Time with friends and family and the social and family self-concept during adolescence

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to analyze the deve-lopment of social and family self-concept during adolescence and to describe their links to the time adolescents spend with their friends and family. It is a mixed study in which 75 men and 75 women participated in three age groups (12, 15 and 18). The self-concept questionnaire Form-5 was used to measure the social and family self and the semi-structured clinical-critical interview to explore the time used to friendly and parental relationships. The results show that the evolutionary line of social self-concept is ascending in men and in women it is stable. The family self-concept decreases in middle adolescence, with greater decline in women, and increases in both at 18 years. When adolescents spend more time with friends than with family, the social self-concept increases while the family self-concept decreases. The study contributes to the evolutive understanding of self-concept in two scarcely explored dimensions and to the knowledge of adolescent social development.