As adults, there are some decisions we don’t have to think about. Eating a salad? Good idea. Swimming with sharks? Bad idea. This is because our amygdala and insula, the parts of the brain that initiate our fight/flight response, give us an instinctual sense that something is good or bad. However, it’s not always that simple.
pic and article via The Situationist: Why Growing Old Helps You Grow Older
Are adults brains wired differently than a teenagers‘? Perhaps. But it would be a mistake to simply throw this to the effects of aging.
Looking at our brains is like looking at the rings you’d see if you cut down a tree. Yes, you’ll get an idea of how old that tree is, but if you look closer and you compare trees, you’ll see that the rings also represent the things that happened during the tree’s life time. The rings tell you which years had the worse droughts, and which years were good in the tree’s life. The rings of a tree are shaped by the environment.
The brain is also shaped by the environment. As a teenager goes through his life cycle, he experiences different social pressures, and that’s what’s shaping their brains.
What would be truly interesting is if we can compare the brains of today’s teenagers with past generations teenagers (not after they’ve become adults). What kind of differences would we see? The environment is different. They didn’t have internet back then. They also didn’t have helicopter parents that are apparently driving kids neurotic.
Luckily, we don’t have to wait until someone takes up the scalpel for that gruesome task before we get an inside look at what’s going on in youth’s brains and how we can connect with them.
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