Schools are considered one of the primary settings in which prevention and intervention initiatives can be implemented successfully, reaching a large number of young people. Especially when promoting social and emotional learning (SEL), many adolescents benefit from universal programs implemented in the school context. This chapter embeds…

Adolescence is a developmental period of risk, as well as a window of opportunity for cultivating positive development and thriving. It is characterized by simultaneous changes in the brain, body, mind, and social domains that offer a platform for building new skills and habits. This chapter discusses the role that secular forms of mindfulness and…

Teaching mindfulness to parents as well as adolescents through a family-centered intervention approach can have a positive impact on the parent-youth relationship. In mindful parenting, caretakers are aware of their own feelings and emotions, and interact with their adolescents in a mindful way by demonstrating emotional awareness, attentive…

During adolescence, young people are traversing exciting and also challenging stages in their development. Mindfulness, if taught in a developmentally appropriate way, has the potential to be an asset in adolescents' lives. Developmentally appropriate approaches of mindfulness intervention during adolescence need to consider adolescents'…

During adolescence, teenagers try a range of risk behaviors including smoking, drinking, and the use of soft drugs. Because substance use contributes to an unhealthy lifestyle of teenagers on the short term and can lead to serious health problems on the longer term, prevention in this target group is important. This chapter provides an overview of…

Adolescence is characterized by incredible development in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is responsible for behavioral and emotional self-regulation, and higher order cognitive decision-making skills (that is, executive function). Typically late prefrontal cortical development and its integration with limbic areas of the brain…

The fairplayer.manual is a school-based program to prevent bullying. The program consists of fifteen to seventeen consecutive ninety-minute lessons using cognitive-behavioral methods, methods targeting group norms and group dynamics, and discussions on moral dilemmas. Following a two-day training session, teachers, together with skilled…

Most American youth hold a job at some point during adolescence, but should they work? This article presents a broad overview of teenage employment in the United States. It begins by describing which teenagers work and for how long and then focuses attention on the consequences (both good and bad) of paid work in adolescence. It then presents…

This article addresses how low-income urban adolescents view the fairness of different aspects of American society, including how wealth is distributed, the nature of legal constraints, and overall social opportunities and legitimacy. This research emerged from efforts to understand the moral and emotional nature of some adolescents' aggressive…

This article explores how adolescents feel and think about contexts of moral conflict and social exclusion. We asked twelve-year-old adolescents how they would feel about intentionally harming another peer, omitting a prosocial duty, and excluding another peer. We then asked them to explain the reasoning behind their feelings and report on levels…

Far from being unthinking energies or irrational impulses that control or push people around, emotions are intricately connected to the way people perceive, understand, and think about the world. As such, emotions are also an inextricable part of people's moral lives. As people go about making moral judgments and decisions, they do not merely…

This article addresses the question of why the emotions children and adolescents anticipate in the context of hypothetical scenarios have been repeatedly found to predict actual (im)moral behavior. It argues that a common motivational account of this relationship is insufficient. Instead, three links are proposed that connect cognitive…

This article reviews the contextual and neuropsychological challenges of the adolescent period with particular attention to the role that universal prevention can play in moderating the harmful effects of stress. The centrality of emotion regulation skills to long-term health and wellness suggests their importance in prevention and intervention…

This article examines children's moral judgments and emotional evaluations in the context of social exclusion. As they age, children and adolescents face increasingly complex situations in which group membership and allegiance are in opposition with morally relevant decisions, such as the exclusion of an individual from a group. While adolescents…

Developmental contexts play a pivotal role in shaping the psychosocial adaptation and development of young people. Family, school, peer groups, and community provide the opportunities and constraints for the attainment of major developmental tasks of adolescence, and changing relations between the individual and these contexts constitute the basic…