What's Wrong with the Teen Brain?

Underage drinking, reckless driving, drug use and unprotected sex. The list of risky teen behaviors goes on and on, to the consternation of parents, teachers and all the other adults involved in adolescents’ lives. But why are teens so often drawn to dangerous, potentially self-destructive behavior?

Advanced imaging techniques such as functional MRI (fMRI) are revealing for the first time how the teen brain actually works, offering new insights. Consider these fascinating findings.

Read more about the developing teen brain.

The Teen Brain: Still Under Construction

The early-adolescent brain is getting ready to shift from a childhood brain to an adult brain, and like renovating a house; the process unfolds in stages, according to Michael J. Bradley, Ed.D. a psychologist and author of Yes Your Teen is Crazy: Loving Your Kid Without Losing Your Mind (Harbor Press) and other books. “There’s nothing wrong with the teenage brain,” he explains, “it’s just not finished yet.”

Indeed, research done at National Institute of Mental Health and elsewhere suggests that the posterior regions, which develop early, are largely responsible for motor control and processing sensory stimuli. That’s why children are comparatively quick to walk, talk and master new information. However, the forward regions of the brain, particularly the frontal lobe, don’t fully mature until a person reaches his or her mid-20s. And it’s the frontal lobe that’s in charge of things like planning ahead, reasoning, and controlling dangerous impulses.

Teen Brains Are Wired for Risk

Teens don’t engage in risky behavior because they underestimate the risks, but because they overestimate rewards – especially social rewards, according to experts such as neuroscientist B. J. Casey at Cornell University and Laurence Steinberg at Temple University. They point out that the reward centers of the adolescent brain are much more active than those of either children or adults.

In a 2011 study, conducted by psychologists at Temple University, teens lying in an fMRI brain-imaging machine performed a simulated, high-risk driving task. The reward system of their brains lit up much more when they thought another teen was watching – and they took more risk!

Teens and alcohol: Find out what's normal.

Today’s Teenagers’ Brains Don’t Get the Right Kind of Exercise

Although today’s kids are entering puberty earlier than ever – perhaps because they’re eating more and moving less – they are not learning all they need to know to become fully functioning adults. In the past, children learned such tasks as cooking and childcare in the course of everyday family life. According to developmental psychologist Ronald Dahl at the University of California, Berkeley, and this lack of practical experiences inhibits the growth of the brain’s control system. Today, many adolescents aren’t expected to do much more than go to school. Dahl uses a car metaphor for this phenomenon: Today’s teens, he says, “develop an accelerator before they learn how to steer or brake.”   

So what can frazzled parents do while they wait for their teenagers’ brains to mature? Here are a few tips from Dr. Bradley:

• Teach, don’t control. Have lots of discussions about porn, sex and drug use, and look for ways to respectfully interact with your kid so that he can develop a healthy belief system. For example, when a reality show depicts smart-mouthed adolescents staggering around drunk, quietly pose questions like, “How do you think those people’s lives will turn out after the cameras leave?” Don’t argue with your kids’ answers; instead, “Let the questions rattle around in your kids’ heads.”
• Don’t overreact. “You’re not in the perfection business,” points out Dr. Bradley, and even good teens get into trouble occasionally. But if your kid is really heading off the rails – refusing to go to school, for example, or abusing drugs -- “draw a line in the sand. Take away all electronics, car keys and other distractions. “Say, ‘I love you too much to let you do this to yourself.’” Your child may not thank you, but when you impose limits in a loving way,” he says, “Kids feel your love.”
• Conjure this thought before losing your cool.  Finally, when you feel angry, learn to pull back from the brink. Dr. Bradley shares one of the tricks he uses: “When I’m about to go insane because the family room is a mess, I think about being on my death bed and how I’ll feel about what I’m about to do. I ask myself, ‘what should my legacy be? Should it be yelling and criticism, or should it be compassion and patience, especially in the face of provocation?’”

I think we all know the answer to that question! 

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