An inside look of the teenage mind

What's Wrong With The Teenage Mind? An inside look on what goes through the modern teenagers' mind, and an explanation behind their reasoning in certain situations. "How does the boy who can thoughtfully explain the reasons never to drink and drive end up in a drunken crash?". The article captivates the readers attention by starting off with this brilliant question. Two things come to mind when one thinks about this question. 1- is this due to peer pressure, and if it is what can be done to prevent it? 2- Can this be an influence of hormones, and if so can it be controlled? Studies show that puberty is now kicking in at an earlier age, why? Can this be cause by all the growth hormones in food? Even though puberty is kicking in at an earlier age, it is mentioned that teen take on adult roles later than normal too. This is still the first page of the article, and the author has brought up so many valid points. The most important part in the article was that they stated that there are two different neural and psychological systems that mainly turn kids into adults. Over an extremely long period of time this has been changing, the question is were people expecting the change to be this big? The topic of emotion and motivation is brought up, and it's connected with puberty and the biological and chemical changes that go with it. Puberty is linked with the part of the brain that responds to rewards. A bit ironic, since as teenagers we would do almost anything to recognition and an award. It is stated that teen aren't reckless because they underestimate the risks they take, but rather overestimate the rewards they might get. The rewards part of the teenage brain is much more active than in any other persons' brain. Developmental psychologist Laurence Steinberg at Temple University suggests that what teenagers want most of all is social rewards. After studies were done it was shown that the reward part of the teens' brains lighted up more, when they thought another teen was watching. "From an evolutionary point of view, this all makes perfect sense." Now it comes to the second crucial part, the control part of the brain. This is usually the part that the teenagers have no control over (pun intended). "You come to make better decisions by making not-so-good decisions and them correcting them." This is not a new concept. Almost all generations grew up knowing this, or figuring it out eventually. In this part of the article the author talks about the past, and the hunter and gatherer system. The author comes to the conclusion that in contemporary society this has changed dramatically. "Puberty arrives earlier, and the motivational system kicks in earlier." Kids of today have very little experience in the fields they will be encountering in the future. An example is child care, the babysitting phenomenon is going away. This also includes cooking, children are not taught to make proper meal. There are too many other quicker options available for kids to even give cooking a second thought. The experience of actually achieving a real goal in real time in the actual real world is delayed. This delays the growth of the control system. Does this mean that the new generation is stupider? In fact this does not mean these teens are stupider than the ones before. Yet there are different ways of being smart. being school smart does not necessarily make you street smart. The current generation is currently being raised to be school smart. This leads to them being the current generation to be directionless in the future. Two crucial points are mentioned. Experience shapes the brain and development plays a crucial role in explaining human nature. "The good news in short, is that we don't have to just accept the development patterns of adolescent brains. We can actually shape and change them."

Teen pregnancy and how the media is influencing it Does Watching Sex on Television Predict Teen Pregnancy? Authors: Anita Chandra Steven C. Martino Rebecca L. Collin Marc N. Elliott Sandra H. Berry David E. Kanouse Angela Miu In this article a three year survey was done to see what is the most common cause for teen pregnancy and also if the media can be blamed, all authors came to one conclusion. With more and more cases every year, people are going out of their way to find the cause for teen pregnancy. Can Television be blamed? Television can be blamed for a lot, but can we blame television for the high teen pregnancy? Pediatricians say yes we can. More sexual content is being put up on television every year. This has been known to shape sexual attitudes and behavior under teens. Two sides are brought up in the article : exposure to televised sexual content predicted subsequent pregnancy for girls or responsibility for pregnancy for boys? After a three year survey was done the results came back. It was due to the sexual content that is being televised daily. 90% of teen were exposed to television with high sexual contents. This is the group in which teen pregnancy was much more common. The United States has the highest amount of teen pregnancies under industrialized countries. 20% of the sexually active young people (ages 15-19) fall pregnant. Teen pregnancy has a major influence on the young parents. Usually it is the mother that has to drop out of school to take care of the child. It is said that to reduce the pregnancy rates sexual content on television and media portrayal should be limited. Will this really help reduce pregnancy? According to the article this will decrease teen pregnancy by huge amounts. It is also discussed that if parents were to be more active in the life of their child, it would help. This has been tried so many times, yet the rates are still increasing? This is another form of proof that the media is influencing it. The fact that teens do it out of pure rebellion is not completely out of the picture, but television can promote rebellion.