Speaker 1: Hey, you found us. Come on in. Welcome to Deeply Human.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking with and about teenagers, and I'm your host.
Speaker 1: Former adolescent dessay. During the teenage years, there's a rite
Speaker 1: of passage around every corner of our mitzvaha, maybe a
Speaker 1: driver's license or a first kiss, if you're into that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. When I was fourteen, my best friend
Speaker 1: Maria had moved away to Sweden and I got to
Speaker 1: visit her, and I remember that trip so vividly. The
Speaker 1: weird chemical taste of the salt liquorice, the crush I
Speaker 1: developed on a dark haired boy, the way that music
Speaker 1: moved me almost to the point of physical discomfort. The
Speaker 1: discovery that the dark haired boy liked me back, which
Speaker 1: both thrilled and nauseated me. There's a term for our
Speaker 1: heightened recall of adolescence and early adulthood. It's called the
Speaker 1: reminiscence bump. The adventures, both innocent and illicit, of our
Speaker 1: teenage years make lasting impressions. We're branded with the memories
Speaker 1: of our first breakup, fierce arguments with parents, the friend
Speaker 1: who tried to skateboard off the roof, the songs that
Speaker 1: electrified us, the six sweet smell of Swedish wine cut
Speaker 1: with fanta. The general intensity of experience in adolescence is
Speaker 1: due in part to our neuro anatomy. We're going to
Speaker 1: look inside the teenage brain to find out why the
Speaker 1: world burns brighter in your teens. Hi, I'm Piper Wilson,
Speaker 1: and I'm eighteen years old. I have been eighteen for
Speaker 1: about a month now. Awesome. Do you think that high
Speaker 1: school turned out to be what you imagined it would
Speaker 1: when you were a little kid. I thought like, once
Speaker 1: I got to be like sixteen seventeen, I would feel
Speaker 1: just like the top of the world. It's like being
Speaker 1: a kid, but with more benefits. So I grew up
Speaker 1: just like imagining that, like my teenage years are going
Speaker 1: to be like just the epitome of fun things like
Speaker 1: staying out too late, or like making bad decisions or
Speaker 1: like partying. Just like if I don't do this now,
Speaker 1: then like when will I get to I've never thought
Speaker 1: about it quite that way, but there can be sort
Speaker 1: of a romantic burden on adolescents, like it's a New
Speaker 1: Year's Eve party that lasts for the better part of
Speaker 1: a decade. Actual teenager them ended up being a mixed
Speaker 1: bag for Piper, with its own set of challenges, including
Speaker 1: some perceived pressure to dress a certain way. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of just like preppy, like the pink hoodies and
Speaker 1: the ripped jeans and all that like, and some new
Speaker 1: social dynamics like talking to people that would like get
Speaker 1: me in trouble um or yeah, like trying to fit
Speaker 1: into a group that like didn't like me and like
Speaker 1: I didn't look like them, but like they were like
Speaker 1: the people. So I'm like I should try at least
Speaker 1: I spent so long like digging around at what I
Speaker 1: should be and of what I really am. So now
Speaker 1: I'm still kind of stuck in that weird limbo where
Speaker 1: like I have an idea, but I'm not sure a
Speaker 1: lot of adults are all too eager to go on.
Speaker 1: When I was your age autopilot instead of really listening
Speaker 1: to teenagers experiences, I spoke to a youth theater group
Speaker 1: based in North London called Company three that received a
Speaker 1: lot of attention for production they did called Brainstorm, a
Speaker 1: play that investigated the teenage experience through the lens of
Speaker 1: neuro anatomy. What you say to me your brain is broken.
Speaker 1: The play was created in collaboration with Dr Sarah Jane Blakemore,
Speaker 1: a groundbreaking neuroscientist who specializes in adolescent brain development, and
Speaker 1: it connected the real life stories of the teens of
Speaker 1: science that provides some insight into their experiences. I say
Speaker 1: to you, my brain isn't broken. It's beautiful. I'm in
Speaker 1: the city have never been to, and I see bright
Speaker 1: lights and new ideas and fear and opportunity and a
Speaker 1: thousand million roads all lit up and flashing. I say,
Speaker 1: my brain isn't broken. What did you find out about
Speaker 1: your brain when you're doing the play? So essentially the
Speaker 1: science goes a little bit like this is that when
Speaker 1: you're younger, your Olympic system is at the biggest point.
