The Teenage Brain

Author - Aarushi Nand - 10A

Author Introduction: Books are my best friend. I aspire to be a photographer.

As a teenager, I hear this phrase, from most adults a lot – grow up. I am either too young or too old for everything and sometimes, it gets out of hand. I hear words like impulsive, rude, argumentative, moody quite often. Teen behaviour has proven to be a whirlwind for many. So I did some digging and found things all adults, parents and teachers, should know about teenagers regarding why we act the way we do..

 

To begin with, over the years there is a drastic change in the way psychologists defined teen behaviour.Psychologist G. Stanley Hall termed this phase as ‘Storm and Stress’ period, while Erik Erikson ,saw this phase as the most tumultuous of life’s several identity crises.

Against these views the 20th century researchers evolved brain imaging technology which enabled them to study the teen brain. NIH (National Institute of Health) conducted a study over a hundred youngsters and the revelation was shocking. The Study stated that our brains are not developed yet. It goes through remodeling, from back to front, and many parts are not wired and may not be for a few years. Most of these parts are used by adults for rational thinking and decision making. This remodeling also helps store things that we do more often and things we don’t, in the trash. We also learn more in this stage therefore we need all the encouragement and support we can get to try new things.

Moving on, we have a lot of hormonal changes. This is important as this can mess with a lot of things we do. One of the hormones is Melatonin. This hormone is responsible of putting us to sleep. As this gets shifted, we sleep late at night and feel sleepy during the day.

More studies and researches are being conducted to better understand what teenagers go through, and how they should be handled.

References:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/10/teenage-brains/dobbs-text

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiduiTq1ei8