This kind of thing drives me up the wall:
TIME Magazine Cover: Secrets of the Teen Brain - May. 10, 2004
"Research is revolutionizing our view of the adolescent mind - and explaining its mystifying way"
Listen, here is some insight: try *really* hard to remember back to when YOU were a "teenager". Remember all the wondering and uncertainty and discovery and whatnot.
Now, take that person, you essentially, and stick them in the present. Think about the environment your adolescent inhabits. Highly fractured and accelerated culture, with specialized cults of interest and an overarching tribal system.
Think about constant and unremitting bombardment of information, entertainment and clashing contexts.
Think of sex, sex, sex, sex, violence, death, sex, war, sex. Pop, hip-hop, garage, whatever. Hollywood, Miami, Chelsea, Afghanistan, Iraq.
Now, how confused, mystified are YOU?
YOU created this world for them. If you are mystified by your adolescent, it is because you did not care enough to look.
Yes our brains are changing. They have to.
