ADOLESCENCE

It is difficult to decide exactly when adolescence begins or ends, as both boundaries are subject to individual variation. Is a person an adolescent when he or she reaches a particular age – say, the teens? Some people at this age are already relatively mature sexually, whereas others are still pre-pubertal. Intellectual maturity can vary just as widely. And when is adolescence complete – at the end of the teens, at 21, or later? Some people have adult responsibilities – perhaps a job and family – by their late teens, while others can be found skateboarding around university campuses, free of commitments and still quite unsure of where they are heading in life, into their mid 20s. For these reasons, psychologists working on adolescence tend to define the period broadly, as a time of transition between childhood and adulthood, acknowledging that the timing and pace of development is subject to considerable variation.