Why Teenagers Make Bad Decisions

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Teenagers may know how important some of their tasks are, like their homework and their exams, but teenagers still put minimal effort even on tasks that have high rewards or consequences. This behaviour may be because their brains are not fully developed yet, so teenagers can't properly evaluate the high stakes on certain tasks and they can't adjust their behavior. 

On the other hand, adults are good at being able to distinguish when a sitation or task is worthy of more concentration or more time. In a recent research, experts have found that when there is potential reward or loss in a task, adults will perform better. Teenagers do not have the same mindset. 

The brains of teenagers are not fully developed, and the research shows that their brains are not mature enough to know the importance of their tasks and they still do not know how to process or react to it. 

A researcher from Harvard University, Catherine Insel, asked teenagers 13 to 20 years old to play a game while lying in an fMRI brain scanner. In some rounds of the game, the teenagers could earn 20 cents for a correct answer, while an incorrect one would cost them 10 cents. But in rounds with higher rewards, the correct answers were worth a dollar and the wrong ones lost the teenagers 50 cents.

Teenage brains are still developing

The researchers of the study found that while the older participants performed better in the rounds that had higher rewards, the younger participants didn't. The overall performance of the younger participants did not change even when they knew that the reward was high. The study showed that the older participants did so much better in their performance when they knew that they were going to get more out of doing well.  Insel said that the teenager's ability to adjust performance according to the stakes at play emerged gradually across their age range.  

When the researchers looked at the brain activity of the participants, they found that their ability to improve their performance was linked to how developed their brains were. An area in the brain called the corticostriatal network is very important as this is known to connect the areas that are involved with reward to those that control behavior. The corticostriatal network continues to develop until we reach 25 years of age. The more developed their corticostriatal network was, the better the participants performed on rounds with higher rewards.  

Reckless behavior

According to Kathrin Cohen Kadosh, a researcher from the University of Surrey, teenagers are much more likely to do things without thinking about the consequences, for example they tend to drive dangerously, especially when one of their friends are around. The findings of the study explained why some teenagers are not alarmed of their dangerous behaviors.

A researcher from the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, France, Stefano Palminteri, thinks that schools should reconsider the way that they test the performance of students in high school. He said that this study suggests it is not a good idea to evaluate school performance in a single final exam. It is better to use numerous smaller tests, conducted throughout the school year. 

Palminteri said teenagers put the same amount of effort into tasks that are not important, and they start to prefer their hobbies to school. He also said that it could be a good thing to allow teenagers to learn complex social skills.    

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