with rage, but in a profoundly irrational way, but but it's a human desire and it shows up early. Adolescence, a period of great transition and a great uncertainty of where you you um you fit into society is a time for perverse actions. And um there's a so-called midlife crisis at a certain point in age. Uh a lot of men, a lot of women are wondering, is this what it is? Is this what
then 40 and then kids and then I start to, you know, change and maybe at some deeper level we are making a certain set adolescence, adulthood, middle age to ultimately old age if we're lucky and then, you know,
And so I'm curious. Adolescence it's real hard, but I'm always to be-- I love doing the
In adolescents, we didn't see that affect. Adolescents' amygdala was reacting no matter who they were looking at. And that's not to say that parents aren't important during adolescence, they absolutely are.
A purposeful life is on the decline in terms of goals of adolescents. Adolescents are increasingly saying, I want to make money, I want to get a great job, and I want to go to a good college. The percentage of students who say, I want to lead a meaningful life, has experienced a steep decline.
New York has finally recognized what research and science have confirmed. Adolescents are children. And prosecuting and placing them under the adult criminal justice system doesn't work for them, and it doesn't work for public safety. In 2017, Raise the Age legislation passed.
And it's largely driven by transgenerational sex, but it's largely driven by the fact that women aren't counted as part of society. Adolescent girls aren't counted as an equal part of society. And so gender-based violence is rampant.
I love to think of ways to implement it so that more kids who need this way of thinking can benefit from it. Adolescents in a fixed mindset feel incredible shame when they are excluded or rejected,
And what the "Brainstorm" approach that we're going to talk about can do is change our whole cultural conversation so we recognize what's happening in the brain and support adolescents rather than try to imprison them. The third thing the limbic area is involved in is called appraisal.
So neurons firing leads to neurons rewiring. Adolescents do not have a space between an impulse and an action as much as they will later on.
So neurons firing leads to neurons rewiring. Adolescents are three times more likely during the period 12 to 24 to be seriously injured or die from preventable causes.
A second experiment that we ran was in a quite different sample of individuals. Adolescents aged 11 to 16 years old who were referred to our youth program on the basis of being at high risk of criminal offending. About 70% of them had an official record of criminal offending, stealing cars, dealing drugs, antisocial behavior, aggressive behavior and they were all screened to have high levels
You're yourself. And there's something about, in adolescence, a constant culture in remembering this culture of performance that starts to be a problem in Facebook. Particularly, for adolescents. So in these lives of performance, I've found again, my work is qualitative. It's interviews. It's a lot of interviews. It's interviews over long periods of time, but it is interview work. I'm trained as a clinician.
but what actually happened is the word spread on the streets and we ended up with about a hundred adolescent boys from the local gangs who'd heard that a new provision had opened on the block and they used to arrive at three o'clock every day pull out their knives rip the furniture
So we could presumably get in the sweet spot of that learning zone in childhood, and not get other periods of life, like adolescence. So to give you an example of how this study worked, we designed the study in 2012. So we brought in young adults, 22 years old, for example, in 2012, and we wanted a stimulus from when they were children-- say, about seven years old.
of the amygdala in their children. In adolescents, we didn't see that affect. Adolescents' amygdala was reacting no matter who they were looking at.
Very interesting. Yeah. We really amplify our own emotions to our children. during adolescence as a function of improved environments, as a function of strong family support, and so on.
Very interesting. Yeah. We really amplify our own emotions to our children. But adolescence seems to be a time when-- for everyone-- our sense of identity is really starting to develop quickly.
These are the individual data points that similarly relate ACEs experiences to depressive symptoms over the course of childhood and adolescence. And what you can see is that there is this tremendous amount of variation. At every level of adverse childhood experience, there's a huge range of outcomes, ranging from kids who have lots of depression and mood
So in the US context, we are consistent in that we kill more newborns, infants, children, young children, early adolescents, late adolescents, young adults, middle age adults at every age group. So in some respects, the US is consistent that way in that it has worse health than all its peer countries consistently.
You couldn't imagine the more trivial plan. Most adolescences, as you probably know, don't want to go to the school outside their own neighborhoods and away from their friends. And on top of that, the cases where you have one place left and two children, one black, one white, applies for it is trivial.
about adolescence and we're checking now to try and see if that's something to do with puberty or just something about the
And that's just not true. The adolescent period can be defined as a period between childhood and adulthood. And there was a debate a while ago, should we just get rid of the term adolescence?
So neurons firing leads to neurons rewiring. Because adolescents have a natural, as you can see, push against the status quo of adults.
For most adolescents, like boys, there's no association.
They run adolescents through brain scanning machines, and they're listening three different times.
that when they become adolescence there's all these new risks on the horizon for them and we don't have the same closeness with them that we may have enjoyed when they were younger.
that's like our adolescent, our inner child phase.
As an adolescent, you don't even know who you are, let alone playing other characters.
So in my adolescent period, I saw the same bloodstained cloth in the backyard of my home.
One would play music from their childhood-- so "Quit Playing Games With My Heart," by the Backstreet Boys, and the other radio station would play songs from their adolescence-- so like Justin Bieber and Ludacris. And the question was, under duress, do we see people tuning in to one radio station more than the other?
line world of my adolescence-- to find out why I hadn't begun to menstruate.
Quand j'étais adolescente, j'ai lu Angela Davis.
This was looking at adolescence.
Or even in adolescents and adults who have attention challenges, we can show that if you give mindful awareness training, you can actually take people who look like they have attention
The essence of adolescence-- an emotional spark, social engagement, novelty seeking, and creative exploration-- those are the four fundamental features of what
happens with adolescent's remodeling brain.
Your kids and your adolescents especially, they're feeling this.
So the U-shaped curve makes sense, because the healthiest years of life are young adulthood. So late adolescence, young adulthood is when people die the least. So that makes sense.
People embrace adolescence, early adulthood.
social context of adolescence. But it's really striking that that's when we see this big change. And if you think back to that chart that I showed you about
And then again in adolescence this major transformation takes place.
that you were hitting adolescence.
Boyhood and adolescence. It was like an interest in anything else you might be interested in at that age.
as best we can until a grownup emerges on the other side and we can finally breathe a huge sigh of relief. Grownups and adolescents find each other frustrating and infuriating. I suspect that some of you are parents who came to this talk hoping for tips on how to handle their teenagers.
And by understanding the truths, we actually empower adolescents and adults who care for adolescents or actually any adult who once was an adolescent to actually reclaim a certain aspect of celebrating this period of life. So we'll then take time for a discussion.
But it turns out that not just in people who live on the West Coast or people who are human beings but actually many mammals have an adolescent period, which is distinct from childhood and distinct from adulthood. So it isn't just we that have this period.
Right? Now, I know a lot of adults who are trying to get that back from their partners, which is probably a good idea. But as an adolescent, if you think about it, nature's got to do something to the brain to say, I know that's a pretty good setup you got. But I need you to go from the familiar home, where you're comfortable and where you're safe,
So neurons firing leads to neurons rewiring. that would drive an adolescent mad, which is a second myth we're going to bust right now.
So neurons firing leads to neurons rewiring. The changes in adolescence are not due to raging hormones.