Speaking of Psychology - Understanding the teenage brain, with Eva Telzer, PhD

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

There’s a common stereotype is that teenagers’ brains are immature and underdeveloped, and that teens are “hard-wired” to take unwise risks and cave to peer pressure. But psychologists’ research suggests these negative stereotypes are unfounded and that the teen years are a time opportunity and growth as well as risk. Eva Telzer, PhD, explains why teens take more risks and why that risk-taking is sometimes beneficial, why parents have more influence than they think, and how social media and other technology use may be affecting teens’ behavior and development. Links     Eva Telzer, PhD Speaking of Psychology Home Page Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There may be no stage in life that's more maligned than adolescence. When people think of teenagers, the words that may come to mind include moody, impulsive, risk-taking, and self-centered. In the movies, on TV and in our imaginations, teenagers drive too fast, they experiment with drugs and alcohol, and they cave to peer pressure to take other unwise risks. Looking back, many of us probably remember doing a few of those things ourselves when we were teens. And teenage brains, so the stereotype goes, are driving these actions.

These brains just haven't developed enough for young people to make good decisions. But researchers are increasingly finding that this negative view of the adolescent brain is inaccurate and incomplete. Yes, teenagers are still a work in progress, but the brain changes that mark adolescents make it a time of great opportunity and growth as well as risk. So what is happening in the teenage brain? Do adolescents take more risks than other age groups and is that risk taking always bad? Who has more influence over teens' behavior, their parents or their peers? Are teens really more self-centered than adults? And how might social media and other technology use be changing teens' behavior and development?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology, the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills. My guest today is Dr. Eva Telzer, an associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She studies teens' brain development and behavior with a focus on risk-taking, family and peer relationships, prosocial behavior, and long-term psychological well-being. She's also interested in how social media and technology are affecting teens' brain development.

and she is the co-director of the Winston National Center on Technology Use, Brain, and Psychological Development. She has received many awards for her work, including APA's Boyd-McCandless Award for Early Career Contributions to Developmental Psychology, and the Association's Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contributions to Psychology. Thank you for joining us today, Dr. Telzer. Thank you so much for having me. Let's start with a definition so that we're on the same page in terms of what age group we're talking about. In your research, how do you define adolescence? Is it just the teenage years from 13 to 19, or does it encompass a broader range?

So defining adolescence is quite complicated. It is not necessarily defined by age. It's not necessarily defined by other markers, such as the onset and offset of puberty. And so when we study adolescents, we often are following youth across time to look at change. We typically start in middle school, so six and seventh graders in the United States, for example, and following them through the end of high school. So 12th grade in the United States, sometimes our research starts a little bit younger and sometimes goes a little bit older. But for the most part, we're studying adolescents from approximately sixth grade to 12th grade. So one of the most common negative stereotypes about teens is that they take a lot of unnecessary and unwise risks.

that this risk-taking tendency is wired into their brains. How accurate is that? Are teens more prone to take risks compared with adults and even younger children? Yeah, so there's a fair amount of research looking at risk-taking behaviors and how this might change across development. So following youth, starting in childhood through adolescence to adulthood, and even doing this work across nationally, researchers have found what looks like an inverted U-shaped pattern with adolescents showing the highest levels of risk-taking behaviors. So this ranges from behaviors that might be construed as negative, like, substance use behaviors, but also less risky behaviors.

