Analyzing Biological and Social Influences on Adolescence Stage

This essay examines the significant biological and social influences on adolescent development, defining adolescence as the transitional period between childhood and adulthood (ages 10-19). It discusses how biological factors like genetics, brain chemistry, hormone levels, nutrition, and gender affect physical and mental growth during teenage years, including the impact of hormonal changes on mood swings and the importance of nutrition for proper development. The essay also explores social influences such as identity formation, peer relationships, and media exposure, highlighting the roles of social motivation, reward sensitivity, and distraction in shaping adolescent behavior. It emphasizes the importance of understanding these factors to address issues like risk-taking and mental health in adolescents, and notes that Desklib offers resources for further study.

ESSAY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Importance of biological and social influences during adolescence development stage............3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Biological and social factor plays very important role in the development stage of the human life
cycle. Biological influence consists of the physical changes occur during the development stage
whereas in social influence the behavioural changes take place. The development time of puberty
during child to mature adult is classified into the adolescence. This essay focuses upon the various
aspects of the human body development and highlights the brief study of social as well as the
biological influences on the adolescence development stage.
MAIN BODY
Importance of biological and social influences during adolescence development stage
Adolescent or teenage is the middle stage in between child to mature adult or can be ideally defined
in between the 10 to 19 years. Evaluation of the adolescence development stages highly depends
upon various factors such as social, biological, psychological etc.
Biological influences on the adolescence development stage
The growth and the development in teenage are positively influenced by biological factors
such as genetic composition, brain chemistry, hormone levels, gender, nutrition and physical
occurrence etc. In this age span, genetics plays a vital role in the physical presence of the teenager as
it highly depends upon the genes of their parents. On the basis of their genetics their height, health,
appearance as well as the internal body functioning depends. Many of time if parents are affected
with any types of the health issues then there are chances to have that same health issue in baby and
the indication of the symptoms starts in teenage most favourably.
Brain chemistry can be defined in the terms of the brain development in the adolescent.
Adolescent brain development can be characterized with the help of imbalance within the limbic and
reward system that start to mature but not fully yet mature to take control over the prefrontal control
system of the body. In this time brain still needs to a lot of remodelling so that it can function as an
adult brain (Hohnen, Gilmour and Murphy, 2019). This prefrontal cortex is the decision-making part
of the brain, that decides and develops the ability to solve problems, logical thinking and can control
the impulses within the body.
In the teenage, the hormonal changes in the body are stays on the peak too. The brain of the
adolescent pours out the adrenal stress hormone, sex hormone and growth hormones, all these have
impact on brain development in the return. These teenage hormones gave a huge impact on their

mood swings, emotions and all the impulses such as aggression on the body. The mood swings are
caused by the estrogens, progesterone and the testosterone hormones, Whereas the estrogens and
progesterone plays important role in the female reproduction system and testosterone plays role in
the male reproduction system (Best and Ban, 2021). These hormones are mainly affects the physical
appearance of the male and females.
Nutrition also plays an important role in the development stage as malnutrition have
detrimental role in the development process. Deficiency of the trace minerals can hinder the proper
growth of the teens in terms of height, body fat, distribution, muscle mass acquisition and the
hormonal production (Weichselbaum, 2017). This disturbance in the hormone levels can cause lots
of issues in the future also.
On the gender basis, puberty changes are always hallmarked in the stage of the adolescence.
According to that, puberty changes are usually occurs two years earlier in females comparatively to
males. The all type of physical changes in the teenagers can be accessed with the help of Tanner
staging. All new physical changes in the body, changes in the mood and emotional levels are the
significant challenges occurs in the puberty stage. This is the time where sex difference start to
emerge in the mental problems for the teenagers. As an example before the teenage, the depression
occurs at the same time in the girls as well as the boys but after all these hormonal changes occurs in
the puberty, adolescence girls are tends to get depression around twice as with the boys. To have an
early start of the puberty risk factors for the anxiety and depression comes in the girls first. On the
contrast boys are more likely to get the substances disorder which can lead them to life threatening
actions sometimes.
Adverse experiences during the childhood like neglect, bullying or abuse are also associated
with the metal health disorder in the later age. Many of times the environmental factors also have a
effective role in the mental and biological disorder. The neuro development processes influences
the brain development by environmental experiences. So, there is a very high possibility that
negative environmental experience as well as the stressful environment have a major effect on the
development of the adolescent brain (Blakemore, 2019.). Although it is predictable to have pubertal
changes , the timing of the changes are variable in person by person. The puberty maturations are
controlled by the interaction between the brain, pituitary gland with the interconnection among them

