We’ve all heard the idea in pop psychology that teen brains are immature and not fully formed which is given as a reason for all kinds of risky teen behaviors. It's been mentioned on the cover of Time Magazine, can be found in hundreds of articles on the internet, and is often repeated on numerous news broadcasts.
However, the idea that teens have underdeveloped brains is not scientifically valid. As this article in Scientific American explains, there are a variety of studies that have attempted to make this claim, most of them picked up and run with by the media, but the research cited is of weak design and even weaker analysis.
The myth has slowly built over time, becoming more and more firmly embedded in the media, public consciousness, and even the minds of some researchers who haven’t taken the time to critically evaluate the idea before incorporating it into their own explanations.
Numerous imaging studies have been conducted between adults and teens, some of those showing that different age groups use different parts of their brain when performing a task, such as evaluating risk. However, these studies are correlational and do not show causation. The studies do not show that the teen brain is undeveloped, but only that teens are still learning. In non-scientific lingo, we’d say that teens have “not yet gained the wisdom of experience.”
You might say, “Well, if they’re still learning, that means they’re underdeveloped, right?” That’s correct, but this is not a universal feature of the teenage brain. Instead, it’s a product of the sociocultural learning environment. When we examine other cultures where individuals are expected to assume adult responsibilities at much younger ages, we do not see the same behaviors (explored further below). In essence, the adolescent brain can be as adept (or not) at risk-taking as it’s been trained to be.
What about the number 25? So many articles online state that the human brain isn’t fully developed until 25 years old. Examples of this often repeated myth can be found here, here, and here. This number has no factual basis in any released study. The reality is that the human brain never stops changing. The word “development” is used rather inappropriately in many of these articles. Our brains are always changing. We learn how to play the piano, but then we get rusty when we stop playing. We learn a language but then forget it through disuse. Most of us can’t remember much about what we learned in college, much less high school. Only the mathematicians among us can easily help our children with their geometry homework and the sin, cos, and tan problems, even though we all spent a year or two learning them ourselves. Our brains are constantly changing, a property referred to as neuroplasticity.
The number 25 is suspected to come from the works of Alexander Cohen and Larry Steinburg, who have both mentioned the 20s in their research, but both admit there is nothing to the age 25 myth. Through the standard mechanisms of the game of telephone, that number somehow got picked up and embedded in much of the discussion around the teenage brain with no basis in any of the research.
In addition to understanding that the myth lacks a firm basis in scientific research, there are three common reasons why we know this myth is wrong.
First off, we have to remember that, for nearly 2 million years of human history, puberty is the onset of adulthood in the overwhelming majority of human cultures across time, the point at which the individual enters adulthood, marries, starts having children, and takes their place alongside adults of the tribe or society. While the ages of 13-15 seem incredibly young to us today, from an evolutionary perspective, our bodies and brains have evolved to be ready for adulthood at that age. In Rome, 43% of Pagan females married at 12–15 years, and 42% of Christian females married at 15–18 years.
Even when we look at indigenous cultures today that have been least touched by modernity, this still holds true. While this seems anathema to contemporary cultural mores in industrialized societies, the point is that adulthood, from a biological and neurological perspective, happens during what we now call the teenage years.
Of course, there is a reason that, in today’s industrialized societies, we have moved the age of adulthood back to 18 or older for everything from voting rights to being able to drink alcohol. Industrialized societies are complex and have many expectations. In small tribal communities, one didn’t need to understand the 3 branches of government and how that applies to the democratic right to vote, how to use algebra, or how to write a research paper. These are modern needs for our highly complex societies.
In this way, we do not put the same expectations on our youth in terms of the speed with which they must acquire adult responsibilities. The brain is a very judicious organ. Even though it only takes up 10% of our body mass, it consumes 20% of our total energy requirements each day. For this reason, the brain only learns what is required of it at any given time. Because we don’t require our children to be ready for adulthood as teenagers, the brain has not invested in developing those resources yet.
The good news here is that while modern American cultural institutions are not designed to fully prepare children for adulthood during the teenage years, our teens are 100% capable of learning such skills. Biologically, there is nothing preventing them from improving risk assessment, decision-making skills, social responsibility, and other valuable traits on their journey to adulthood.
Imaging studies such as fMRIs have been widely misused in the science of behavioral research. The primary misunderstanding is that an observed difference indicates structural dysfunction. This is grossly inaccurate.
Instead, fMRIs simply highlight changes that have already occurred. When we learn to play the piano, certain areas of our brain will show more activity. The same goes for when we learn math, a sport, to use substances, to bite our nails, to communicate with people, to obsess about our anxieties. Any habituated human activity, behavior, or thought pattern requires neuronal wiring. The more we do something, the stronger the wiring becomes. This is as true for gaining a new skill as it is for suicidal thoughts or substance use. The more we do something, the stronger the neural wiring becomes.
In this way, fMRIs do not show deficits or structural defects. They simply show changes or differences. And it’s very important here to draw attention to the fact that there is no common brain function between specific behaviors. While there are some broad commonalities in the ways in which the human brain develops, the majority of our brain’s development is highly individualized. The neural pathways that form when one person learns the piano are different from someone else learning to play. This is why there is no fMRI or other brain scan that can identify piano playing, math skills, depression, anxiety, addiction, or any other behavior or thought pattern. Brain scans can’t even tell us what emotion a person is feeling at any given time, much less tell us about an individual’s skills, behaviors, thoughts, or level of development.
