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."