New Research: Teenagers Really Have Lost Their Minds
Like billions of other parents, Austin Frakt of the Incidental Economist is enthralled with his young childrens’ cognitive development. Wanting to be the best parent he can be, he keeps up with research in child psychology and the recent MRI-fueled bloom in brain development in hopes that it can help him stay “several steps ahead of” his kids.
Several steps ahead now entails trying to understand teenagers.
His summarizes the book The Primal Teen. It describes the extensive remodeling of the brain that neuroscientists now believe occurs during adolescence and have begun to document with longitudinal MRI imaging studies. This remodeling appears to be as “critical to human development as that which takes place during the first two years of life” and has “profound implications for educators, behavioural scientists, pediatric health professionals and, with luck, bewildered and desperate parents.”
Frakt’s conclusion: Don’t take it personally. Kids young and old “are captives of their own developing brains. Are they really unable to appreciate how insane they behave? Yes, they really are!”
We needed a study to know these things?
I didn’t need a study.
I think Linda was making a joke of all this.
I’m a little shocked that they got teenagers to agree to do MRI studies. If, at the age of 15, some researcher told me that he wanted to try to figure out why I was being irrational, I would have told him to take a hike.