara Wilensky They’re always surprised, usually a little impressed, which is nice, flattering. I think sometimes it has to do with being a girl and then sometimes it has to do with being Black and even a Black girl.
Noor Harwell This year, our classes are split up into standard, honors and advanced, and I’m in an advanced class and people, their eyes always blow by when they hear that I’m in advanced geometry or like that I do math outside of school or like teaching coding, like people are just very surprised by that. It’s a bit of like frustration because, like people are underestimating you. I’ve had a lot of people in my class ask me if I understand really easy topics, or they kind of baby talk down to me when I ask a question. And that can be very frustrating.
Ron Dahl That sounds complicated to unpack—people’s surprise can be seen as positive, they’re impressed. But their surprise can also be seen as skepticism, which is negative. Have you received other negative messages from people about being Black young women pursuing STEM subjects?
Jara Wilensky One that immediately comes to mind, is in high school, I was taking an honors math class and I started to not do well, because I struggle with anxiety. And so I was really showing up on my exams, like I would do very well on the homework, do very well in class, but I just wasn’t doing well exams. And so I considered switching it to a different class just to help with my stress. And then also just because the teacher wasn’t very understanding and the teacher’s response to me was, ‘No, don’t switch. You’re the only Black girl in this class.’ And I mean, that shocked me just because it wasn’t, “No, you’ll get through this. No, you’re doing well. No, you actually understand just the exams class” or whatever. It’s you no, you’re the only Black girl. You got to fulfill the diversity quota we have. And that that would definitely upset me. I don’t think I really showed it at the time, but it definitely that’s something that really stuck with me, because that was one of the few times where someone explicitly said, “I think you’re just here because of your race, and that’s how I see you. I don’t see you as really contributing to the class. I just see you as kind of a placeholder to make sure we’re not accused of not having Black people in the class.” And I mean, I did well in that class because that lit a fire. And I was like, well now I’ve got to do really well, I’m not moving out of this class.
Ron Dahl Yeah, so rather than feeling recognized as a person with some anxieties and all your capabilities, you were just placed in this category and not being recognized, as a person, as an individual. Noor, what’s your experience been like?
Noor Harwell I’ve been fortunate enough to not have experienced too many microaggressions past people’s surprise, at least involving STEM, but definitely when I went to an all girls school, nobody ever said it to my face. But people sometimes make comments about, oh, you only got accepted because you were the Black student. Like I remember when as soon as we learned the term affirmative action, that was, people look at you and you feel like, am I only here because I’m doing this? Am I—are teachers like giving me extra help or pushing me to these other math classes only because I will be one of the few Black students there? So I think that’s what I’ve gotten mainly.
Ron Dahl Jara, what advice would you give to other students, particularly Black girls, who are experiencing these kinds of comments and assumptions?
Jara Wilensky I think my experience as a tutor really helps me answer this just because I do work with, like primarily Black students and pretty much exclusively Black students. And a lot of times I do see themselves start to doubt themselves. And that can also be frustrating to me because I see them like or I hear, they’ll like talk about, “oh, these other students are doing better than me, and the teacher pays attention to them more, and the teachers are always nicer to them.” But usually they actually understand the material and they can do it themselves, but they just lack confidence. So usually I just end up saying, you know, your teachers and your peers will see you as a Black student and many times they will doubt you and not want to make space for you. But sometimes you have to create your own space and you have to take up space in your classes. Don’t back down. Just because they look at you and don’t see someone who’s going to excel in STEM doesn’t mean that they’re right.
***
Ron Dahl We’ll hear more from Jara and Noor in a bit. But first, joining me to share her expertise on adolescent development is Joanna Lee Williams, Associate Professor in the School Psychology Program at Rutgers University. Professor Williams also co-directs the National Scientific Council on Adolescence at the Center for the Developing Adolescent. Her research focuses on the role of race and ethnicity in school and friendship networks; she also translates the science of adolescence into recommendations for parents, teachers and policymakers. Welcome, Joanna.
Joanna Lee Williams Thanks Ron, glad to be here.
Ron Dahl In a recent panel you were on, a Maya Angelou quote came up. Can you remind us of it?
Joanna Lee Williams Sure. So the quote reads, “You are the sum total of everything you’ve ever seen, heard, eaten, smelled, been told, forgot. It’s all there. Everything influences each of us. And because of that, I try to make sure that my experiences are positive.”