So on an experimental task, for example, where you can manipulate rewards that they might receive, but a risk of not getting that reward, we can see that adolescents more so than children and more so than adults choose to take the risk in order to receive that reward. And this is thought to be driven by sensation-seeking and reward-seeking behaviors that are substantiated in the brain. So there's quite a bit of research out there showing that an area of the brain called the ventral striatum, which codes for reward value, is more activated in adolescence when they receive rewards and when they take risks, then this brain region is activated in children or adults. So it is true based on the empirical research out there that adolescents are more likely to

take risks and that there is evidence from the brain that supports why this might be happening. So it's perhaps driven by this tendency to seek out rewards. But the widely held stereotype that this is very negative and drives only negative behavior, like teens recklessly driving or jumping off a bridge or doing other more negative risks may be overstated because teens are engaging in so many positive risks that are sometimes overlooked in the media as well as parents worried about what teens might be doing with their peers, for example. And so there's lots of risks that might be construed as more positive. So, for example, if you're in a class and the teacher raises a question, some teens may feel very nervous about raising their hand and answering the question. But you might do so. You might raise your hand and answer the question, even if you're kind of afraid of your peers thinking poorly of you or not getting the answer right.

And so that's just one example of a positive risk. There's also what we define as a pro-social risk. So this is going out of your way, potentially risking social status or other types of risks that may come with some backlash in order to help somebody else. So as an example, there might be a kid getting bullied in school. And so a pro-social risk would be standing up to the bully and helping out that kid who's being bullied. And so there is this potentially huge risk that the bully is going to backlash at you or that your social status. You may be viewed more negatively by some of the cool kids in school, but the potential positive of this is helping out that kid who might be getting bullied. So you mentioned an area of the brain that's activated, right, which is why some teens may be taking risk.

Does the same thing happen in adults? And how is it that adults can regulate that? So there is heightened ventral stride in activation in adults, too, when they engage in risks and receive rewards. it's just not as high as it is in adolescent. So there's thought to be less of this reward drive in adults. There's what is now thought to be a relatively simplified view of the development of reward seeking and risk taking behavior, which is not necessarily robustly supported in the research, which I think you're alluding to, which is this idea of regulation where adults are better regulated, have a more developed prefrontal cortex, and therefore they can

can downregulate that ventral striatim response. But that's not necessarily the full story here. Adolescents actually are very good at regulating their behavior. They have not a broken brain or undeveloped prefrontal cortex, but a regulatory system that's very flexible and can be engaged to meet their motivational goals. And so it's not that they can't regulate their behavior. It's just that sometimes their goal is not to regulate their behavior because the reward of one behavior just may be much more highly valued than the reward of regulating that behavior. And so they choose to engage in it. It's not that they are incapable of not stopping themselves from engaging in it.

There's an idea that the teenagers are egged on by their peers to take risks and that their parents don't have a whole lot of influence over them at this point in life. What have you found in your research, do parents, or peers have more influence when it comes to teens risk taking? Yeah, so there is absolutely this stereotype out there that peers are going to drive adolescents to engage in largely negative behaviors, and that parents have less of a role in affecting their teens' decision-making. And what's remarkable is that there's really been no research to support this, and

not a lot of research out there has even been done to ask this. very question. And so we have completed several studies now in my lab to look at the relative role of parent and peer influence on adolescents risk-taking behaviors, as well as they're more positive types of behaviors like pro-social behaviors or healthy behaviors. And what we have found is across multiple studies now, either parents and peers have a similar influence on adolescence decision-making or parents actually outweigh that of their peers. In one study, for example, adolescents had the decision to take a risk or not in the presence of conflicting information from their parent and their peer. So their parent may have said, take the risk, and their peer

may have said, no, play it safe, and vice versa. And what we find is that teens are more likely to go along with what their parent says than with what their peer says in this risk-taking context. In other studies, for example, looking at their risk attitudes and their pro-social attitudes, we find that teens go along with their parents' attitudes and their peers' attitudes at about a 50-50 level. So they're just as likely to follow what their parents' attitudes are as they are to follow what their peers' attitudes are. And what's actually quite striking is that they stick with their own attitudes more often than they go along with what their parents or their peers think.

