Jeffrey
Jensen
Arnett
Emerging Adulthood
In recent decades, the lives of people in their late teens and twenties have changed so dramatically that a new stage of life has developed. In his provocative work, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett has identified the period of emerging adulthood as distinct from both the adolescence that precedes it and the young adulthood that comes in its wake. Arnett's new theory has received enormous worldwide scholarly attention and has inspired a thriving new field of research. See the website of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (SSEA), www.ssea.org.
Learn More About Emerging Adulthood
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is a developmental psychologist at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.
Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is Senior Research Scholar at Clark University. He is the originator of the theory of emerging adulthood and the author of Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties, published by Oxford University Press. He was the Founding President and first Executive Director of the Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood (www.ssea.org). He lives in Worcester with his wife Lene Jensen and they are the parents of emerging adult twins, Miles and Paris.
For a full list of Dr. Arnett’s publications and their citations, see his Google Scholar Page.
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Contact Dr. Arnett
Why does it take so long to grow up today?
Watch Jeff's TEDxPSU talk in which he explores the question, why does it take so long to grow up today? Older adults grumble that it takes “too long”, but most people will be better partners and parents if they wait longer, so why not use most of the twenties for adventures you’ll never be able to have again?
Textbooks
Speaking
Engagements
Dr. Arnett is an acclaimed public speaker and has delivered talks on emerging adulthood in countries all over the world, including India, China, Turkey, Chile, France, and Romania, among many others. His audiences include academic researchers and students as well as parents, college students, educators, and therapists.
Other Scholarly Activities
In addition to his scholarship on emerging adulthood, Dr. Arnett has made notable contributions in the areas of promoting a more culturally-inclusive psychology; adolescents’ risk behavior; media use in adolescence; and adolescents’ responses to cigarette advertising. His first book, Metalheads, published in 1994, was on the subculture of adolescent heavy metal fans. His research on adolescents’ responses to cigarette advertising has played an important role in successful litigation against the major tobacco companies, resulting in the almost total removal of cigarette advertising from American life.
Learn about other scholarly activities