Adolescence

Adolescence is the most important period of human life. Poets have described it as the spring of life human being and an important era in the total life span. The etymological meaning of ‘adolescence is to grow to maturity’. Adolescence is the span of years during which boys and girls move from childhood to adulthood, mentally, emotionally, socially and physically.

According to a group of psychologists, it is the period when an individual is capable of begetting offspring. It means that then we can say he/she has become an adolescent.

As it is used today, the term adolescence has broader meaning. It includes mental, emotional, and social maturity as well as physical maturity. It is customary to regard adolescence as the beginning when children become sexually mature and ending when they reach the age of legal maturity. Chronologically, adolescence comes roughly in between the years from 12 to the early 20s. The onset of adolescence varies form culture to culture depending on the socio-economic conditions of the society and the country. In this period, great changes occur in all development dimensions of the individual.

Adolescence is the most important period compared to others because of their immediate effects on attitude and behavior. Similarly, it also characterized by transitional period; period of change, age of problem, time of search for identity, time of unrealism, and threshold of adulthood. So, they begin to concentrate on behavior that is associated with the adult status, such as smoking, drinking, using drugs, and engaging in sex.