Ron Dahl Angelou’s quote is a great springboard to talking about identity. Forging a sense of identity—who we are, where we fit in, what we value—is an important developmental task of the adolescent years. Can you talk a little bit about this process, how we form our sense of identity during adolescence?
Joanna Lee Williams Yes, so let me start with adolescence as an important period for this kind of exploration. During adolescence, there’s a lot of really important and dynamic changes that are happening with young people. So those changes are happening, you know, biologically and physiologically. They’re also related to cognitive changes and changes in social relationships and emotions. Around the time of puberty, there are changes that happen that essentially heighten young people’s sensitivity to social information and social relationships. This is important for identity, because one of the ways that we kind of negotiate and make meaning of who we are is in relationships with other people.
So in early adolescence, there tends to be a heightened attunement to information from peers, and peers serve as an important reference group for, kind of bouncing off answers to questions like, “Who am I? You know, how do I fit in? Who do I see myself becoming?” Over the course of adolescence, beyond the early years, young people become increasingly able to think in abstract and complex ways. They are able to engage in self-reflection on a deeper level, which means having ways to create a deeper sense of, a sense of self around these questions related to identity.
Ron Dahl Some of your work has focused on early adolescence as a particularly important time in developing our sense of racial identity. Can you share some of your insights about this?
Joanna Lee Williams Sure, so I’ll start with just kind of basic developmental processes around, you know, what we know related to racial identity. It’s also similar for ethnic identity. I would say the the most simple developmental model suggests that young people move from a place where they’re not necessarily thinking so much about what it means to be a member of their racial group. They may have a particular label that they identify with, but they don’t necessarily start thinking about themselves in relation to that label. For many young people, they may have a particular experience, including, I think in relation to the Maya Angelou quote, experiences that evoke particular feelings, positive and or negative, that get them thinking about themselves in broader terms.
I think the manifestation of that, particularly for black youth in the United States, often they may find themselves being acutely aware of their racial group membership in response to, say, negative comments or negative experiences, so experiences that create or convey negative stereotypes about one’s abilities, expectations of certain kinds of behaviors, and that for many youth, begins to catalyze this this process of, oh, I need to you know, people are viewing me in these sort of racialized ways.
Ron Dahl It’s fascinating to me that developmental psychologists and people studying development in childhood and adolescence rarely talk about power. We emphasize this as a time where young people seek autonomy and agency, but it’s also about how young people finding a sense of their own power…
Joanna Lee Williams What’s important for an adolescent, as you’ve said, is having some agency in being able to say, this is who I am, this is what I value, and this is how I want to be seen, you know, on this particular day in time, because that can change, of course, over time. But the challenge, I think, for Black youth in particular and other youth from historically stigmatized groups is that oftentimes they are being defined by others in ways that are grounded in stereotypes, often negative stereotypes.
So this idea that somebody else is defining who I am doesn’t align well with what we know about the need for exploration and agency and self-definition and can be really disempowering for young people to be in a setting where, you know, say, in schools, my teacher already has preconceived notions of who I might be because of this one aspect of my identity.
I will say, though, that despite what we know about the prevalence of implicit and explicit bias of racial discrimination at an interpersonal level and racism at a structural level it’s hard to overlook that there is great resilience in Black communities across the country, especially among adolescents around identity development and having a sense of pride, I think there’s a resurgence in this concept of Black joy, which is about despite all of the things that may be going on in our country, I still can look to my people as a source of joy. And I think having those messages being prevalent for young people to have access to can also tremendously benefit them in terms of racial identity development.
Ron Dahl Joanna, how did you, personally, experience this process of racial identity development?
Joanna Lee Williams So as I think about my own identity, I identify both as Black and as biracial in terms of my racial identity. I was raised by a White mother and a Black father and didn’t have the language in childhood. You know, I use the term biracial now as one of my terms. “Mixed” was the term that we used as kids, and it was sort of like generally understood that being mixed was just another way of being Black. I have a very vivid memory of an experience that I had in middle school in sixth grade. I attended a school in northern New Jersey that was somewhat diverse, but really comprised of two groups. So about I would say, 30 or so percent of students identified as Black and maybe 60 or so percent of students identified as white.