Speaker 1: And the Olympic system is like the reward system is
Speaker 1: what we called it. So it's the bit that gives
Speaker 1: you the high like when you're young, um, and like
Speaker 1: every time we do some they knew or exciting, it
Speaker 1: just gets really excited in your reward in your Olympics system.
Speaker 1: So you end up doing more and more naughty things
Speaker 1: or things that are considered naughty and teenage like behavior.
Speaker 1: That's second now in her early twenties, who talks with
Speaker 1: big fluid gestures through a wide smile. Her cast mate
Speaker 1: Jack was only fourteen when he participated in the play.
Speaker 1: Now he's eighteen, tall and slim with girls that fall
Speaker 1: almost into his eyes. The Olympics system is the part
Speaker 1: of the brain that is involved with taking risks. So
Speaker 1: when we're younger, there's kind of a lot more connections
Speaker 1: there and we tend to our proof onto cortex, what
Speaker 1: kind of manages Our decision making isn't as developed yet,
Speaker 1: so like we're kind of a lot more prone to
Speaker 1: taking risks, not doing what we're told to do, um
Speaker 1: kind of pushing the boundaries to try and find out
Speaker 1: what is acceptable and what isn't. We learned that when
Speaker 1: you're young, your synapses are just growing and you're making
Speaker 1: so many connections. It's easier for you to pick up
Speaker 1: things and learn things, and pick up bad habits or
Speaker 1: good habits, and I guess that's where you can learn
Speaker 1: new languages and new talents and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: that was really exciting. Synapses are the connection points between
Speaker 1: our brain cells, and teenagers actually have more brain cells
Speaker 1: and more synapses than adults do, even though the structures
Speaker 1: of the adolescent brain may be very similar to an adults,
Speaker 1: those structures aren't yet wired together in the same way,
Speaker 1: and the process of connecting our brain regions to one
Speaker 1: another starts at the back of the head and moves
Speaker 1: towards the front, which means that the frontal lobe, which
Speaker 1: is associated with empathy and judgment and decision making, is
Speaker 1: actually the last to connect. Okay, time for a deep
Speaker 1: dive into the science. MH. I'm Francis Jansen. I'm Chair
Speaker 1: of Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania and I'm also
Speaker 1: the author of The Teenage Brain. Every function or thought
Speaker 1: or memory you have is like a relay race through
Speaker 1: your brain, using probably thousands, if not millions, of synapses
Speaker 1: at times for a single act or a thought or
Speaker 1: a memory. So it's these relay races that get rehearsed
Speaker 1: over and over again. That's the practice effect. So these
Speaker 1: synapses can be strengthened by experience. That's the magic of
Speaker 1: this UM process. And when you repeatedly have a communication
Speaker 1: going from Cela to sell By, we believe that's the
Speaker 1: base of learning in memory. And it takes only milliseconds
Speaker 1: for UM that process to start, and then by about
Speaker 1: an hour you have a stronger synapse. Well, I don't
Speaker 1: what are you going? This is a Billie Eilish track,
Speaker 1: As pop fans will probably know, we at only seventeen,
Speaker 1: Billie Eilish swept the Grammys, winning all four of the
Speaker 1: biggest awards. Mozart was writing opera at fourteen. Mary Shelley
Speaker 1: started on Frankenstein when she was eighteen. Malala Yusef Psai
Speaker 1: and Greta Tonberg have both helped shape major geopolitical conversations
Speaker 1: as teenagers. Teenage years are full of passion and creativity
Speaker 1: and learning, partly because the adolescent brain isn't just a
Speaker 1: brand new adults brain. The creativity of teenagers is not
Speaker 1: to be taken lightly. But it's only in recent decades
Speaker 1: that imaging technology like m r S and fm r
Speaker 1: S has allowed us to look inside the living teenage
Speaker 1: brain to see how it's built and watch it at work.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like the brain doesn't. It doesn't finish
Speaker 1: itself like a like a biscuit rising in the oven. Evenly,
Speaker 1: it's like a building going up part by part. And
Speaker 1: that's what's so fascinating about human development. We are so
Speaker 1: customized to our environments that we believe that scientists, we
Speaker 1: believe that nature intended this so that your brain can
Speaker 1: be sculpted to be customized to the environment in which
Speaker 1: you will live the rest of your life. Right, So,
Speaker 1: all the way through your childhood, skill sets you're learning
Speaker 1: are strengthening certain parts of your brain in one person,
Speaker 1: and then a different skill set and another person, so
Speaker 1: we all end up quite different. The brain is the
Speaker 1: human organ that takes longest to develop, and this long
Speaker 1: window of maturation can actually be an advantage. It allows
Speaker 1: our brains to adapt and optimize themselves to the exact
Speaker 1: demands of the particular lives we lead. In adolescence, our
Speaker 1: brain is being tailor made by the circumstances of our lives.
