Awkward phase is not just a glitch in adolescence, it is a part of growth.
Opening an old high school yearbook, you will find a record of various attempts: hairstyles that were considered cool at the time, outfits that now look very outdated, and the short-lived obsession with bands, styles, and personas that disappeared before the end of the school year.
We often look back at these evidence of attempts and feel embarrassed. But embarrassment is actually the least worthy part of it.
Mitch Prinstein, a psychology and neuroscience professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told The Epoch Times, “Without embarrassment, we wouldn’t have the social maturity that is displayed in adulthood.”
The awkward phase is a typical experience of growth, a period that allows children to learn resilience and feel more comfortable with themselves.
However, today’s teenagers are in a world that provides more “scripts” on how to present themselves and their appearance – a world that is brighter, easier to edit, but also harder to escape from.
Adolescence is a period of exploration, where children start to break away from childhood and move towards independence.
It is also one of the biggest remodeling projects for the brain. Prinstein stated that besides early childhood, adolescence is the period when the brain undergoes rapid and dramatic reshaping. About two years before visible signs of adolescence appear, the brain areas are “filled with dopamine and oxytocin receptors.”
Prinstein (who is also the co-director of the Winston Center for Brain Development and author of the book “Popular: The Power of Likability in a Status-Obsessed World”) said, “This makes us extremely interested in our peers, and we are really interested in any form of attention we receive from our peers.”
This intense interest is what fuels the awkward phase.
Almost overnight, the social world feels like a stage. Prinstein calls it the “imaginary audience”: the feeling that everyone is watching and judging you. Teenagers pay close attention to who is the most popular, what people are wearing, who sits together at lunch, how others integrate into the group – and most importantly, how they themselves are perceived.
This heightened sensitivity is what makes adolescence so awkward, and it serves a specific purpose.
During the awkward phase, teenagers start to try out various interests, friendships, styles, values, and behaviors.
For parents, these changes may seem chaotic. But for the teenagers experiencing it all, these are part of exploring self-identity. These trials cannot be carried out without an audience.
Sophia Choukas-Bradley, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh, told The Epoch Times, “Peers are crucial in shaping self-awareness in adolescents.”
This audience effect is a key part of making these attempts effective.
Not every attempt goes smoothly. Someone says something embarrassing. Friends get angry. A teenager is excluded from a group chat. At that age, these moments can feel like the end of the world. However, each of these experiences creates an opportunity to figure out what happened and how to do things differently next time.
Choukas-Bradley said, “A key developmental task during adolescence is learning how to show vulnerability in relationships, how to deal with conflicts, and how to tolerate awkwardness.”
These experiences provide young people with opportunities to practice emotional regulation, empathy, and social skills.
This requires practice. A young person in inappropriate clothing has to endure the embarrassment and figure out what to do next. Saying something awkward means deciding whether to brush it off or apologize. Facing rejection means enduring disappointment without letting it define you completely.
These are micro-rehearsals for adult life: how to tolerate discomfort, repair relationships, endure rejection, and continue to engage in the social world.
Peer relationships provide feedback. Larger social groups establish norms and give cues when teenagers overstep. Intimate friends are more nuanced. They offer support but also provide honest feedback and different perspectives when issues arise.
Through these relationships, adolescents can better navigate the increasingly complex social world and bring these skills into adult relationships where they are needed.
Social media has not eliminated awkwardness. If anything, it has raised the stakes. Teenagers are still experimenting, making mistakes, and worrying about what their peers think. However, the conditions surrounding these experiences have changed. Their audience is no longer limited to hallways, cafeterias, or classrooms. Social media makes reactions immediate and public.
A 12-year-old no longer needs to figure out a makeup routine, personal style, or sense of humor from scratch. Polished examples come in millions daily, pushed by algorithms that reward confidence, stability, and visual perfection. Before teenagers have a chance to ask “Who am I,” they are absorbing an answer to another question: “What should I look like?”
Choukas-Bradley said teenagers can “carefully curate their perfect selves, including their appearance and overall lives.” They can plan, pose, and edit what they present to others, and compare themselves to the polished versions of their peers.
Choukas-Bradley said, “When teenagers are so focused on performing perfection for their online audience, they are more likely to experience body image concerns and other developmental issues.” She noted that this pressure is especially pronounced for girls, as they are taught that being visually appealing and effortlessly perfect is crucial, although it is becoming increasingly true for boys as well.
She said that the more teenagers focus on “performing perfection for their online audience,” the less they might be “practicing the messy parts of living in the real world.” This dynamic can lead to social difficulties later on.
Social media may give the illusion that teenagers have skipped the awkward parts. It provides more scripts, more examples, and more control over the version of self they present.
However, this editing does not mean that adolescence has become less awkward. And knowing how to present oneself does not equate to knowing how to interact with others.
Prinstein expressed concern that a lifetime of interacting through personal profiles, posts, and numbers might make it easier for people to see others in a more flattened way: thinking of them as good as their latest post, either supporting or opposing us, rather than viewing them as layered, emotional beings with conflicting feelings and unfinished stories.
Prinstein said, “Children are forming relationships with digits, not people. You know how many followers, how many likes, but you don’t know the living beings behind those likes.”
Numbers can quantify attention, but they cannot replace the complexity of interacting with another person. A like can tell you that someone agrees with a post; it doesn’t tell you why. A carefully selected photo shows what someone wants others to see, but it rarely reflects what is happening beyond the frame.
In face-to-face interactions, this information is harder to quantify – and harder to fake. The hesitation before answering, changes in tone, expressions that don’t completely match the words. A friend might say everything is fine, but look anything but.
Learning to read these inconsistencies is part of cultivating social sensitivity: imagining what others may be feeling, recognizing that two things can be true at the same time, and then adjusting accordingly. A friend may feel excited yet anxious, loving yet annoyed, satisfied with one part of a situation while unhappy with another. Learning to accommodate these contradictions – seeing another person not as a profile or post, but as a whole, complex person – is part of growth.
These skills are what carry children from adolescence into adulthood. Prinstein said they shape how people navigate work, long-term relationships, and eventually parenthood.
Prinstein calls for establishing a more balanced “social diet” – one that includes some online interactions but does not exclude face-to-face and vocal communication, as many of the most challenging social learning occurs in these interactions.
Parents cannot give their children the adolescence they experienced. However, they can make space for experiences that are hard to obtain through screens: time spent with friends, real-time unfolding conversations, and the freedom to make mistakes without immediately editing, deleting, or avoiding them.
They can also resist the impulse to make every uncomfortable moment disappear. When a teenager returns home with embarrassment or frustration about something that happened among friends, the most useful response may not always be to solve the problem. Sometimes, listening and helping the teenager make sense of what happened and what they want to do next is the best approach.
The goal is not to shield teenagers from embarrassment, but to give them enough space to overcome it.
Prinstein said, “Our awkward phase is a huge learning window. We learn by making mistakes. We learn by being overly self-conscious. We learn by having empathy for others who might be feeling the same awkwardness.”