Keywords

Overview

As a period of socialization and transition, adolescence can be understood as society’s efforts to structure limitations placed on youth and the need for adolescents to place appropriate limitations on themselves. As a result, abstention, the ability to deprive oneself, is an important consideration. Abstention during adolescence, however, tends to be understood by studying other phenomena, most notably behaviors that place adolescents at risk for negative outcomes. After providing a broad overview of abstention, the discussion provides two examples to highlight important aspects of abstention as it relates to adolescents.

Abstention

Abstention refers to a deliberate act of self-denial. The period of adolescence involves considerable abstention, especially as a result of social and legal efforts to encourage adolescents to abstain from engaging in numerous types of behaviors. Included among the most frequent behaviors that adolescents abstain from are smoking (Jacobsen et al. 2005), consuming alcohol and illicit drugs (Rosenberg et al. 2008), engaging in sexual activity (Loewenson et al. 2004; Byers et al. 2016), and general delinquency (Boutwell and Beaver 2008).

Our society has developed and continues to support numerous institutions that help adolescents abstain and can use the force of law to have adolescents abstain from activities deemed problematic. Illustrative of these efforts are the juvenile and criminal justice systems, schools, health-care institutions, as well as families. These institutions also embrace efforts to help adolescents abstain from more socially acceptable and legally permissible activities, such as using potentially harmful products like caffeine (Oberstar et al. 2002), sugared products (French et al. 2003), and even the media (Levesque 2007).

Given the recognition of the need to protect society as well as prevent negative health and its associated outcomes, the period of adolescence always has been a period that has attracted efforts to foster habits that would result in having adolescents abstain from an ever-increasing amount of activities deemed potentially problematic. These efforts always have attracted considerable controversy, as evidenced most strikingly in abstinence-based sexuality education (Levesque 2000), since they go to the heart of what it means to be an adolescent: someone who is in transition and who needs special supports to transition effectively through a period that likely will have an important impact on their later development.

Illustrative Examples of Abstention

Two particular examples of adolescent abstention reveal well the dynamics and underlying issues involved in the phenomenon in general: smoking and sexual activity. In addition to serving as examples, however, both activities have been studied extensively and are important to consider in and of themselves.

In terms of smoking, certain trends and mechanisms of abstention illustrate patterns expected during adolescence. For instance, much of the motivation behind adolescent abstinence from smoking is initially external rather than internal. Public schools, pediatricians, and public service ad campaigns all have taken youth and young adolescents as a key target audience for antismoking messages. Given the propagandistic nature of modern smoking advertising – equating smoking with “coolness,” power, wealth, and sexuality, among other qualities – it is understandable why antismoking messages wanting to increase their effectiveness need to start reaching youth as young as possible (Andrews et al. 2004). Moreover, abstention from smoking can be largely influenced by proximity to others who smoke. Having a sibling who smokes might well cause an adolescent to try cigarettes, while losing a parent or other close relative to lung cancer caused by smoking can evidently have the exact opposite effect (Andrews et al. 2004). Partly due to a large decline in adolescent cigarette use in the past 50 years, it is also easier to resist peer pressure. While still undoubtedly present in certain cases, there are also plenty of allied adolescents equally against smoking cigarettes who can help generate pro-abstention peer pressure. This makes it worth noting that adolescents themselves can be a source of quasi-internal motivation for abstention, especially within close-knit peer groups that might otherwise deride or reject interventions by outside adults.

The example of abstention relating to smoking also illustrates why adolescent abstention is so critical in the eyes of public health advocates. Eighty percent of adult smokers began during adolescence. This indicates that, without abstention, habits formed during the relatively malleable period of adolescence have a tendency to last and become permanent, regardless of whether they are in the best interests of the adolescent or their health (Siegel and Biener 2000).