and the environment in terms of social, cultural, ambient environment of the locality. A relative
research era relates the puberty with the development of the brain in the context of support cells and
neurons. These neural change within the puberty results in the cognitive growth as well as the
improvement in the abstract reasoning.
According to the research (Bluth and Eisenlohr-Moul, 2017), an adolescence age is a
stressful development stage where the anxiety, resilience increment, gratitude, exploration, Self
compassion in the attitude changes take place with the time. However, with the research it has been
found that these behavioural changes can be measured and controlled with the mindful self
compassion program. On implication of the multilevel growth programs, the mental health of the
teenagers can be improved with the low stress factors.
Social influences on the adolescent development stage
Social changes in the adolescence are notable as the autonomous identity from their parents, their
intimacy, their logical thinking, self consciousness etc. Social and emotional changes in the
teenagers indicates their growth as an independent identity and their brain development to think
logically as well as decision making (Orben, Tomova and Blakemore, 2020). There are three verbal
model exist that supports the social influence on the adolescence development stage: social
motivation model, reward sensitivity and the distraction model. The study of these models
concludes in terms of two neurodevelopmental results, whereas social model results in the term of
social brain development and rest of the two models results in the term of slow maturation among
the cognitive control system.
There are various social factors exist that have a influence on the teenage. There are social
and psychological changes take place as the teenager start to search for their identity because in this
age teenagers strive or seeks for more freedom, and they spend more time away from their guardian
or parents. In the adolescence, teenagers give more importance to the group or peers compared to
the family so the parental supervision and guidance became more important. During this phase,
individuals tends to evolve with the person having same feeling, attitude or the behaviour. These
group can serve negative or positive depends upon the environment of the group. A bad company
can lead the adolescent into bad habits as well as good company can lead them towards positive
environment and improved positive thinking.

Social influence compromises as the process where one is having influence with the other in the
manner of feelings, thoughts or action and it can have positive as well as negative effects during the
development stages of teens.
In the adolescene age, teenagers are keen to learn from their own observation and practiccal
experience regardless of the parents action or their point of view. So the physhology matter a lot
during the social influence. Concept of the social influence can be understood with psychological
perspectives: Lifespan perceptive, learning perceptive, humanistic perceptive and the sociocultural
perceptive in the development age. Lifespan perspective emphasizes upon multidimensional,
multidirectional development of the adolescent. Involvement in the social activity positively can
result in the logical thinking towards the problem as well as the thinking towards the social issue in
the environment can also result in the positive manner. Learning perspective leads towards the
development centrered to the learning processes within the environment.
These environmental influences includes the observation and reinforcement techniques in
development stages. These perspectives broaden up the thinking in practical manner. The way others
are reacting and adopting towards the condition comes under this ideology. Humanistic perspective
emphasizes on the whole person such as in peers, individual way of behaving towards the problem
and the result in terms of positive or negative can be studied under this prospective (Wood and et.
al., 2018). This way the development get affected with the social environment. Under the last
perspective it is a behavioural study of the adolescent about the behaviour culture by examine the
regulation of the social culture.
The self understanding leads the teenagers towards many arguments with the experienced
ones. Adolescents arguments with their own point of view, their thinking and logics towards the
things or situation lead them to have opinion different to their parents. Teenagers have a tendency to
get effected easily with the person of their same age or group. This influence leads them to the
different logical approach which can be either positive or negative depends upon the other person's
thinking (Garcia, Medina and Sibley, 2019).
The peers are always formed among the same people with the same way of behaviour,
reason behind their way or the path chosen by them is an effective study of the peer behaviour.
These all perceptive of the groups of teenagers have influence over their brain as well as their
lifelong behaviour. These perspectives also plays important roles into development of understanding
the laws and moralities.

Intimacy, closeness between the persons in personal relationships is also a part of the social
influence in the teenagers. Developmental studies in adolescence also focuses upon the increasing
closeness, mutual assistance and self disclosure in these adolescence year as the puberty tends to
loyalty and trust within friendship as well as the relationship. A need of the close friend is stronger
during the adolescence period. The impact of intimacy is generalized in the form of distraction.
Teens often opt the things they found rewarding in nature either they are beneficial for them
or not. Media have influences on all type of decision that teenagers make about their health,
lifestyles etc. Teenagers focuses upon the networking even when they have an idea that the
concentration should be on something else. Media advertises the content and teenagers start to
following those trends regardless they are having positive healthy effects or not. Teenager uses the
junk foods, alcohol, smoking to look cool, grown-up or to show off the grown up image in front of
other (Akram and Kumar, 2017.). However, media have lots of positive effects as well such as the
innovations, news and the creativity can develop the thinking or vast the knowledge of adolescent.
They can learn lots of good thing and can be socially interactive with the others by sharing the
knowledge or the ideas about different fields.
According to the researches, adolescence are more likely to be negatively affected by the peer
influence, they are tends to be more hypersensitive towards their social exclusion. This
hypersensitivity is the threat for their social rejection, it can be a major risk factor that can lead
towards the mental illness or the depression in itself (Luz and et. al., 2018). Moreover, Risk taking
and the mental health of the adolescence are being global issues nowadays. These issues can be
taken care with the intervention as well as the treatment that includes the social, biological and the
psychological understanding of the adolescent.
CONCLUSION
In this essay, the social and biological factor study has been conducted to understand the changes
occurs in the adolescent age of a human. The influence theory have positive as well as the negative
effect on the teenagers depends upon the path opted. The guidance and the supervision of the parents
as well as the mature adults can control the negative impact of these influences and can lead
adolescent towards the positive mental health.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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Best, O. and Ban, S., 2021., Adolescence: physical changes and neurological development. British
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Blakemore, S.J., 2019. Adolescence and mental health. The lancet, 393(10185), pp.2030-2031.
Bluth, K. and Eisenlohr-Moul, T. A., 2017., Response to a mindful self-compassion intervention in
teens: A within-person association of mindfulness, self-compassion, and emotional well-
being outcomes. Journal of Adolescence, 57, pp.108-118.
Garcia, A. M., Medina, D. and Sibley, M. H., 2019., Conflict between parents and adolescents with
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