Speaker 1: It's a period of becoming self aware and creating an
Speaker 1: identity for yourself. I like being outside of my friends,
Speaker 1: I think. So we just liked riding around on bikes
Speaker 1: and you just cycle around, Um, you just get that
Speaker 1: sense of freedom. My friend she had like people who
Speaker 1: she really liked him, who would like to talk about
Speaker 1: And if we didn't know anyone, we didn't want anyone
Speaker 1: to know. I'd be like, so, how's twenty eighteen, how's ten?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, here's your twenty and yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of an inside joke. No one else has it. Man,
Speaker 1: teenagers are natural cryptographers, folded notes, code words, fresh lang.
Speaker 1: It takes real inventiveness to have a private conversation. I
Speaker 1: can still remember learning how to say do you think
Speaker 1: he's cute? In Swedish Hannard's Sneak. Maybe years from now,
Speaker 1: Kessie I will be drinking tea with friends, referring to
Speaker 1: her partner as her two teenage conversations with parents, Well,
Speaker 1: there is not so much subtext, maybe not even that
Speaker 1: much text text. We were like we really talk about
Speaker 1: in depth, like things. It's usually just like, how is
Speaker 1: your day fine? And if not, I'd be about school.
Speaker 1: And if it's not school, it's just on what's on TV.
Speaker 1: We're in different generations, like we just don't really understand
Speaker 1: each other, and it's just a really restricting conversation. I
Speaker 1: think as a teenager, my relationship with my parents had
Speaker 1: essentially collapsed. It had none of the sweetness and intimacy
Speaker 1: it had in childhood or that it would have in
Speaker 1: my adulthood. At fourteen, I'd cut off my long hair
Speaker 1: and dyed it pink. In the Mississippi River. I've done
Speaker 1: my own piercing in a bathroom mirror. And I was
Speaker 1: writing tortured poetry late at night in the basement, and
Speaker 1: I remember thinking I won't always feel this way, But
Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about the neuroscience that underlied my experience.
Speaker 1: Learning about how teenage brains work doesn't only help adults
Speaker 1: understand teenage behavior. It can also help teens understand themselves.
Speaker 1: Here are brothers Arda and bergon fifteen and thirteen. I
Speaker 1: get sometimes angry for some stuff, and I need free
Speaker 1: space and I don't get that space, which gets me
Speaker 1: more angry. And then and you some parts of yourself
Speaker 1: is hidden because there's like some stuff that you you
Speaker 1: still have to find out about yourself. Could you feel
Speaker 1: yourself like, could you feel your personality changing when you
Speaker 1: talk about like being shy at twelve and thirteen, where
Speaker 1: you like, I am becoming a slightly different person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I think when I got to fifteen is when
Speaker 1: I got loads of it. I started to get a
Speaker 1: lot of attention from Mayo um, and like that's when
Speaker 1: you know your crushes start to message you and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, or even just girls always comment in on
Speaker 1: how pretty you look, and everyone's just like the trends
Speaker 1: is appearance, and everyone's focusing on, oh, you have really
Speaker 1: nice hair, your eyes, your smile, and those just compliments
Speaker 1: just made me kind of get more and more confident
Speaker 1: in myself and gave me that freedom to just find
Speaker 1: friends who are because everyone was trying to be friends
Speaker 1: with everyone if you well, if you were pretty, but
Speaker 1: you just have that connection, like we've got the same hair,
Speaker 1: let's be friends. Do you know what I mean? There
Speaker 1: are serious changes in the social terrain. Your own temperament changes,
Speaker 1: and is our neurologist Francis explains, even the clock in
Speaker 1: your body changes. Teenagers and sleep, why do they keep
Speaker 1: schedules of like miniature bartenders. Yes, to make our our
Speaker 1: brains want to go to sleep. We release a protein
Speaker 1: called melotonein. It's a transmitter and it helps make the
Speaker 1: rest of your brain get sleepy. We put it out,
Speaker 1: you know, in the mid evening, eight or nine o'clock
Speaker 1: at night. And teenagers are programmed, as are all animals
Speaker 1: mammalian species, as they go through to this this window
Speaker 1: of juvenile development. It comes out later, so it's not
Speaker 1: even getting released until closer to midnight eleven o'clock at night.