And so rather than being like overly susceptible to what other people think in their social environment, especially their peers, adolescents are actually kind of sticking to their guns more often than they are to follow what their peers think or even what their parents think. And we think that this is quite remarkable compared to the overall stereotype that teens are overly susceptible to others. And actually, teens kind of are independent thinkers and stick with what they think are positive and negative behaviors more so than they are to go along with others. You've found that risk taking can be adaptive in development. What do you mean by that? How does risk taking essentially help young people grow and develop? Sure. So there's lots of different

ways that risk taking can be adaptive. One is that just from an evolutionary perspective, going out, learning from your environment, engaging in kind of flexible behaviors, trial and error helps adolescents to learn and develop and explore who they are and what matters to them. It allows them to make new friends to get away from the family and find a mate. So sort of from that kind of evolutionary perspective, it promotes development. There's also adaptive ways that it can happen just in terms of these more positive risks that I alluded to earlier, raising your hand in class, or asking your crush out on a date, or trying out for a challenging sports activity or something else that might be challenging that you might be scared to do, but

kind of taking the risk to try it, are all ways that risks can. be highly adaptive in adolescence. Now, you've tackled another stereotype in your research, which is that teens are more self-centered than adults. That's a pretty common idea. But as you've pointed out, there's a countervailing stereotype that many teens are driven to change the world for the better. I mean, a lot of the big social movements of our time from climate change to Black Lives

Matter have been led in part by adolescents. So how do these ideas fit together? Are teens more self-centered than adults? or are they more idealistic and driven to do more good in the world? Adolescence, I think, is just such a remarkable developmental period. So for all of the reasons that the brain is developing and changing and thought to be negative are many of the reasons that adolescents are engaging in really positive behavior. So, for example, increases in the ventral stratum that I discussed earlier that is related to

reward value and feeling good are increasing during adolescence. And at the same time, brain regions involved in social perspective taking are increasing. And these together, I think, really promote the ability of adolescents to engage in really meaningful activities that bring them joy. So that reward sensitivity while also taking the perspective of others and thinking about the broader societal needs of their community. And so we see that adolescents, as you mentioned, are engaging in really positive behaviors during this. period. They're leading social movements. They're also doing this at a smaller scale, whether that be contributing to their family or helping their friends or volunteering at their local community. Some teens do this at such a huge level. So leading the climate change movements, leading these bigger

scale movement that have gotten tons and tons of people involved. But it doesn't have to happen at that scale and adolescents in their everyday lives are doing activities that are pro-social and community-oriented. And they're not doing this just to like get into college, for example, but there's research showing that these brain regions involved in reward sensitivity and social sensitivity are activated, suggesting that it really does bring them joy to engage in this. And it is a meaningful activity for adolescents. How does culture affect teens' experiences of adolescence? Do teens in different countries show similar changes in behavior and brain development during the years that you study?

In a way, adolescent is a social construction. And so the society that you live in determines how adolescence is viewed. So the stereotypes of adolescents are determined by the culture we live in. In some cultures, adolescence is described as a time of risk-taking. and this storm and stress, which was one of the very original ways of describing adolescents. And some cultures don't view it in that way. And what's really interesting is that in the way that one's culture views adolescence, oftentimes adolescence is experienced in those ways.

So there has been cross-cultural research, for example, Young Q, who's now an assistant professor at Northwestern, has done research in China and the United States, to look at how these stereotypes of adolescents are different. And they differ in China and they differ in the United States. And China adolescents is viewed less so at this time of risk-taking in peer influence and more so as this time of family obligation and educational motivation than, for example, in the U.S. And so there's definitely ways in which the culture that we live in can affect how

adolescents are viewed. and what's important to keep in mind is that these stereotypes and views of adolescents are often self-fulfilling prophecies. So if I grow up in a culture that views adolescence as this time of risk-taking, I'm more likely to think that adolescence is a time of risk-taking and therefore engage in more risk-taking because I think that that's what adolescents are supposed to do. And so there's definitely ways in which culture impacts just,

the mere experience of what adolescence is described as the stereotypes that are endorsed by that group and how adolescents growing up in that culture might view and experience adolescents themselves. What about differences between the sexes? A lot of people say that girls are more mature than boys, that they are more sensible than their male counterparts. Do girls take fewer risks? or is this a groundless belief or do they take different types of risks? Yeah, that's a great question that I don't have the full answer for. But the short answer just from our work is that we don't find gender differences. Boys and girls don't differ in the amount of risks they take.

