Group items tagged

Risk Taking

This means teens literally cannot come to a decision as fast as an adult.

scans showed that the reward center of the teen brain became much more active in the company of their peers

he greatest changes to the parts of the brain that are responsible for impulse-control, judgement, decision-making, planning, organization and involved in other functions like emotion, occur in adolescence. This area of the brain (prefrontal cortex) does not reach full maturity until around age 25!

You hear two opinions from experts on the topic of what happens when kids are perpetually exposed to technology. One: Constant multitasking makes teens work harder, reduces their focus, and screws up their sleep. Two: Using technology as a youth helps students adapt to a changing world in a way that will benefit them when they eventually have to live and work in it. Either of these might be true. More likely, they both are. But it is certainly the case that these kids are different—fundamentally and permanently different—from previous generations in ways that are sometimes surreal, as if you'd walked into a room where everyone is eating with his feet.

It's as if Beatlemania junkies in 1966 had had the ability to demand "Rain" be given as much radio time as "Paperback Writer," and John Lennon thought to tell everyone what a good idea that was. The fan–celebrity relationship has been so radically transformed that even sending reams of obsessive fan mail seems impersonal.

The teens' brains move just as quickly as teenage brains have always moved, constructing real human personalities, managing them, reaching out to meet others who might feel the same way or want the same things. Only, and here's the part that starts to seem very strange—they do all this virtually. Sitting next to friends, staring at screens, waiting for the return on investment. Everyone so together that they're actually all apart.

with technology, there is such a tendency for it to be a source of anxiety. I’d really like us to be in a place where we think of it instead as an opportunity for teenagers.

Yet when journalists (and law enforcement, talking heads and politicians) imply that teenage suicides are directly caused by bullying, we reinforce a false narrative that has no scientific support.

Rosen said teenagers’ desire for individualized experiences is something they expect will carry over into their education.

Adults are as addicted—if not more addicted—to technology as teenagers.  

adults’ smartphone addiction telepressure: “the combination of a strong urge to be responsive to people at work through message-based [information and communications technologies and] a preoccupation with quick response times.”

It’s worth considering: When we criticize teens who are glued to their screens, are we offering wise advice? Or are we projecting our own mixed feelings onto them?

children learn values and norms by watching their parents and other caregivers.

Once you begin saying out loud every time you look at technology, you also realize how much you’re looking at technology. And what you’re normalizing for your kids.

Teenagers loathe hypocrisy. It’s the biggest thing that I’ve seen to undermine trust between a parent and a child.

Today, however, teenagers carry far more information and computing power in their pockets than would ever fit in their heads.