Positive Youth Development - Importance of Youth Development

Importance of Youth Development

During adolescence, young people experience profound physical changes, rapid growth and development, and sexual maturation, in addition to psychological and social changes. This often leads to issues with personal identity, sense of self, and emotional independence. In an attempt to cope with the complex changes and challenges of development, they may engage in behaviors considered to be experimental and risky Due to this, several important public health and social problems either begin or peak during these years including homicide, suicide, substance use and abuse, sexually transmitted infections, and teen and unplanned pregnancies. Addressing the positive development of young people can decrease these problems by facilitating their adoption of healthy behaviors and helping to ensure a healthy transition into adulthood

Read more about this topic:  Positive Youth Development

Famous quotes containing the words importance of, importance, youth and/or development:

    We have been told over and over about the importance of bonding to our children. Rarely do we hear about the skill of letting go, or, as one parent said, “that we raise our children to leave us.” Early childhood, as our kids gain skills and eagerly want some distance from us, is a time to build a kind of adult-child balance which permits both of us room.
    Joan Sheingold Ditzion (20th century)

    When will the world learn that a million men are of no importance compared with one man?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    What Youth deemed crystal, Age finds out was dew.
    Robert Browning (1812–1889)

    Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.
    George Orwell (1903–1950)