Understanding Adolescent Development

Dispelling Myths, Embracing Complexity

I was at a neuroscience conference in 2019 when a tense disagreement erupted over what parents of teens understand about their children’s development. Because the field of adolescent studies had been laser-focused on risky behavior, some argued that researchers were conveying negative images to parents about their kids. They began to call each other out about the way they talked about teens to the media.

Just at that moment, we were finalizing the survey we would give to a nationally representative group of adolescents, 9 through 19-years old and their parents, I thought to myself, I don’t have to wonder. I can find out. What’s more, finding out may help us better understand what young people mean when they tell us, “You don’t understand me” —something most of us have heard from years. At the conference, I wrote down the following question to use in our survey.

When you hear the phrase “the teen brain,” or “the adolescent brain,” what one word comes to mind?

We weren’t asking about their own child’s brain, but about the generic adolescent brain.  You’ve also probably noticed that I have defined adolescence as most researchers do, beginning when children begin puberty, which is as early as 9- or 10-year-old. So, we’re looking at tweens and teens. 

We administered the survey—The Breakthrough Years survey—to 1666 parents and their children. 

If I asked you to guess, what percentage of parents used positive words, what would you guess?  I would have guessed that it was low, but not as low as it actually was…

• Only 14% of parents used positive terms—like “exploring,” “creative,” “fun,” or “the future.” 

• 27% used neutral terms, like “growing” or “changing.” 

• And 59% used negative terms, like “forgetful,” “stupid,” “clueless,” “distracted,” “know-it-all,” or “bratty.”

Further insight came when we looked at the actual words that parents used to describe the adolescent/teen brain. The most frequent word? “Immature.” It was used 11% of the time. That’s a remarkable convergence for an open-ended question. Another 8% wrote down "un-", "in-", or “not” words, including:

• Unformed 

• Undeveloped/under-developed 

• Unfinished

• Incomplete

• Inexperienced.

• Not thinking/not smart

These words indicate that many adults are using an adult yardstick to assess adolescents and are finding them lacking.

Perhaps this conception hearkens back to an earlier time in history when young people moved straight from childhood into adulthood. Or perhaps it’s because young people can look adult-like, so we assess them based on appearances. There are many reasons.

But young people aren’t adults. We wouldn’t say that infants are immature toddlers when they experience stranger anxiety in learning whom to trust or that toddlers are immature preschoolers when they say “no, no, no” in learning what they can and can’t control. Children at these younger ages are doing exactly what they are developmentally primed to do—what they need to do for their brains to develop. 

Yet, I found that too many of us seem to think about our teens as immature adults, even though they, too, are doing exactly what their brains are priming them to do (and by the way, this was true in earlier eras when there was little societal demarcation of adolescence):

• They are moving further out into the world, so they need to be highly sensitive to social and emotional situations. 

• They need to become environmental detectors to determine what’s okay and what’s worrisome and to react strongly because their parents aren’t necessarily there to help them.  

• They need to explore their identities and what it means to be and become them. So, they're highly sensitive to what matters to them, and to experiences where they can begin to figure this out.

As I read hundreds of studies about adolescence, I found that our lack of understanding can affect how we handle everyday situations with adolescents and can have longer-term repercussions. For example, studies show that expecting the worst from adolescents—expecting storm and stress—can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading to more turmoil.[¹] 

Our study found that when parents have negative views of the teen/adolescent brain, those adolescents weren’t doing as well nine months later—during the pandemic when we administered another survey to the same people—as those young people whose parents have positive or neutral views. 

The next time we’re motivated to say to a teenager, “Stop being such a teenager,” or we use negative words about them—“you’re a hormonal minefield”—we might be the ones who need to stop. 

We need to pause and remember that they are doing what they are supposed to be doing—exploring the world to find their place in it, having quick reactions so they can determine who or what is safe, and being highly sensitive to what matters to them. Just as we wouldn’t criticize a baby for stranger anxiety or a toddler for saying “no, no, no,” we need to say, “I understand that you feel this way”, then we can begin to help them. 

And we help them best by not fixing things for them, but helping them gain the skills to fix things for themselves.

1. Christy M. Buchanan and Grayson N. Holmbeck, “Measuring beliefs about adolescent personality and behavior,” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 27 (October 1998): 609-629, https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022835107795; Christy M. Buchanan and Johna Hughes Bruton, “Construction of social reality during early adolescence: Can expecting storm and stress increase storm and stress?” Journal of Research on Adolescence 19, no. 2 (May 2009): 261-285, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1532-7795.2009.00596.x.