I think we need more well-powered studies. And by that, I mean large sample sizes that look at risk-taking across many different behaviors to get a better sense of whether girls and boys might. differ in the types of risks that they take. There are in the literature out there, I'm less versed with it, so don't want to say too much, but there is some evidence that girls and boys might differ in terms of externalizing behaviors, for example. But I think that girls and boys actually are more similar to each other than they are different, and that the variability is really within these groups of adolescents. So it will range across girls as much as it will range across boys.

Do you know whether there are differences based on race and ethnicity or socioeconomic status? You could imagine that somebody who is living in a tougher situation, you might be willing to take more risks because, you know, what do I have to lose here? Right? My life is already tough. Yes, there's definitely evidence, especially when it comes to socioeconomic status. that teens from lower SCIS environments are more likely to take risks and engage in externalizing behaviors for exactly the point you raise that, like, what is there to lose? Or actually, maybe there's something really to gain by engaging that's risk-taking. So if my family can't afford to put food on the table, I might go out and steal or engage in other

behaviors in order to help my family. And that's considered a huge risk, but it may actually be in the end. the outcome is helpful for them and their family, or being exposed to an environment that has lots of risks and negative experiences in the environment, whether you're growing up in a place with a lot of violence or being exposed to other things. There's instances where either taking a risk is a good thing or taking a risk is something that is socialized within that environment because of what you're exposed to. When it comes to ethnic racial differences, the

literature is much more mixed. And so there's not kind of clear differences there. I think, again, similar to boys and girls, there's more similarities than there are differences. And the differences are not at all due to anything that's like biologically wired that's different between racial or ethnic groups, but perhaps something that is culturally socialized if there are differences that are found. In our culture, we have kind of prolonged adolescence. I mean,

you know, kids are living with their parents longer for economic and for other reasons. You know, we're really sort of, in a sense, you might say, you know, we've been coddling our kids. Is that having an impact on their desire to take risks there and risks that might be good for them? Yeah. So in either societies where kids have to grow up, up sooner or for other reasons where you might have to grow up sooner. For example, if you don't have lots of resources or parents who are available. And for example, if you're in the foster system and don't have a mom and dad necessarily to support you well past 18, you might have to grow up sooner. Whereas for teens in higher SDS environments or for those who do have parents who

one can live with for longer past the high school years when you're technically defined by society to be an adult. This provides an opportunity to kind of grow up slower. In a lot of ways, this can be positive. There's research from both animal models and actually human models showing that the brain slows down in development when given the opportunity to, but speeds up and becomes more mature sooner in environments where you kind of have to grow up sooner. And both are adaptive. You're adapting to the environment to which you need to either grow up sooner or have more opportunity to explore your environment.

And so by prolonging adolescents, we're giving teams the opportunity to explore more, explore their identity, explore different opportunities for like, who they want to be when they grow up, engage in different types of risk that might be very adaptive for reaching those goals. And so if you're in an environment that allows you to kind of slow down that process of developing and growing up, then it's perhaps a positive thing for youth and not something that we necessarily need to look down on. Like they're just not growing up and they're staying teenagers forever and they're not getting married and having kids until later. Maybe this is a positive thing that allows them to really explore and define who they are and

make decisions that are going to be the best for them as they reach adulthood. Now, you also study teens and technology and social media use, and I know you're interested not only in how it's affecting their social and emotional lives, but how it might be shaping their brain development. Can you talk about that? What are the questions you're trying to answer by looking at this particular situation? Yeah, so social media has really, I think, changed the social landscape of what adolescents looks like today compared to, for example, when I was a teenager and had to see my peers either in person or talk to them on the phone in order to interact with them. There's this around-the-clock ability to, um, and

engage either synchronously or asynchronously. And by that, I mean, you can be texting back and forth into the wee hours of the night. You can be scrolling through social media and putting up comments and getting likes and getting feedback on that very quickly. And this, we think, has really changed what it means to be an adolescent, what peer relationships might look like, teens' ability to connect with others, their sense of loneliness. And this is happening in both good and bad ways. And so we're trying to unpack what that means in terms of how they're able to stay connected to others, to find others who might share their similar interests.

