How teens can strengthen their sense of self
Feeling connected to their past and future selves could help adolescents cope with bullying
Authors
Adolescents learn a great deal about who they are through their interactions with others, especially friends and classmates. Being accepted by peers can help young individuals feel valued and give them a sense of belonging, while being picked on can leave them questioning where they fit in. When negative peer experiences such as bullying and peer victimization occur frequently, their effects may extend beyond the immediate pain they cause. Over time, these experiences can influence how adolescents see and understand themselves.
The developing sense of self during adolescence
Adolescence is a period of physical, social, cognitive, and psychological change. Young people mature physically. Their interests change, and their social worlds expand. They develop new values, goals, abilities, and ideas about who they are and who they want to become.
Peer relationships also become more important during this period. Friendships can provide teenagers with support, a sense of belonging, and opportunities to learn about themselves. Bullying and victimization, on the other hand, can communicate very different messages. Teenagers who repeatedly hear hurtful comments about their appearance, personality, or behavior may start to internalize those messages. At this stage of life, young people are actively constructing and consolidating their sense of identity. They might wonder whether such comments reflect something true about who they are.
“Adolescence is a period of physical, social, cognitive, and psychological change.”
The need for a continuous sense of self
Despite all the changes that characterize adolescence, young people are also developing a sense that who they are persists over time. Psychologists call this sense self-continuity: the subjective understanding that your past, present, and future selves are connected across time.
It does not mean believing that you are unchanged. Change is inevitable, especially during adolescence. Rather, the term self-continuity refers to a sense of connection that persists regardless of changes. It is the recognition that even as you develop, there is a link between who you once were, who you are now, and who you will become. Self-continuity is a fundamental aspect of identity that most of us come to develop over time.
“Despite all the changes that characterize adolescence, young people are also developing a sense that who they are persists over time.”
Victimization by peers threatens teens’ self-continuity
We wondered whether the concept of self-continuity might help us better understand how peer victimization connects to a negative self-portrayal. In a recently published study, we examined how peer victimization affected adolescents in Curitiba, a city in Brazil, over the course of a school year.
In our study of 310 adolescents, those who experienced peer victimization during the school year reported weaker self-continuity during the next school year. We measured self-continuity with three questions assessing the extent to which adolescents perceived themselves as remaining the same person over time despite experiencing change. Those with stronger self-continuity were less likely to agree with negative self-evaluations such as “If I could, I would change many things about me.” We also found some evidence of an indirect effect, with earlier victimization possibly leading to later negative self-portrayal through self-continuity. Our findings align with previous research suggesting that peer victimization is detrimental to adolescents’ psychological adjustment and self-concept development.
Why might feeling connected to yourself across time matter after a negative experience? One possibility is that self-continuity provides a broader perspective for understanding what is happening in the present. An adolescent being bullied may feel hurt, rejected, or excluded, but those experiences do not necessarily become intertwined with how they see themselves. A stronger sense of self-continuity may help place the experience within a larger personal narrative. Put simply, there is a difference between experiencing something difficult and having that experience define your sense of self.
When the present remains connected to a larger sense of self across time, a difficult period a person experiences is less likely to become a persistent definition of that person. Self-continuity may provide a broader temporal perspective, allowing experiences to be understood as events within a person’s life rather than enduring statements about who that person is.
“Self-continuity may provide a broader temporal perspective, allowing experiences to be understood as events within a person’s life rather than enduring statements about who that person is.”
Can self-continuity be strengthened?
Emerging research suggests that adolescents can strengthen their self-continuity. One surprisingly simple approach is to create opportunities for teens to connect their present self with their future self. In a pilot study by other researchers, students wrote letters to their future selves as well as from the imagined perspectives of their future selves. They were encouraged to think about the connection between who they are now and who they will be in the future. The exercise strengthened the students’ future orientation and was associated with more academic and career planning. Engaging in this exercise could help young people develop a persistent sense of self.
Although more research is needed to understand how such an approach might support adolescents experiencing victimization by their peers, the idea behind it offers a useful starting point. Parents, teachers, and counselors might create opportunities for young people to look beyond the present moment and consider themselves over a longer span of time. Adults might encourage adolescents to revisit positive and important memories, recognize qualities and values that have remained part of who they are as they have grown, and imagine the person they hope to become while identifying goals and possible pathways for getting there.
A few simple questions could help adolescents connect who they have been, who they are now, and who they are becoming:
- Thinking back a few years, what qualities, values, or interests are still an important part of who you are today?
- What difficult experience have you been through that reminds you of what you are capable of?
- When you imagine yourself a few years from now, what aspects of who you are today do you hope will still be part of you?
- What do you hope will be different about you in the future, and what is one step you could take toward becoming the person you hope to be?
Difficult experiences do not define a young person’s identity
For adolescents, the present can feel all-encompassing. It can feel as if rejection or harassment by peers will always continue. A difficult school year can seem as though it will define everything that follows.
A strong sense of self-continuity can offer a different perspective. Difficult experiences can hurt, they may even leave a lasting mark, but they do not erase who a young person was before or determine who they will become. By forging connections to their past and future selves, young people are better able to see the present within the larger context of their lives. A difficult experience can become part of a young person’s story without defining who they are.
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