In the ’50s and ’60s Professor Erik Erikson formulated his model of how we struggle from birth to define our identity.
To Erikson, this struggle is precipitated by a continual onslaught of crises. During infancy, we grapple with who to trust, and then how to assert our growing need for independence. In childhood, our crises surround our abilities and self-esteem.
Once we hit adolescence, however, Erikson says we move into a psychosocial crisis between our personal identity and role confusion. Teenagers continually wonder what they are doing with their lives, who their real friends are, and how the world sees them. It’s an awkward time fraught with much angst.
A teenager’s job is to discover his place in the world. When he is young, he spends the majority of time with his parents, and his identity comes from them.
When he is around seven years old, he spends about as much time with his peers as he does with his parents, and by eleven or twelve, the preteen spends roughly 40% of his waking hours with his friends.
At fifteen or sixteen, he hardly sees his parents, spending three hours with his peers for every one spent with his family. So during Erikson’s psychosocial adolescent crisis, the teen must turn to his friends to develop his values and beliefs.
