“What’s Wrong with the Teenage Mind?” by Alison Gopnik, Wall Street Journal, 1/28/2o12

“If you think of the teenage brain as a car, today’s adolescents acquire an accelerator a long time before they can steer and brake.”

“Our social and cultural life shapes our biology.”

The crucial new idea is that there are two different neural and psychological systems (the first system involving emotion and motivation and the second system has to do with control)  that interact to turn children into adults.  “Recent studies in the neuroscientist B.J. Casey’s lab at Cornell University suggest that adolescents aren’t reckless because they underestimate risks, but because they overestimate rewards—or, rather, find rewards more rewarding than adults do. ” What teenage desire most is social reward.  The development of the second system requires learning through experience.  The issue in contemporary society is that puberty kicks in earlier along with emotional energy/angst while social and cultural life limits opportunities for adult-supervised experience.