The long-term effects of failing to abstain during adolescence have led to efforts to create interventions. These interventions have been found to be useful in helping adolescents abstain (see Simon et al. 2015; Jensen et al. 2011). But these successful interventions have been successful mainly in the short term, with studies examining long-term effects finding less support for noticeable effects during later adulthood and actually concluding that the short-term impact does not endure to young adulthood (see Peterson et al. 2016). In general, the dynamics of abstention from alcohol and other illicit substances are similar to those of abstention from cigarettes: careful educational campaigns and awareness of social pressures are the best ways to encourage healthy choices about the use of substances, but it remains debatable whether cessation and interventions have the long-term effects found in the short term.

In regard to sexual abstinence, the dynamics are much more nuanced and controversy is markedly more present than few other topics involving abstention. Still, the domain does provide important lessons about adolescent abstention in general. First, abstention from sexual activity is often influenced by religion, zeitgeist, and “normative attitude” in general. While that point may seem trivial, it is important to understand that adolescents accept and express a spectrum of reasons for and degrees of adherence to abstinence. It also is important to understand that they do not live in a vacuum, but rather they live in a time of their lives when they are most susceptible to the opinions of others (Lowenson et al. 2004). Indeed, adolescent females who abstain from sexual activity have been noted to most commonly do so because they believe that the timing of sexual intercourse is not appropriate for them in their life stage, which can indicate a belief in waiting for marriage (religious or otherwise), an acquiescence to social pressures (e.g., a belief that girls of their age who have any sexual activity are too promiscuous), a concession to peers (e.g., a possible desire for sexual activity but choosing not to act because of the potential impact on their social circles), or a combination of all three, among other possible reasons (Paradise et al. 2001). Additionally, with sexual abstinence there is an additional nuance that is appropriate in most (if not all) types of abstinence: primary vs. secondary abstention. In the case of sexual intercourse, this refers to the distinction between virgins and adolescents who are already sexually experienced but have decided going forward to refrain from sexual activity (Duerst et al. 1997).

The degrees and distinctions among sexual abstinence are of significance. They are helpful in understanding and responding to adolescents. For example, taking a narrow view of abstinence can alienate those adolescents who abstain secondarily from sex (or any other common target of abstention for that matter) because, although they have technically broken the boundary of any absolute zero tolerance, they still have the correct intentions and desire to make the right choices moving forward with their lives. This means that when interacting with adolescents (whether in a family, educational, medical, or other capacity) and addressing issues of abstention, it is important to highlight why abstention is important rather than narrow, individualized perceptions of what abstention really is.

Recent research on sexual and romantic avoidance supports the above view of the variety of ways that adolescents abstain and their broad range of reasons for doing so. A large study of adolescents’ avoidance of sexual and romantic activity concluded that adolescents revealed considerable agency in their decision-making in intimate contexts (Byers et al. 2016). Adolescents gave many reasons for sexual avoidance, such as values, fear of negative outcomes, and lack of enjoyment. They also provided several reasons for avoiding romantic relationships, such as sexual concerns, lack of interest, negative emotions, other priorities, and effects of previous relationships. In terms of the characteristics of adolescents who had avoided sexual activity, girls were more likely to have experienced sexual coercion than other girls, while boys were more likely to be religious and also likely to have experienced sexual coercion than other boys. For avoiding romantic relationships, no pattern emerged for girls while boys who abstained were more likely to be more sexually distressed and to have experienced sexual coercion. These findings highlight well how adolescents do make choices as well as how some of their experiences may be out of their control, as illustrated by the role of sexual coercion in leading adolescents to abstain from relationships and sexual activity.

Conclusion

Abstinence during adolescence is very important both because of the role it can play leading into an adolescents’ adulthood and also because it is a confluence of self-expression, self-determination, and managing peer and adult influences simultaneously. Considering cigarettes and sexual activity as two illustrative examples, the underlying factors influencing abstention can include family influences, uncontrollable external factors like religion, zeitgeist, and consumer culture, and especially personal history. These two examples should be construed as comprehensively exploring every avenue of abstention. Rather, the examples provide insight into broader mechanisms of abstention that can be found in other domains involving abstention. In the end, adolescent abstinence –what adolescents abstain from, why they do so, and how they do so – can be as varied and unique as individual adolescents themselves, and so to understand abstinence as a personal choice of self-denial is in essence its most important part.

Cross-References