And, I had been in social studies class with my two best friends, one identified as white. Her parents were from England and she was Mormon, the other identified as Black—her parents were from Guyana. And so the three of us, this little multiracial group, were really close. And we had a great time in this class. Midway through the year, they decided for whatever reason to restructure. And I found myself in a class with kids that I knew but wasn’t friends with at all. I remember it was when we had sort of open opportunities to choose our own seating. I found that really challenging, because there was a small group of Black students in the class. So I again known since elementary school; there was a larger group of white students who I knew I wasn’t really close friends with either group. But I remember one day sort of I was sitting closer to the white students.
And one of my Black peers came up and was like, “Why are you sitting here? Are you Black? Or, are you white?” And that question just sort of throws me in my tracks, in part because I had known the student since kindergarten, like he knew my family and so did a lot. Like the rational part of me was like, well, you know that, you know, my mom’s white, you know, but I didn’t really have the language to kind of articulate would the embarrassment that I felt and the shock that I felt at that question. And so I don’t know what I said in the moment, but I do know that the very next day in that class, I made the decision to sit with my Black peers, and then for the rest of the school year, felt like I had to make this decision.
And now in my academic life, I’ve read work by Prudence Carter, who’s a sociologist, and she studied, you know, educational settings. And she uses a term called Cultural Status Positioning. … a lot of her ethnographic work has focused on Black and Latinx adolescents, and she talks about within the Black community this idea of engaging in these kinds of questions around authenticity that are really about, you know, sort of figuring out the boundaries of like who gets included, who’s sort of defined in ways that young people feel is authentic and that I understand it as part of developing identities….and that question, really from this peer of mine came from that space. I don’t know what; I’ve never asked him his intention behind that question; I just know how it made me feel.
For me, it was, you know, like race became very suddenly salient. And for probably the rest of middle school on some level, sixth through eighth grade, I was always very conscious of who I was surrounding myself with and what it meant for me to be defined by who I was sitting with. And that’s common in middle school, that our identities in some ways are defined by our peer groups.
Ron Dahl Thank you so much for sharing that story. It’s such a clear example of how racial identity becomes so salient in the middle school years. Let’s return to our conversation with Jara and Noor, and then you and I can talk some more.
I asked them to reflect on their own developmental journey in terms of their racial, ethnic and cultural identity. I wondered if there were important events—like yours having to choose where to sit in the classroom, Joanna—or people who were influential to them. Jara answered first, then Noor:
Jara Wilensky I think the biggest jump I made to who I am now was in high school because before then I had been just kind of always in white spaces, like I was in a group of majority Black people very few times. I mean, usually like family or church. And because I was also kind of a gymnast, I didn’t go to church as often just because I would have practices all the time. Then gymnastics was a white space. I did competitive horseback riding. That’s a white space as well. My school—I went to a private school in D.C., majority white as well. So they’re kind of very few spaces until high school when the number of Black people in my grade increased. And I met this girl named Zia Holman, who became one of my very good friends, who was just I remember her just being like unapologetically Black. And I was like, wow, like that is so inspiring because I always think people kind of like, not toning down their Blackness, but trying to be a little bit trying to like I guess it almost seemed like they were trying to make white people more comfortable, especially at school versus I mean, she just didn’t care. It was great. Like she was just herself. And I was just so amazed by that.
Noor Harwell For me, it was like from like beginning with like fourth grade, I knew I was Black and I knew my family was Black, but I didn’t identify as Black until like fifth grade, sixth grade, middle school. And it really started with my first Black teacher, my fifth-grade teacher, Ms. Nick, and she was just really great. Like she recognized that I was Black and she really saw me and had allyship with me. And she introduced me to this thing called an affinity space, which I’d never heard of before. And so I joined that. And we just had discussions every Friday during lunch. We just talked about all sorts of things. And I think what was most valuable for me from that experience was having words to describe, like what was happening to me, like words like “microaggression” and words like “implicit bias.” I finally say, Oh, and like, look back on my life and see, that’s what’s happening, like, now I can tell people and like, ask for help or like, let someone know what’s happening to me. So that was the moment I really started to claim me being Black as something. Yeah.
Ron Dahl That’s fascinating, so that affinity group experience was giving you words and concepts, but also feelings, can you say more about that?