Speaker 1: It takes about an hour and a half for this
Speaker 1: to work. So you can imagine then they don't even
Speaker 1: have the sort of soporific hormone or protein to to
Speaker 1: help them go to sleep, and they're also stimulating themselves
Speaker 1: with all kinds of social media and all kinds of things,
Speaker 1: so it is kind of like the perfect storm. This
Speaker 1: is very, very challenging in high school especially, and so
Speaker 1: a lot of schools have actually adapted to doing something
Speaker 1: a bit softer and gentler earlier mindfulness or sports. Several
Speaker 1: studies even link early high school start times with increased
Speaker 1: rates of teenage driver car accidents. The American Academy of
Speaker 1: Sleep Medicine has called for communities to adopt start times
Speaker 1: of eight thirty or lay leader for middle school and
Speaker 1: high school students. The world wasn't really designed with the
Speaker 1: teenage brain and mind, and maybe we should rethink the
Speaker 1: school day and a lot of our public policies in
Speaker 1: light of what we now know about teen development. Some
Speaker 1: of those policies have life or death consequences. Should courts
Speaker 1: punish teens, for example, in the same way as adults
Speaker 1: when they commit serious violent crime. Dr Francis Ginson had
Speaker 1: an opportunity to submit her opinion on that issue to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court of the United States. She contributed to
Speaker 1: what's called an amicus brief, a document meant to provide
Speaker 1: perspective or advise the justices, even though the authors aren't
Speaker 1: directly involved in the case. So I was one of
Speaker 1: many people on amicus briefs about trying to overturn that
Speaker 1: what had been the law of the land, which was
Speaker 1: mandatory life without parole for capital crimes. So this is
Speaker 1: people under the age of eighteen that have been bystanders
Speaker 1: or evolved or you know, under the influence of an
Speaker 1: older person to do a cry our murder. And we
Speaker 1: argued that they are so susceptible to peer pressure. I mean,
Speaker 1: isis knows this right. I mean, they can take young
Speaker 1: boys and make them do heinous things and that's not
Speaker 1: what that child would have been like most likely if
Speaker 1: they'd been in a better environment. They're very easily susceptible
Speaker 1: to suggestion in that window because they don't have a
Speaker 1: frontal lobe to say bad idea. But also the peer
Speaker 1: gratification piece is big. In the end, the U S
Speaker 1: Supreme Court did overturn the law of the land. It
Speaker 1: abolished the mandatory sentencing of life without parole for juveniles.
Speaker 1: Now every case must be considered individually. Francis also recommended
Speaker 1: that people who had already received mandatory sentences for juvenile
Speaker 1: crimes should have their cases reviewed to see if the
Speaker 1: punishment was fair. That suggestion was accepted to they look
Speaker 1: like an adult. They you know, walk like an adult,
Speaker 1: They dressed like an adult. That their brain is not
Speaker 1: adult like we as adults. We do have our front
Speaker 1: lobes present and attached. So when I talked to parents
Speaker 1: and community leaders, I say we should give them a
Speaker 1: frontal lobe assist being there to support them through this
Speaker 1: rather rocky part of development, which is magical at the
Speaker 1: same time as a little bit treacherous for some of them.
Speaker 1: My friend Maria told me that Swedish has a term
Speaker 1: to convey the particular sort of trashiness that comes with
Speaker 1: being exactly fourteen years old. People might use it, she said,
Speaker 1: to describe a group of girls loitering in a parking
Speaker 1: lot smoking cigarettes. For example. Culture isn't always very generous
Speaker 1: with teens. They're dismissed as vapid hormonal. We call it
Speaker 1: loitering when they stand around talking as if they had
Speaker 1: anywhere private to go. My brain isn't broken. It's like
Speaker 1: this full reason. I'm like this full reason. I'm becoming
Speaker 1: who I am, and I'm scared, and you're scared because
Speaker 1: who I am it might not be who you want
Speaker 1: me to be, well who you are, And I don't
Speaker 1: know why, but I don't say it's all going to
Speaker 1: be okay. There are so many things I don't say
Speaker 1: to you. I don't know why I want to say them,
Speaker 1: but I can't. I pick up my plate, put in
Speaker 1: the kitchen and go upstairs. I think as you get older,
Speaker 1: you think that you you remember your teenage life, but
Speaker 1: you don't. You think that you can say to your child,
Speaker 1: I know why you're doing this. I used to do
Speaker 1: that too. But the world is always changing. Everything's always developing.
