Is There Anything Worse Than Being A Teen?
Science, why are teenagers so stupid?
Our brains have networks of neurons that weigh the costs and benefits of potential actions. Together these networks calculate how valuable things are and how far we’ll go to get them, making judgments in hundredths of a second, far from our conscious awareness. Recent research reveals that teen brains go awry because they weigh those consequences in peculiar ways…. The rush of hormones at puberty helps drive the reward-system network toward maturity, but those hormones do nothing to speed up the cognitive control network. Instead, cognitive control slowly matures through childhood, adolescence, and into early adulthood. Until it catches up, teenagers are stuck with strong responses to rewards without much of a compensating response to the associated risks.
Um, this sounds exactly right. God, do you remember how awful it was being a teenager? You could not PAY ME ENOUGH to go back. Especially these days, with teens now being vulnerable to "Facebook depression," an affliction "more painful than sitting alone in a crowded school cafeteria or other real-life encounters that can make kids feel down." The next time you are tempted to feel sorry for yourself—and, sure, there is plenty to feel sorry about—just remember that at least you are not a teenager. (If you are a teenager all I can tell you is that if you manage to get through it the rewards are more than ample. At least for about ten years or so. After that it all starts falling to shit again, plus you've built up a deep well of regrets, and also you're carrying around some extra weight and you don't move as quickly as you used to and everything hurts all the time and some days you feel like you're never going to stop crying. But you're legal to drink, so it's kind of a draw. Anyway, teenager, it'll be okay, I promise. Do not let them scare you with the "Facebook depression" or "Twitter terror" or whatever else they try to turn the basic angst of being human into some kind of diagnosable condition. Just keep it together and all the suffering you're doing now will be repaid handsomely. For a while. Also, keep reading this website, you're really helping our aggregate demographics.) Things may seem hopeless (I am talking to the old people again now), but at the very least you can go to a bar, get drunk, pick someone up and take them home and do sex to them and however briefly alleviate the pain of existence. Plus, you no longer have to take Morrissey lyrics seriously. So, really, it could be much worse.
Youth consists of counting the hours until the day comes when you dread the passing of every moment.
Exactly.
So it's going to be that kind of week around here.
When is it not?
I know we all like to make fun of the NY Times for Bullshit Trend Stories, but that AP piece on "Facebook Depression" is a real winner.
The story quotes a total of four people: the publicity-seeking researcher ("Facebook is where all the teens are hanging out now. It's their corner store"); two random teens who have never been depressed by facebook, but "can see how it might affect some kids;" and a puzzled-sounding "University of Wisconsin adolescent medicine specialist" ("Parents shouldn't get the idea that using Facebook 'is going to somehow infect their kids with depression,' she said).
I can just see this poor reporter sitting around with nothing to do on a no-news Sunday, so her assignment editor pulls a random press release out of the slush pile and says, "Here — write this up." Thinking about this makes me depressed.
"Trend-piece Depression"
On a related note, thanks to the magic of Netflix streaming, I've been watching My So Called Life for the first time and oh my God it is harrowing.
That show made for a great drinking game, though. Crumpleface = chug the rest of whatever's in your hand
I just saw the episode where the neglected little sister dressed up as Angela for Halloween and ran through all of her beloved tics. "I can't just pass the plate … it's not that simple, OK?" Took only nine episodes to get meta. Ahead of its time, for sure!
Oh, lord. You are correct. But it took years, many years, for me to get over my Claire Danes crush, and I'm not sure if I could stand revisiting those days.
Growing up is cool and all, but not taking Morrissey lyrics seriously? Seems like more a sign of willful delusion than maturity.
Ugh ugh ugh. You just gave me commenter depression.
So…heaven knows you're miserable now?
I'll let myself out.
On the other hand, poetry seemed so much more important, then.
Um…not so much. This is haunting my brain today.
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
And a whisper will be heard in the place
Where the ruined
House once stood.
- Yehuda Amichai
@Bitter: Thanks for that.
My continued weighing of consequences in peculiar ways is vestigial from my teenage years?
Stories like these are exercises in "explanatory neurophilia." Brain state corresponds to behavior, therefor brain causes behavior! There's no way that, like, society could affect what happens in your brain!
Also, old people have really gone up in prestige since we evolved our brains, so the story is about how the brain is "maturing" at a point that used to be much closer to the end of healthy life. The headline could just as accurately read "turns out senility begins at 20!"
that really doesn't explain my 20s at all.