Noor Harwell Yeah, it gave me a space where I saw people who had gone through the same things as me. I think a prominent thing that always comes up with a lot of Black women is hair—people touching your hair, putting their hands in your hair. And because I’ve been one of the only Black students in my class and my grades, I never heard from anybody else who had that same experience. But here were like 10, 15 other girls who were saying the exact same thing. So I think I felt a sense of camaraderie and a sense of belonging, really.
Jara Wilensky It’s one thing to be a woman and it’s another thing to be a Black person, but being a Black woman is an entirely different experience. And so being able to be in a space with other Black women is usually like one of the few times where I can let my guard down the other time being with family and close friends.
Ron Dahl Joanna, what do you think about what Jara and Noor shared and about affinity group experiences?
Joanna Lee Williams I think we’re hearing very normative experiences from these two young women about, you know, it being sort of middle school and high school when they started really thinking about themselves in terms of being Black and being Black women in ways that went beyond just being able to like to use a label. They were starting to think about what that meant and really integrating it into a sense of, you know, this is this is part of who I am as a person. And I think that we see the importance of context, we hear the importance of context, in their stories.
So for Noor, having a space facilitated by a teacher, this intentional affinity space where she and other Black girls could talk. And I imagine that those conversations, again, didn’t necessarily have to be about race. But when you bring Black girls together and the intersection of race and gender comes up and they can have these “aha” moments where they feel like, oh, you know, I’m not the only one, then, you know, I think young people begin to get a sense of their identity in terms of the balance between who I am as a person and who I am as a part of a collective, larger collective.
So Jara talked about feeling sort of most herself when she’s in spaces, affinity spaces with other Black women, she can sort of let her guard down and not have to pretend or anything like that. So, I think all of those are really aligned with what we know about identity development happening in relationships, about the importance of context. The fluid and dynamic nature of identity means that as we move from space to space, even throughout the same day, different aspects of ourselves and our identity may be salient at different points in time. Both of these young women talk about being Black and being women as being important parts of who they are. When you’re able to be in a context where there’s just a lot of congruence between how you see yourself and these important and central aspects of your identity. The importance of context—meeting them in particular moments of development—stood out to me as being really critical.
Ron Dahl To expand on this idea of relationships and contexts, let’s hear more about the Alberta V. Scott Leadership Academy at Harvard, or AVS, where Jara is a mentor, and Noor is her mentee.
Jara Wilensky My job is to check in on Noor every once in a while. Just make sure she’s doing OK. And then also attend the Zoom meetings with the rest of the people in AVS every Saturday. And, of course, Noor is there as well. And we will discuss a little bit of Black history, some current events, and then there is a book club, So that usually will have to do with experiences as a Black woman. A lot of times they’re little vignettes about like a long novel that’s just like consists of the whole time. So we can usually just like read a chapter and then we’re going to break out and discuss it. And usually being a Black woman in STEM does tend to come up just because if you’re talking about being marginalized, then that’s definitely one of the spaces where that would happen.
Noor Harwell I think for me, the mentee program, mentorship program has been so cool just to see Black women in college off and doing things and not that I haven’t seen that, but getting to talk to them and they’re very real. Like, when I look down the line and think about STEM, I often think about what I hear about all the hardships you face and how you’re going to be the only Black person in the room with all these things that are going to happen to you. And it sounds like really sad and really awful. And then I get to see these people every Saturday who are going up against that, and they’re still going about their day smiling, laughing, having fun. So for me, definitely that I’m going to say I talked about before having a space where it’s almost unfiltered in a sense, where people could just talk about how they feel, how their week went, what may have happened if it has to do with race being Black or even if it doesn’t, just a space to kind of be free.
Ron Dahl It’s really interesting to hear how important being in an unfiltered space is for Noor—the mentorship program gives her a place to be free…
Joanna Lee Williams So I loved hearing all of that. I think some of the things that I really appreciated about the way the program is structured and also how it was how it was being received was that there was some intentionality around acknowledging race and acknowledging, you know, sort of racism and bias. But there was also a celebration of cultural pride and history. And when we think about identity development during adolescence, race is for youth, particularly for youth of color, race is one of many aspects of identity. And so I heard Noor talking about, you know, sometimes we can you know, we sort of talk about things that are related to race and being a Black woman in STEM. But sometimes we just talk about other stuff and talk about our day. So I think identity is comprised of how we see ourselves in terms of our individual identity, who we think we are as an individual person that is unique from other people. And that’s also sort of wrapped and intertwined with how we see ourselves in terms of race and gender. So the way the program was structured, it allowed for addressing kind of the multiple dimensions of who the the young mentee women were.
