The Teenage Mind

I read an article yesterday afternoon in the Wall Street Journal over my lunch hour about the teenage mind. The article went into scientific explanations about why so many teenagers and young adults...

a. Make dumb decisions even though they are "book smart" and have all the facts and fully know the consequences of their actions. Example: A young girl knows that if she has unprotected sex, she could get pregnant, but does it anyway and finds herself pregnant.

b. Seem to be wandering aimlessly through much of their 20's and unable to settle down or establish themselves physically or emotionally. Example: Most young Americans are unmarried until their late 20's, even early 30's and are waiting longer and longer to have children, if having children at all.

The scientific explanation of this was the delayed development of the frontal cortex of the brain - which is the portion of the brain involved in decision making, particularly decision making that comes from rational explanations we reach on our own from things such as past experiences. Bottom line being, experiences form us and teach us about what to do and what not to do. How can we actually know the truth unless we try it ourselves?

For years now our high schools and colleges have been preaching to us to get a "well-rounded" education, hence the reason for taking your "generals" prior to actually getting into the nitty-gritty of your chosen major, which by the time you get through your "generals" you don't even know if you want to pursue your chosen major anymore because you've had so many other ideas thrown at you...

This "well-rounded" education is making us smarter, yes, no doubt about that, but it's causing serious delay of this crucial development in the brain because no one is getting any experience nor do our institutes of education require any experience until senior year, which is usually in the form of an internship that lasts less than 6 months - well, laddy-friggin'-da - see how a 6 month internship looks on a resume for getting a "real" job - no one will give a hoot.

My generation in particular, "Gen-Y", has been most affected by this educational phenom. People are in college and have no clue what they want to do with their lives because they aren't getting and hands-on experience in college. Some are smart and start internships or job shadowing early on, but most aren't so lucky.

Not only is the job experience seriously lacking, the emotional commitments are also lacking with many roaming from mate to mate, dating a lot of different people, but never really diving in deep enough to make a serious commitment either because they don't know how to commit or they just simply don't want to be emotionally involved. I think there are a lot of different reasons for this development, none really convinced me in the article, but I'm sure it does have something to do with this delayed development of the frontal cortex since we are remaining more "emotionally immature" as a result.

An interesting read to say the least...

All for now - hopefully I've provided some interseting insight for your Tuesday!