The following essay will discuss the purpose cliques and crowds serve in adolescence, and identity development. The definition of a clique is “a group of four to six friends with strong affectional bonds and high levels of group solidarity and loyalty: the term is used by researchers to describe a self-chosen group of friends.” (Boyd & Bee, 2012, p. 283) A crowd is “a larger and looser group of friends than a clique, normally made up of several cliques that have joined together: a reputation-based group, common in adolescent subculture, with widely agreed-upon characteristics.” (Boyd & Bee, 2012, p. 283) Whichever group a person associates with in the end it assists with forming the identity with which the individual will grow into later