Joanna Lee Williams The other piece that is really important that both Jara and Noor acknowledged was being able to see, you know, women who have had these experiences. So understanding that if I have a vision of my future self as being a woman in STEM, it may be easier to kind of make that more concrete, if I actually can have relationships with women who are a few years ahead of me and who are doing this. So, I think there is a lot of value in this kind of mentoring program for being able to see that ‘this person is just a few years ahead of where I am now, but I see their experience, and I can envision myself having this kind of experience, too.’
Ron Dahl Yes, and I think one other aspect you allude to in that exchange, Joanna, is the weaving together of the challenges, but also the positive—the fun—aspects of daily life, even in the face of the particular kinds of challenges that are coming up.
Joanna Lee Williams Absolutely. Absolutely. I think really, you know, our identities never developed in a vacuum. They’re essentially almost always done in relational contexts. But, you know, we gain and develop and recast our sense of ourselves in relation to images that we see, conversations we have, things that we watch on television or a YouTube video, things that we hear, messages that we receive, say, um, say in classrooms and things like that. But I think the relational experience is an important part of identity development. And I think you pointed out a really key piece that the women who are serving as mentors were full humans. They might have been spotlighting at times particular aspects of their identities as Black women in STEM, but they were also portraying their full selves, allowing the young women to also do the same. So I think that’s really important, including all of the, the strengths and the joy that comes in in that experience.
Ron Dahl And of course, another aspect of identity we haven’t mentioned in this context is gender, being female and in STEM. Because these dimensions of identity can also be challenging and also create opportunities to connect. Are there other gender-specific aspects that would be different, or do you think they’re actually quite similar in many ways to the racial aspects of identity and ethnicity?
Joanna Lee Williams Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I imagine the way that gender and race operates, there are, when we’re talking about identity, we might draw out some core principles around young people want to be seen and understood and respected for who they are and how they define themselves. In the context of this particular program, you have the intersection of race and gender being made explicit. We can’t necessarily tease apart different components of identity. And we have to recognize that, for instance, being Black and also identifying as female may create a different sense of identity than somebody who identifies as Black and male, you know, say CIS gender, male or Black and transgender, male or female. So the intersection of those categories can make for unique experiences and unique ways in which we’re received in the world.
I still think there are ways in which you can, you know, sometimes talk about race and the collective history of African Americans, in this case, you can sometimes talk about gender and collective experiences of women, and/or women in STEM. But I think what’s great about this particular program is you have Black women who are in STEM. So they are in, you know, drawing from their lived experience of what it’s like to be somebody who identifies with multiple identities in this particular space. But the core principles of making room for these conversations and seeing youth for their full humanity, I think would be important regardless.
Ron Dahl We talk about intersectionality with ease nowadays, but it wasn’t always easy to have multiple identities—like being Black and female—in the worlds of science and math. I asked Jara and Noor if they think it’s any easier for them today than, say, 10 or 20 or 30 years ago…
Jara Wilensky It’s definitely easier; a lot of the barriers have already been kind of torn down by the people who have come before me and also there are just more mentors. And that’s something that you see a lot of, especially white men have. There’s always someone to kind of support them. They tend to have like a much wider network, versus now we’re kind of starting to build that network for Black women in STEM. And, you know, that’s something new. And that makes my experience very different from the experiences of Black women who were starting out in STEM like alone, or not entirely alone, but the network was much smaller.
Noor Harwell Definitely easier, also like mainstream media just a couple of days ago in math class we were watching “Hidden Figures” and movies like that, and like books about maybe kids of color, Black girls who are interested in math and. Definitely, like, you know, it’s possible because you’ve seen other people do it versus, I can imagine 30 years ago, maybe you’re the first one to do it. So I appreciate not being one of the first.
Ron Dahl And what about looking forward—over the next 10 or 20 years? Are you hopeful?
