Adolescent Self-Esteem

Although self-esteem is generally interpreted to be self-respect, self-confidence or self-love, they still have some ambiguity for the definition. Keshky and Samack (2017) define self-esteem that it is a belief of an individual which "encompasses self evaluation and self realization of his/her own true worth." In short, self-esteem refers to how you feel about yourself, and how you view yourself.

Self-esteem pretty much reflects changes in people's environment as well as "maturational" changes such as adolescence and cognitive declines in old age (Robins and Trzesniewski, 2005). Especially during Adolescence, self-esteem continues declining according to their physical and psychological growth. They start thinking abstractly about themselves (personality, identity, body image, etc.) and also about their future, and therefore they tend to have worries and struggles between self and others. Adolescence would be most challenging time for people both academically and socially because it is the transition from childhood to adulthood. Once you reach the middle of 20s, self-esteem is generally recovered as you become older.

(data from http://www8.cao.go.jp/youth/kenkyu/thinking/h25/pdf_index.html)

This survey was conducted in 2012 targeted 13-29 year-old youths in 7 countries; Japan, South Korea, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, France and Sweden. The question here "Do you feel satisfied with who you are?" meant to measure how much youths in those countries feel proud of themselves and how much they feel confident with themselves, and this question is assumed to be closely tied with the concept of self-esteem.

It is often said that Japanese youths relatively have low self-esteem, and the graph above actually reveals that Japanese youths have very low self-esteem compared to other 6 countries. (45.8% in Japan, and 86.0% in the U.S.). In case of Japan, however, this might be related to Japanese virtue that staying humble and modest is highly valued. So it means that the result would be different from what they really think of themselves.

On the other hand, the following question "Do you often feel that you are useless?" which is also associated with self-esteem came out the very different result from the first one. In the second graph, we do not really see the big gap between countries compared to the first result. Talking about Japan and the U.S., they have close percentages each other, which is 47.1% in Japan, and 46.7% in the U.S.

This research made me think that the concept of self-esteem may have (more than) two perspectives, especially when we try to measure it. The first question "Do you feel satisfied with who YOU are?" implies more subjective assessment of self while the second question "Do you often feel that you are useless?" sounds more objective. This is because one's "usefulness" would be given in a community which reminds people of their role, position or status in the society. However, we still should note cultural differences among countries, like individualism vs. collectivism for example. In Japan as a collectivist country, self-evaluation often involves the existence of "others." We tend to evaluate ourselves in the comparison with other people, but assumingly American people tend less.

Self-esteem and education are closely connected because youths spend more time in school when their self-esteem is low or becoming low. Or we should rather think the opposite; their self-esteem becomes low because they go to school. But it should not be too pessimistic. It is very natural process for youths. They meet new people in school, and expand their world and horison. Their self-esteem will gradually rebound as their grade advances.

What if you fail to recover your self-esteem in the adolescence? What if school actually fails to encourage you to gain your self-esteem (cf. school bullying & school refusals)? Self-esteem apparently is a big deal for your life. I would say that the issues of hikikomori and neets are really tied with the concept of self-esteem. Then why do not we have much more school choices in Japan?