And ways that this may be increasing their sense of loneliness or negative aspects on their body image. The exciting piece that we're starting to explore, which we don't have data to share yet, is how this might be co-occurring with their brain development. So we know that the adolescent brain is highly sensitive to rewards. It's highly sensitive to social feedback. And so how might this interact with the ways that they're engaging in these online platforms in social media and digital media context? And does the brain then get shaped by those experiences because the brain itself is highly plastic and sensitive to its environment? The adolescent period is a huge time of brain development, second only to that that we see in infancy. And so not only do we see this heightened sensitivity in terms of reward sensitivity and social sensitivity,

but we see that the environment and things that teens are exposed to can shape further brain development. And so we don't yet know how these digital media platforms and what they're experiencing online might be integrated into their brains. So that's something that we're just very interested in exploring and are starting to conduct longitudinal research to follow teens across time and understand the bidirectional relationships here. So how is adolescents' neurobiological sensitivity affecting maybe how they engage online and vice versa? How is the way that they engage on these digital platforms shaping potential changes in brain development across time? I thought it was really interesting.

And there was a recent Forbes article about your technology research and Jim Winston, whose foundation funds the center at UNC that you had. He said, a child born today and primarily raised on devices will be neurobiologically incapable of reading war and peace as an adult, not lazy or unmotivated. Incapable. Do you agree with that? I mean, do we even know whether that's the case? I don't think we know. We definitely need empirical research that follows youth from childhood to adolescence into adulthood to be able to answer that question.

question. We really don't have the data yet to even know how their use of digital media is impacting brain development and their ability to do things like read War and Peace. And so we're just not there yet. We need much more research to be able to support those types of comments. And that's exactly what we're trying to do with our longitudinal research is to be able to understand these mechanisms and how digital media might shape brain development and of course, vice versa for both good and bad ways. We don't know the positive and negative ways that this could be occurring because like I said with the growing up too fast versus maturing more early, how that impacts brain development. It's the same thing with digital media. The brain is

adapting to its environment. And so in a way, whatever the brain is doing to respond to, these social inputs is adaptive, whether we qualify that as a good thing or bad thing is subjective, I think. And so understanding these processes is going to take a lot of time because we need to do longitudinal research. And also we need to take into context whether this is a good thing or bad thing because much of it is subjective based on what we think adolescent should be doing or how we think these outcomes are impacting their development. Any other big questions that you're trying to answer at this point? I think that our main research is really just trying to unpack and answer a lot of the potential stereotypes that are out there.

So we have work happening right now looking at peer influence. So we talked about this earlier, but also really considering the positive side of peer influence is one of our big. goals, there is just as much evidence suggesting that peers can push teens to engage in very good behaviors and change their attitudes in more positive ways as there is evidence on the contrary that peers drive teens to be more risky. And so this is a big area of research that we're eager to contribute to more and kind of debunk if we can with empirical evidence, this idea that teens are driving each other to engage in more negative and deviant behaviors, but actually are promoting very positive behaviors as well. Well, Dr. Telzer, this has been very interesting. I really

appreciate you're joining me today. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. You can read more about Dr. Telzer's research and other research on the teenage brain in the July-August issue of APA's magazine Monitor on Psychology. You'll find a link on our website at www. www. speakingof psychology.org. You can also find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology there or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you hear, please leave us a review.

If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at speaking of psychology at APA.org. Speaking of psychology is produced by Lee Weinerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condiyan. Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.