Jara Wilensky I’d like to expand the network even further just you know make sure that everyone who wants to be in STEM can be in STEM, like just making sure, like if someone is super passionate and has so much potential and a feel that they’re not held back because they’re a woman or because of their race. I mean, think of all the advancements and all the progress we could have if gender and race weren’t a factor in the opportunities that people have.
Noor Harwell Definitely finding each other and helping each other and then, as you said, for the future, definitely building networks and giving more media presence so people don’t go, oh, I will be the Black girl who likes math, the Black girl who likes STEM, I’ll be the kid who likes STEM.
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Joanna Lee Williams Yeah, I love that—“the kid who likes STEM.” I think that, I mean, that really encapsulates a lot of this. What I heard from Jara and Noor made me think about the importance of going beyond just sort of role models where there’s just a few people that you can look to but really thinking more about critical mass so that there’s enough Black women in STEM so that it’s not seen as unusual or exceptional in some way and it’s normalized as a career pathway for Black girls. You know, that this is something that Black girls and Black women do.
STEM is I mean, we’re talking about a tough career field and it’s important for young Black women to understand that, you know, nobody gets there kind of on their own. And I think stereotype and identity threat can also make it difficult to feel like I can actually ask for help or I can be part of, like, say, a study group or something like that. But the more opportunities you have to hear from other women and the ways in which their journey has worked and the support they’ve gotten along the way, I think that can help with kind of minimizing some of those stereotype threats and identity threats that may come with being a Black woman in the STEM field.
Ron Dahl Joanna, I want to ask you to now reflect a bit on the developmental science lens you bring. That is, not only on how we should address these issues broadly in society, but also why it is important to take extra care in thinking about girls and young women at this particular time in their lives and development. As adults, we have an important opportunity to try to create more of these positive supports and influences.
Joanna Lee Williams Yeah. So I think, you know, we heard from Jara and Noor some really good examples of things that have helped them. And I think we know from the literature that these are beneficial. So mentoring programs and affinity spaces, when done well, can be really affirming spaces that help young people, young Black girls and other young adolescents feel affirmed in who they are and who they may want to become in that moment. We heard in one of the young women’s experiences that she found it helpful just to get some vocabulary and language to put to the experiences that she had. When somebody says ‘no, that’s actually that’s a real thing. I’m validating your experience and I can give you a term that you can use to label that. I think that that is something that can be helpful as we think about particular aspects of identity development.
But, I think giving young people opportunities to be able to, you know, show and express that their identities are still in flux and still in development and that they can, you know, don’t necessarily have to be narrowed down to one particular aspect of identity.
Just because a kid sees themself, you know, halfway through 6th grade, halfway through 7th grade, they may have started to explore themself in other ways, and a few years later, that’s going to just deepen. So creating opportunities for depth of exploration and for growth, creating access to images and messages that affirm and support pride in one’s racial and or gender or other identities, I think is really important, too. So, never at any point our kids feeling ashamed of expressing a particular identity. I think part of that also involves adults educating themselves about the rich, diverse ways in which Black people might express themselves and realizing there’s no one single way to be Black or to, you know, express your Blackness or interpret what Blackness means. I think that takes being in relationships with, you know, people who are Black, for example, to get a sense of the rich, the richness of our cultural heritage. You know, the same goes for when we’re talking about gender and other identities as well. We have singular labels, but those labels stand for so many things. And so understanding that each individual child may center their race in their gender as important to them, they’re still going to have unique and individual ways of expressing those identities.
Ron Dahl Thank you, Joanna. Those are wise and important suggestions.
I asked Jara if she could shine a light on some ways to improve support and understanding for people who are not walking in her shoes…
Jara Wilensky I wasn’t really suggesting anything, but I would ask a couple of questions, and that would be, have you ever been in a space where your race is the minority or your gender is the minority, or both? And how did that make you feel? Did someone and then has someone ever doubted you? Because you because you’re of a certain race or a certain gender? And then finally, would you be OK with would you be OK if one day you woke up and you were a Black woman and you wanted to continue in STEM, would you be OK with that? And I think a lot of the times people would say, no, I wouldn’t want that. And they may not admit it, but, you know, in the back of their, back of their mind would be like they kind of, that’s not something they would want. And that kind of helps you realize if you just think about why that is. Then you start to realize what other people experience and how your race and gender are actually affecting your experience.