Each of us has unique lives with unique learning and development experiences that create brains unique to us. This is why treatment for mental health conditions must be individualized to a certain degree as well. While there are commonalities in experience with certain conditions, we also experience conditions in a way that is unique to us, which must be addressed appropriately within the therapeutic setting.
In modern society, we often do not require our children and teens to make complex decisions or take on heavy responsibilities. For most of human history, teenagers would have had their first child between the ages of 16 and 18 and be required to provide for their child and their family. By that age, they would need all of the life skills that go along with such responsibilities.
That is not the case today. Our children and teens have much more time to take on such responsibilities. The reason they may not have the same reasoning, risk analysis, or decision-making skills as adults is that they have not been required to have them up until this point.
When we look at the rebellious teenager trope, it doesn’t hold true outside of Western, industrialized cultures, except, and this is important AFTER the cultures have started to be exposed to Western media and ideas.
This process has been documented time and time again. In most cultures, youth evidence a normal transition into adulthood without any rebellious or high-risk taking phases. From Scientific American:
“In 1991, anthropologist Alice Schlegel of the University of Arizona and Herbert Barry III, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, reviewed research on teens in 186 preindustrial societies. Among the important conclusions they drew about these societies: about 60 percent had no word for "adolescence," teens spent almost all their time with adults, teens showed almost no signs of psychopathology, and antisocial behavior in young males was completely absent in more than half these cultures and extremely mild in cultures in which it did occur.”
While they may make more mistakes than adults due to lack of experience, it’s nothing more than their parents made when they were the same age. We all learn from our mistakes, and hopefully, we will all reduce those mistakes over time.
All of this is great news when it comes to helping our sons or daughters prepare for a successful transition to adulthood. It means that all we have to do is teach them and provide them with the right contexts in which to learn. If we want them to become more responsible, we have to give them responsibilities. These can range from having a job to household chores to a key position on a sports team. And we can help them improve these skills more rapidly by providing guidance and support. If we want them to make smarter decisions, we have to give them the opportunities to make them while providing guidance from our own, more extensive experience.
For the most part, as we’ve covered, many of our teens have not had enough opportunities to practice higher levels of responsibility, risk assessment, or decision-making. Cultural expectations also play a part. Just as in other cultures, teenagers become more reckless when exposed to Western media and ideas. Our teens internalize the idea that adolescence is a time to act out or take risks. Exhibitions of distress are also strongly culturally defined. As teens have concerns in their lives, they display that distress in a variety of prescribed ways, such as acting out, suicide attempts, self-harm, and other behaviors.
Here at Bricolage Behavioral, we understand the cultural and neurological processes by which the brain develops. Many of the children and teens in our program lack key life skills that may lead to them being less successful than their peers, having mental health concerns, or having difficulty coping with everyday challenges.
Some of our children simply need to be given the right opportunities and guidance to learn skills that will help them solve their current mental health challenges and succeed in life. Others need additional challenges in order to grow and become the best version of themselves.
The great news is that all of the challenges children and teens in our program face are manageable and solvable with the right support and guidance. Training for our therapists, our curriculum, and our programming are all designed to support the children and teens in our program to develop the beliefs, behavior patterns, and skills necessary to become the best version of themselves. Call us at 469-968-5700.
Abrams, Z.. (2022, August). What the neuroscience tells us about the teenage brain. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/07/feature-neuroscience-teen-brain
Romer, D. (2017, October 31). The Impulsive "Teen Brain" Isn't Based in Science. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/impulsive-teen-brain-not-based-science-180967027/
Epstein, R. (2024, February 20). The myth of the teen brain. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-teen-brain-2007-06/
Everything you know about the teen brain is wrong. Brandeis Magazine. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-myth-of-the-teen-brain-2007-06/
Hu, J. C. (2022, November 28). A powerful idea about our brains stormed pop culture and captured minds. It’s mostly bunk. Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/technology/2022/11/brain-development-25-year-old-mature-myth.html
Kersting, K. (2004, July). Brain research advances help elucidate teen behavior. Monitor on Psychology. https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/brain
Lewis-Fernández, R., & Kirmayer, L. J. (2019). Cultural concepts of distress and psychiatric disorders: Understanding symptom experience and expression in context. Transcultural Psychiatry, 56(4), 786–803. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461519861795Zuryn, S. (2024, February 7). How your brain makes and uses energy. Queensland Brain Institute - University of Queensland. https://qbi.uq.edu.au/brain/discovery-science/how-your-brain-makes-and-uses-energy#:~:text=Your%20brain%20is%20arguably%20the,our%20food%20into%20simple%20sugars
Bricolage Behavioral Health is strength-based, skills-based, evidence-based, and medication-light. We empower your child or teen to develop the skills they need to take control of their mental health with effective, science-backed therapy.
At Bricolage Behavioral Health we believe that whole family healing affords your child the best chance for long term mental health and can put your loved ones on the path to a healthier, happier life.
Bricolage Behavioral Health
3204 Long Prairie Road
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Flower Mound, TX 75022
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