During adolescence, the body is no longer merely a biological fact, but becomes a true social construct , a tool for defining identity. Corporeality interprets a nonverbal, symbolic language, a quest for autonomy marked by conflicting emotions and feelings as we transition into adulthood.
Drawing on the thinking of Le Breton, Melucci, and Arnett, we will examine how adolescents use their bodies to communicate externally, from aesthetic manipulation to risky behaviors to new forms of self-affirmation and attempts to exercise control in a fluid and complex society. This experiential workshop continues well beyond adulthood, leading to definitive adult roles.
The symbolic body
In the context of adolescence, French sociologist and cultural anthropologist David Le Breton defines tattoos and deep piercings as instruments of self-reappropriation and personal control , and not simply fashions and aesthetic ornaments.
These practices become true acts of writing on the skin, signs in which the boys symbolically declare that they are the masters of their own flesh, of their own body, which during this phase becomes almost a stranger to be domesticated.
For Le Breton, skin is proof of our presence in the world. It allows us to be recognized, named, identified. It envelops and embodies the person, making them similar to others or differentiating them. Its texture, its color, its distinctive features create a unique landscape. The mark of skin confers identity, even more so when chosen.
In a social context where traditional rites of passage have disappeared, these experiences mark the boundaries of the ego , establishing a clear boundary between the self and the outside world, a process of differentiation. The body is used as a draft, a tool for communication and a project in progress, a space for expressing one's will.
This allows the adolescent to rewrite his personal autonomy and complete an identity plan: to be born into himself , using physicality through aesthetic choices and voluntary modifications.
The relational body
Sociologist Alberto Melucci (1943-2001) offered an original and profound perspective on the theme of the body, not an object but rather the primary locus of our experience of the world. Not an isolated container, but a permeable membrane through which we connect with others and the environment.
For Melucci, adolescence represents a time of maximum tension, where the body is in flux and relationships with others are mediated by a physique that the individual does not yet feel is his own.
The adolescent body lives in the gaze of others, through a process of validation and recognition , and identity is constructed through the visual references of peers. The peer group plays a central role in the lives of boys and girls, where the desire to be equal to others manifests itself in shared gestures, postures, and body language that create a sense of belonging and protection.
Adolescents experience their bodies as paradoxical: on the one hand, they use them to separate themselves from their parents and assert their autonomy ; on the other, they use them to integrate with their peers and find security . A constantly changing, relational body , a meeting point between internal biological dimensions and external social pressures, forces them to constantly renegotiate the boundaries between themselves and the world.
The experiential body
American psychologist Jeffrey Arnett is famous for introducing a new sociological category in the 2000s, Emerging Adulthood , to describe a new demographic becoming established , especially in Western countries. A new stage of life located between adolescence and adulthood.
Arnett argues that, in contemporary industrialized societies, entering adulthood is no longer an immediate event, but a prolonged and transformative process mainly due to four types of social revolution : the technological one , caused by the transition from a manufacturing economy to an information-based one that requires much longer courses of study; the sexual one , where contraception has separated sex from marriage and reproduction, allowing for long-term relationships without immediate family commitments; the women 's one , where entry into education and careers has postponed the age of marriage and first child, thus enjoying greater independence and decision-making autonomy; and the youth revolution , as the way of viewing adulthood has changed.
Once a coveted goal, today it's often seen as the end of freedom and fun. According to Arnett, this exploration of adolescents and young adults, of their bodies, of their freedom, serves to experiment with different versions of themselves. Free from parental hierarchies and not yet bound by family responsibilities, they change studies, jobs, and partners. Despite the uncertainties, this is a time of greatest hope, where dreams can still be realized.
The symptomatic body
During adolescence, the body can become an emergency language . When words aren't enough, struggling to express a difficulty or a suffering, the body takes over through symptoms . We will now briefly analyze the phenomena of self-harm, eating disorders, and risky behaviors through the thinking of Le Breton, Melucci, and Arnett.
For sociologist Le Breton, adolescents seek limits through pain or risk to confirm their reality. Self-harm (cutting) is not a death wish, but an attempt to sense boundaries. Physical pain shifts attention; cutting is a way to reclaim a body perceived as alien or numb.
Starting from an anthropological perspective, Le Breton analyzes risk behaviors (Ordeals) as meaning-generating instances used by young people as individual rites of passage. Extreme challenges, such as speed, viral challenges, and various drugs, are modern ordeals, where adolescents interrogate death to feel alive, seeking answers about the meaning of their lives and their right to exist.
Anorexia, an eating disorder (ED), is also seen as a quest for purity and absolute control over the body, a form of passive resistance to social pressure.
