We all know teenagers are, well, different. They aren’t kids…but they aren’t adults, either.
Probably you didn’t need to read this to know that. Whether you are a parent, a teacher, or anyone, really, you know that when dealing with teens you are dealing with someone in a unique period of development.
You were a teen once, too, after all! So you know firsthand what I’m talking about here.
What you didn’t know, unless you’re a scientist who studies the brains of teens, is that there are things going on inside a teen’s brain that simply are not occurring in an adult’s brain. Or even a child’s, for that matter.
The Big Pot of Gold
It’s one thing to intuitively feel that something is different about teen behavior. It’s something else entirely to find hard evidence within the brain.
So how do you test something like this?
That’s where the work of Drs. Adriana Galvan at UCLA and Abigail Baird at Vassar come into the picture. They’ve completed some fascinating studies to test exactly this phenomenon within teens’ brains.
Let’s start with Dr. Galvan’s study in which she had children, teens, and adults all play a pirate video game while hooked up to an fMRI scanner. In the game, you can win a gold coin, a stack of coins, or a pot of gold.
While playing, kids’ brain scans lit up for any reward, from the coin to the big pot of gold. As you may have discovered for yourself already, children are excited by just aboutanything.
Adults’ brains lit up in proportion to the prize. The bigger the prize, the bigger the pleasure response in their brain.
Teens, however, displayed quite different behavior. Their brains only responded to the big pot of gold. In fact, sometimes they even showed a dip in their response to either the single gold coin or the stack of coins.
Interesting, isn’t it? And it gels with observable behavior within teens, especially younger teens and adolescents.
For example, you may have once or twice observed them react quite strongly to either a positive or negative event, often disproportionately to how most people would respond.
Interestingly – and frighteningly! – these kinds of fMRI results are the same as displayed by drug addicts: If it’s not the big pot of gold, it’s not worth it.
“I’d Rather Swim with Sharks than Dance with a Girl”
By the way, what exactly is the big pot of gold for teens?
Two answers: 1) thrills/risks, 2) social interaction with peers.
Enter Dr. Abigail Baird, whose following two studies help illuminate the above two answers.
In one experiment, Dr. Baird had both teens and adults respond to a list of ideas as either a good idea or a bad idea. The list includes items such as “swim with sharks,” “bite down on a lightbulb,” and “jump off a roof.”
Teens gave the same responses as adults. However, adults answered these questions much more quickly than teens did. While adults acted with almost a gut instinct, teens appeared to actually take time to think about each one, as though perhaps it was worth trying out!
Dr. Baird states that the lack of automatic response from teens is because they could notfeel the answer because they lacked the experiences adults have and therefore had tothink about each one.
As Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman point out in their resourceful book Nurture Shock, which also details this experiment, if you have ever said to a teen, “Why did you do that? Didn’t you know it was a bad idea?!” the reality is that, yes, a teen knew it abstractly but they did not feel it, and human beings respond more strongly to feelings than abstract concepts when inhibiting their behavior.
If teens are such open risk takers, and even require bigger payoffs in order to experience pleasure release within their brains, then why are they so self-conscious in other settings?
Say, asking a girl/guy to dance with them…or even just talking to the opposite sex!
A second experiment by Baird shed some light on this. Teens in a lab took various poll questions, such as what music they liked and what they did for fun.
These teens were informed that another group of teens was online taking the same set of questions, and randomly their answers would be selected to be displayed to the other group.
The other group did not actually exist. But the teens being studied did not know this. They would randomly see “results” from the “other teens” which made them believe their results would be shown, too.
Again, MRI scans were taken of the teens’ brains, and again the results were beyond fascinating. What they showed was that “Just the mere possibility of having their preferences displayed to this imaginary audience vibrantly lit up the regions of the brain that signal distress and danger.”
For Teachers and Parents Use with Teens – What to Do!
To recap, sharks are safe, while school dances are not only scary but dangerous in the minds of teens.
They seek thrills, especially those gained from peer approval.
If you’re a teacher, this might help you understand why a teen is willing to get in trouble to make the class laugh. The reward you offer is simply a gold coin, at best. But the classes’ laughter is the big pot of gold.
If you’re a parent, you are familiar with over-reactions to discipline related to limiting social interactions. Not that all kids are social butterflies, but even the “shy” ones are responding to this intense value placed on peer approval: they chose not to even risk humiliation by avoiding social interactions as much as possible.
What to do, then?
I say, embrace it!
You aren’t going to change their brains. You can’t go in a rewire them. In fact, that would be a bad thing.
If they stayed as children forever and always valued interactions with you as the big pot of gold, they would never move out! Or graduate!
They are supposed to want to value peer approval. They are supposed to want to take risks. Yes, the pendulum swings too far. They still need some guidelines and rules and advice from adults.
But we want them to be this way, even if it’s a little annoying for a while. They are finding out who they are. Being social and taking risks is a big part of that process.
So use it to your advantage. Use social interaction as motivation for homework. Use guided group work in the classroom.
Rather than try to stifle their natural tendencies, instead try to harness them. Maybe even talk to them about the social world they’re so engrossed in!
I used to joke that I wish there was another planet we could send junior high students to until they were older.
In reality, it is my favorite age to teach. I love the delightful and, yes, disputatious nature of junior high students. Their brains are changing and they are learning to think on their own.
This is a good thing! Just as a child learning to walk falls down many times before they master the art, teens take some tumbles before their brains mature.
But the truth is their energy and capacity is unique, just as the absorbent mind of the young child is unique and essential to development. So don’t fear it! Embrace it!
Oh, and PLEASE keep them away from shark tanks!
As parents and teachers, our task is to train them in the way they should go, and to pray for them to grow in wisdom and stature:
“I guide you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hampered; when you run, you will not stumble. Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life.” Proverbs 4:11-13