Speaker 1: So when you sit there and tell me I used
Speaker 1: to do that too, you're not. You're just telling me
Speaker 1: that instead of action in okay, I'm gonna let you
Speaker 1: have the space to make those mistakes so that you
Speaker 1: understand and then we can talk about it. The memories
Speaker 1: of adolescents feel so vivid. I remember the ribbing of
Speaker 1: my favorite pair of ripped tights. I remember the beat
Speaker 1: up Raiders cap I wore with the brim pulled low.
Speaker 1: But maybe second is right. Maybe I can't recall what
Speaker 1: it was really like to experience the world with the
Speaker 1: brain that was in that Raiders cap. Do you ever
Speaker 1: think about now you're eighteen? Do you think about what
Speaker 1: it's going to be like when you get older? Is
Speaker 1: there an age that you think that you're excited to
Speaker 1: be in the same way that you might have been
Speaker 1: excited to be a teenager. I want to say I'm
Speaker 1: excited to be like twenty four because that's when I'll
Speaker 1: be done with like my bachelor's degree in college. And
Speaker 1: I think that by then I'll be married. So I
Speaker 1: really want to do that. I really want to get there.
Speaker 1: Do you know who you'll be married too? Yeah? Do
Speaker 1: you my girlfriend? They do? Yeah? Yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1: She's a little younger than me, so I want to
Speaker 1: propose to her on her eighteenth birthday and that's like
Speaker 1: a little over a year. So, M and how long
Speaker 1: have you guys been dating? Like nine months? Um? And
Speaker 1: I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but like
Speaker 1: I've literally never felt this way about anybody at all before,
Speaker 1: like not even close. I don't want to say I
Speaker 1: believe in destiny, but I feel like she's definitely my person.
Speaker 1: Our culture does presume that teenage love is hyper intense
Speaker 1: and fleeting and isn't to be considered as seriously as
Speaker 1: adult love. Do you think that it's definitely perceived as that?
Speaker 1: And I feel like a lot of the time it
Speaker 1: is like that, but because of that, a few times
Speaker 1: where it's not usually overlooked, like I want her to
Speaker 1: be my endgame, and I tell it to people and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, hi, that's so cute, Like no, I'm serious,
Speaker 1: Like I want to marry her. It's strangely acceptable to
Speaker 1: mock and even demonized teenagers, and we would never get
Speaker 1: away with treating other people that way. Do you plan
Speaker 1: when you're an adult on treating teenagers differently than you've
Speaker 1: been treated by the adults in your life? Definitely? Yeah,
Speaker 1: how so, like both teenagers and children are treated as
Speaker 1: a very homogeneous group. Isn't like they're young and they
Speaker 1: don't know what they're doing and like they're not wise
Speaker 1: or anything, when really, like you don't know everyone's story. Um,
Speaker 1: So I feel like I would definitely treat like children
Speaker 1: and teenagers when I'm an adult, with the same respect
Speaker 1: that I would give an adult that I had just met.
Speaker 1: Like they're younger than me, sure, but they're not like
Speaker 1: a different breed of thing. They're a human being with
Speaker 1: a brain and a heart. There shouldn't be that big
Speaker 1: of a difference. Adolescents are the way they are for
Speaker 1: a reason. We are teenagers by design. The neurological development
Speaker 1: that can make the teenagers challenging also lends the adventure
Speaker 1: and passion and the thrill of those years. It's part
Speaker 1: of what makes us feel so fully, almost unbearably alive.
Speaker 1: It's what makes the world burn brighter through our teenage years.
Speaker 1: Next on Deeply Human, we're talking deja vu? Why do
Speaker 1: you get it? And what could it reveal about the
Speaker 1: mechanics of memory. I remember driving four hours to meet
Speaker 1: with a patient we've not met before, and I turn
Speaker 1: up and she opens the door and she greets me
Speaker 1: like she knows me. Deeply Human is hosted by Me
Speaker 1: Tessa and as a co production of the BBC World
Speaker 1: Service and American Public Media with I Heartmedia Special Thanks
Speaker 1: this time around to company three Theater Group in London,