Navigating Local and Global Worlds: Opportunities and Risks for Adolescent Cultural Identity Development

This essay focuses on the opportunities and risks that adolescents face when developing cultural identities in the context
of globalization. It starts by illustrating how globalization entails that adolescents increasingly have interactions with
people from diverse cultures in myriad domains. Adolescents navigate local and global worlds, for example, with regard to
language, diet, dating, and work. With the exposure to diverse cultures, new opportunities and risks arise. The nature of
and evidence for three of these are highlighted. One is the risk of adolescent cultural identity confusion, with attendant
internalizing and externalizing pathological behaviors. A second is the emergence of cultural gaps between adolescents and
parents, a phenomenon that may constitute both a risk and a necessity. The third issue discussed is the way that globalization
may open up more opportunities for youth civic involvement, even if such involvement sometimes aims to resist globalization.