Joanna Lee Williams Wow, I think, you know, we just heard some brilliant questions that really framed out the importance of these issues around identity and identity in context. And, you know, I think that those questions are really compelling and really telling. And it gives me pause to think about in STEM and beyond. The fact that those questions are still quite poignant and quite relevant means that, you know, there’s there’s a lot of work to do.
I think, for me, when I think about identity as a as a Black girl or Black woman, ideally we can you know, the first thing that comes to mind is sort of pride and joy. It started out and circulated as a hashtag, but the phrase of “Black girl magic,” all of those things, I think are the kinds of feelings that anybody would want to evoke when they’re thinking about the identities that are important to them. And so I think we need to find ways to continue instilling that in young Black girls and women, but then also recognizing that the thing that needs to change are the settings and the structures and the contexts.
These young Black women, as we heard, are doing really well. They really are grounded in their sense of who they are, as Black women and as scientists, too. I think, you know, not underestimating the importance of identifying as a scientist, if STEM is your field, is really important. So they’re really grounded in their identities. And I think this sort of speaks to the idea that there are aspects of, you know, individual settings as well as, you know, larger structural contexts that that need to shift in order for us to have true congruence between one sense of oneself as a Black woman in STEM and, you know, being in the spaces in which you are doing your work or being educated.
Ron Dahl Joanna, thank you so much for such a remarkable breadth and depth of expertise and wisdom, helping us to understand these really, really important issues.
Joanna Lee Williams It was my pleasure. Thank you so much.
Ron Dahl I also want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to Jara Wilensky and Noor Harwell for sharing so many valuable thoughts and insights.
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So we’ve heard from three exceptional women about developing passions, goals, and identity—particularly racial and ethnic identity—during the adolescent years.
As Joanna explained, part of the opportunity for this sort of discovery comes from the cognitive changes that give us new capacities to think and reflect in more complex ways about our experiences. Equally important are the emotional changes that occur during adolescence—including our increasing sensitivity to social feedback and strong motivation to feel socially valued, admired, and respected—particularly by the people we value, admire, and respect.
And how these cognitive and emotional changes combine to make the middle- and high-school years an important period to make sense of racial identity.
As adults, we can help young people as they form their sense of identity by creating opportunities for exploration and growth and providing messages that affirm and support youths’ racial or gender or other identities.
We also need to allow room for young people to define for themselves who they are, and to recognize that there’s no single way to be a young person of color or to follow a particular passion in STEM, math, and physics.
When we support youth to develop a positive sense of identity, we help them thrive as individuals who can bring their knowledge, talents, skills, and ideas, not only for their own development, but to contribute to tackling the complex challenges of our world.
I’m Ron Dahl, thanks for joining us on Adaptivity.
Our podcast is recorded primarily at UC Berkeley. Our senior producer is Polly Stryker. Our producer is Meghan Lynch Forder. Our engineer is Rob Speight. Adaptivity is a co-production of UC Berkeley and the UCLA Center for the Developing Adolescent.
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This episode of Adaptivity features the following songs:
All available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.
Council Report | Education | Community Engagement | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination | Juvenile Justice
This first Council Report from the National Scientific Council on Adolescence summarizes research on how racism and related inequities impact key developmental milestones of adolescence and offers policy and practice recommendations to support Black youth.
Adolescence—beginning around 10 years of age and ending in the early 20s—represents a particularly important period of experience and opportunity during which youth explore the world, develop a sense of agency, and define their identity. Experiences with racism within common contexts and spaces create different experiences for youth along racial lines.
Fortunately, the monumental growth and learning that occur during adolescence make it a time when interventions and anti-racist approaches can make a real difference. Insights from developmental science remind us to focus on the adolescent years as an important time to promote anti-racism in ways that can positively impact young people today, their futures, and the communities and country that they will come to lead.
Report lead Joanna Williams, co-author Andrew Fuligni, and youth reviewer Kofi Mason talked with moderator Jennifer Pfeifer about how we can work to eliminate anti-Black racism and mitigate its effects in order to support the healthy development of Black youth.
Joanna Williams, along with Jamila Walida Simon and Asia Ambler from New York State 4H, spoke with Karen Pittman, Founder of the Forum for Youth Investment about how the new council report amplifies the role youth-serving organizations can play in optimizing learning and development and intentionally counter inequities to ensure that Black adolescents have what they need to thrive.