For Melucci, the body is relational, therefore the symptom is a broken message . Eating disorders and self-harm are seen as a rupture of the membrane between oneself and others. When the relationship with the environment is absent or suffocating, the adolescent attacks the body because it is the only space over which to exercise sovereignty, and the symptom is a form of resistance against a performative society, which transforms every aspect of life into a performance to be optimized.
Psychologist Arnett observes these phenomena through the lens of exploration and the temporary instability of emerging adulthood . Risky behaviors are linked to sensation seeking, typical of those who do not yet have stable social roles, with spouses or children acting as a brake. During this phase, the body appears as a tool for experimentation: for Arnett, self-harm represents a sign of failure in the exploration process, while eating disorders describe a sort of paralysis, where the body impedes the transition to adulthood.
Real body versus digital body
In the current era, the use of the body has shifted to its representation. The transition from the real body , made of flesh, physical presence, and limitations, to the digital body , represented by data, pixels, and omnipresent virtuality, creates a split between the lived body and the visualized body and represents the most complex sociological challenge for adolescents today.
Taking up the three previous authors, let us analyse this dematerialisation of experience.
Le Breton is very critical of this issue and speaks of an eclipse of the body . In the real world , supposed bodily defects are seen as obstacles. The digital world offers the temptation of a perfect body. Rites of passage, such as tattoos and risks, serve to feel the skin, while the digital world anesthetizes: the digital adolescent has no skin , so he can interact with the world without the risk of physical contact, but unfortunately, losing the depth of real emotions.
For Melucci, the body is a permeable membrane that connects us to others. In the transition to digital, the membrane undergoes a profound transformation, where the boundary between inside and outside blurs, leading to an expansion of the self . The body is not imposed, but constructed: adolescents manage their image to negotiate their acceptance into the group, but the risk is creating an unbridgeable gap between the perceived self (screen) and the experienced self (physical body).
Arnett's emerging adulthood finds the perfect laboratory in the digital world. Social media represents the ideal space for identity exploration, where young people can test out different versions of themselves with seemingly less risk than in the real world. The digital body exacerbates the adolescent's self-focus , leading them to spend considerable time reflecting on and constructing their image, transforming identity exploration into a constant monitoring of their personal brand . The ease with which digital relationships are opened and closed reflects and amplifies the instability typical of this stage of life, making the transition to stable commitments and definitive roles even more difficult.
This analysis suggests that today's adolescent lives on a dual track between the real body, which remains the locus of pain, hunger, and unmediated sexuality, and the digital body, which becomes the locus of social representation and success.
The great danger is that these two bodies will no longer speak to each other.
The extreme social withdrawal of hikikomori (a phenomenon that originated in Japan in the 1990s, has spread rapidly, and is now considered a global problem) represents the final breaking point between the two bodies. Hikikomori are unable to cope with reality, which has become unbearable due to social pressure, feelings of inadequacy, and academic failure, and use their digital body as a shield to protect a real body they perceive as fragile and vulnerable.
Future perspectives
The distress of adolescents today is not an isolated issue, but a reflection of a society that has made the real body too heavy to bear and the digital body too easy to inhabit. It is necessary to reintroduce the body into everyday life, ensuring that the skin once again becomes a meeting place and not just a barrier for defense. In practice, we need to create an educational community that works synergistically on reality, not by talking about adolescents , but by talking with adolescents . Families, schools, local authorities, and associations must provide young people with a physical space in the world and implement youth-focused projects to offer them places of exploration and safe havens.
References
- Arnett JJ, Emerging AdulthoodThe Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties, Oxford University Press, 2014
- Esposito V., Withdrawn but Connected. Understanding Hikikomori as a Social Fact, Naples, Paolo Loffredo, 2025
- Fabbrini A., Melucci A., The Golden Age: Adolescents Between Dreams and Experiences, Milan, Feltrinelli, 2017
- Francesconi C., Piccinini C., Hikikomori: The Future in a Room. Frames from the territory for a new community, Milan, Franco Angeli, 2023
- Le Breton D., Anthropology of the body and modernity, Milan, Giuffré, 2007
- Le Breton D., Experiences of Pain: Between Destruction and Rebirth, Milan, Raffaello Cortina, 2014
- Le Breton D., Escaping from oneself. A contemporary temptation., Milan, Raffaello Cortina, 2016
- Le Breton D., The Skin and the Trace. The Wounds of the Self, Rome, Meltemi, 2005
- Le Breton D., The tattoo, Madrid, Casimiro, 2017
- Melucci A., The Game of Self: Self-Changing in a Global Society, Milan, Ledizioni, 2021
