Adolescence is a period of challenging social and biological development that calls for thorough peer networking, close friendship and an urge of romantic relationships which begins from as early as 16 years of age. It is a developmental stage in which adolescents feel more secure with their peers and friends than their parents. This shows the critical role that peer relationships play in the adolescents’ feelings of social anxiety and depression as they are the key risks that this vulnerable group has an exposure to. Annette and Hannah in their article examine depression and social anxiety as different aspects of internal distress. To achieve this, they use different models of risk and protective factors.
Annette and Hannah synchronize on peer crowd affiliations and peer victimization as the two different aspects of adolescents’ general peer relationships. Peer crowds are groups of similar individuals sharing similar reputation who rarely spend time together. This group brings together adolescents with either good or bad social norms such as popular high-status and deviant low-status adolescents respectively. Adolescents affiliated to the high-status category benefit from high self esteem and good companionships. On the other hand, members of the low-status peer relations suffer from high depression and low self esteem. These are the two major peer relationships that dominate larger peer systems. Peer victimization concentrates on the negative effects that come with the affiliation with larger peer sets. These negative effects include loneliness and feelings of depression.
Negative romantic relationship qualities are more alienated to depressive symptoms rather than social anxiety. These relationship patterns go beyond ethnic boundaries as they are similar across various ethnic groups. It is thus important to understand that the negative qualities of romantic relationships that have a very unique contribution to the conceptualization of the adolescents’ depressive affect. This fact stand s tall even though best friendship and romantic relationship qualities are interrelated. Besides, this article reiterates that gender biasness is not evident in the association and relationship and internal distress patterns.
Peers and peer groups have a very central role to play in the physical and social development of adolescents. During this critical stage, both peer acceptance and peer rejection contribute to their emotional and social maturity. Peer acceptance refers to the extent to which children are liked and disliked by their peers and peer groups. The determinant factors of peer acceptance are inherent in the character development of individual children. Some of these characters may be develop from association or through inheritance. Good children who are outgoing and friendly and possessing wonderful cognitive and problem solving skills are regarded by their peers as popular. These students are emotionally stable and achieve early maturation especially boys. However, children mixed up in positive and negative social behaviors such as high social impact and arrogance respectively are viewed by their peers as relatively unstable. They are controversial and may occasionally be very influential in their peers but not well liked by their peers. These children end up changing their peer groups so fast so as to seek adjustment towards acceptance.
Children are likely to be neglected by their peers due to two basic reasons: aggressiveness and social awkwardness. First, aggressive children are disruptive and hostile. Such children may resort to reactive aggression in which they may physically hurt their peers through their unwanted behaviors. Others may be vested on proactive aggression that involves mental torture on their victims. The children subjected to aggressive treatments may be distressed and have feelings of loneliness. This is what Annette and Hannah explores in their article as peer victimization. Initial researches greatly linked adolescent boys with such behaviors but recent studies show that relational victimization can include rumor mongering and friendship withdrawals which are also very common with girls. In fact, they emphasize that aversive experiences with such peer groups can intensify depression and social anxiety with time. These two aggressive approaches may drive away peers who find it hard to cope with such peer groups.
Secondly, some adolescents may exhibit non-aggressive behaviors that can still lead to rejection by peers. Anti-social characters such as immaturity, poor or low-self esteem and depression defines non-aggressive rejection. These characters discourage socialization among peers because such children may be targets for bullying, and mockery.
As this article states, friendships are voluntary relationships that are anchored in greater loyalty, faithfulness, intimacy and generosity that should be compounded by high degree of mutual concern. It is through these qualities that friendships develop into either romantic or best-friendship relationships. Friendships present several benefits to the adolescents by building emotional wellness, very crucial social skills requires for adulthood close relationships and self developments. Friendship also avails platforms from which social challenges can be approached and solved.
However, lack of good relationships among the peers and adolescents may b detrimental to the psychological health and well being. Many developmental psychopathological implications arise from poor peer groupings. If not mitigated upon immediately, they may lead into severe psychological maladjustments such as mental health symptoms, loneliness and low school achievements, aggressive and delinquent behaviors. This is what Annette and Hannah elaborates in their article. These relationships must therefore articulated carefully to ensure that these risks are avoided.
References
Annette M. La Greca and Hannah Moore Harrison. (2005). Adolescent Peer Relations,
Friendships, and Romantic Relationships: Do They Predict Social Anxiety and
Depression? Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology , 34 (1), 49-61.
