For English class this past week, we have been studying the brain and how our brains develop. It got me thinking and researching on my own time about the development of our brains, and why we act the way we do. Teens do not fully develop until the age of 25. We like to think that we are the smartest individuals, and that we can make conscious decisions without any adult help most of the time. Well, in simple terms, that is very wrong. We like to take risks and do dumb things that when we look back on later in life, realize were totally out of our control and that we could have made smarter decisions about what we could have done. It is out of our control sometimes due to our developmental state. Our frontal cortex fully develops at 25, leaving us with all the years ahead of that where we were not fully aware of the consequences, and outweighed the risk with the reward.
Outweighing the risk with the reward is something that all teens universally have in common. We may blaze through a yellow light just for the reward especially if we are surrounded by our peers. Adults on the other hand do not do this and actually make very conscious decisions, outweighing the reward with the risk, even when surrounded by their peers. Studies have shown that this developmental state for teens is crucial for us in life. Learning at this pace helps us in life even if we do not know it. if we learned at a quicker pace and had our frontal cortex develop faster, we would basically be set up for failure. This entire process sets us up for success from he beginning. We learn from our mistakes, we learn to reason, we grow from consequences, and we mature at the best pace possible even if we may have needed it during our teen years. This stage is crucial for our future and our development as humans overall.
