The Teen Mind, and How to Understand It
By: Curtis Kelly
Teens are trouble
As toddlers, we enter the long journey building important executive functions that allow us to succeed in the world. Working memory allows us to hold more information in our minds. Cognitive flexibility allows us to consider that information from different perspectives. Self-inhibition restrains our urges. We finally complete this development in our teens. But that leaves a conundrum. Why then, in teens, aren’t those executive functions working very well? As any parent or high school teacher knows, teens are trouble. Get this:
62 seniors broke into Teaneck High School and covered all the hallways with balloons first as a joke, and then with pee. They thought it was pretty funny till they all got arrested. (Buzzfeed)
Teenager Ankita Lavender, texted police that she had been abducted by two men in a pickup truck. An Amber Alert and search resulted in them finding her lying on the ground near the site but also found the whole thing was faked. Ankita did it to get the attention of her ex, but instead got her parents charged over $5000. (Buzzfeed)
Teen Daniel Calhoun was driving his Camry through a tunnel in Portland, Oregon. He drifted over the centerline and crashed head on with a Ford Explorer. Why? He was trying to hold his breath until the end of the tunnel and passed out. (CBS News)
Just hours after graduating, some teens made a game of sitting in a shopping cart and getting pushed down a dock into a lake. On one attempt, these teens gave Chance Werner the push but had also tied him to the cart. His body was found the next morning at the bottom of the lake still tied to the cart. (CBS News)
These are not isolated incidents. I have seen similar firsthand. So, what in the world were these teens thinking, or were they even thinking at all? Here is more:
Almost a third of US teens have used marijuana by their senior year (US News).
In 2023, US teens gave birth to 140,000 babies out of wedlock, and believe it or not, that number shows a decrease (Office of Population Affairs).
Hikikomori (extreme social withdrawal) has become epidemic among Japanese high schoolers, due to the high levels of bullying and academic pressure (National Institutes of Health).
Teens drive less than any other age group except the elderly, but 16 to 19-year-olds have the highest crash risk of any, three times that of 20+ year olds. The leading causes are a) not scanning for hazards, b) going too fast, and being distracted. By whom? Friends in the car, of course (examples from the US, the US, and Australia).
Yep. Teens are trouble, especially the boys. But why? We know that they have a strong need to impress their peers. And we know that myelination of the prefrontal cortex is not yet finished, the part of the brain that processes consequences. Myelination is the wrapping of fat around an axon that increases firing speeds up to 100 times. Without it, the routines related to consequences are just not firing very well, and so they tend not to be considered. And Mirela, in a following article, will explain more.
Nonetheless, even though most teens do stupid things, that does not mean they are stupid. Along with teenhood comes the ability to do high-level reasoning, and even those who blunder are usually considered quite intelligent by others. Then too, let’s not forget that many teens have also changed the world:
Louis Braille, at 15, invented a writing system for the blind.
Bobby Fisher, also at 15, became a Chess Master.
At 17, Joan of Arc revolutionized France.
18-year-old Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein.
17-year-old Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Greta Thunberg gained world attention, at 15, as an environmental activist.
Emma González, 18, co-founded a gun-control advocacy group after a shooting attack on her Parkland high school.
And so on (BBC, Reader’s Digest).
Yes, they are trouble, but wonderful too. So, let’s look at why. Let’s unravel the teenage brain.
The teenage brain in an important time of life
First of all, it is more than a coincidence that teens are experiencing massive changes in their attitudes, their explorations, and even their risk-taking in what is probably the most crucial time of their lives, preparation for adulthood. So many of the things these adolescents do are rehearsals for their adult futures. They wander into romantic relationships. They get their first jobs. They start taking control of their own education and setting future goals. And don’t forget, how they perform in their 2nd and 3rd years of high school pretty much determines what colleges they can enter, and thus, their future place in society.
It might seem counterintuitive, but it is also no coincidence that they become so resistant to advice from wiser heads in this important time. Nature requires the offspring of any species to mature, move out, and reproduce. For us homo sapiens, moving out is not easy since we have such a long gestation period and home is so comfortable and safe. So, nature uses tricks, hormones actually, to get our youth out on the street: they suddenly develop a need to “find themselves,” a defiance of caretakers, powerful emotions, and a drive (especially in the boys) to take risks. The last thing that nature wants is for them to think much about the consequences of their actions, which might be why myelination is delayed. They also, and this is important for us teachers, develop a powerful need to have and be with friends. Powerful I say? It is a social supernova leading to extreme social sensitivity and SNS addiction. But it is also a way to break free from family.
All this happens for one simple purpose, to build autonomy, in a life stage Kohlberg tells us is centered on “Moral Development”[1]. And autonomy is the prerequisite to moving out. It is a time youth establish their own rules of right and wrong, explore ways to manage relationships, and seek out universal social principles. After all, aren’t these exactly the tools youth need to become autonomous? To free themselves from being dependent?
So, in short, we can say that adolescence, especially later adolescence, is when nature is putting the finishing touches on these budding adults. These offspring are at the end of the assembly line, almost ready to go off on their own.
In terms of their brains, these finishing touches include the finalization of executive function development and superior cognitive control.
Executive functions and cognitive control
As we are growing, even in infancy, our brain is storing information that allows us to understand how the world works. Memory does not really exist to remember the past. It exists to help us figure out what is happening now and predict the next few seconds of the future. “I suspect he’ll be mad if I say this.” “If I don’t step to the right, that kid on a bicycle is going to hit me.” That use, for predicting, is why memory is so weak with details; it prefers gist. As a result, we accrue thousands of mental models on how our physical and social environments work.
But how does the brain take all this knowledge and turn it into actions? How does the brain set goals for every waking moment of our lives? How does the brain help us get things done? It does so through what is called “cognitive control,” not at all an easy process (Badre), and one that utilizes all our executive functions working in concert. Unlike lower animals who have rigid, automatic responses to events, cognitive control gives us this mental ability to flexibly shape our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions. It allows us to ignore distractions, switch between tasks, regulate emotions, and know when to hold ‘em, and when to fold ‘em. It gives us volition.
In simple terms, cognitive control is the way our brains bridge the gap between knowledge and action. Cognitive (or executive) control skills are developing throughout all our lives, but the development goes into overdrive during teenhood, with the purpose of equipping us for autonomy.
Most of cognitive control happens in the prefrontal cortex, the main thinking part of the brain. It relies on little processing apps that we start developing in early childhood, especially between the ages of 3 and 7 (which is why teachers of early learners should be paid the most). These executive thinking apps, that shape our behavior and skills, are called executive functions. They can be organized into organization abilities to gather and structure information, and regulation abilities to evaluate that information and modulate responses. From The Weill Institute for Neurosciences (2026):
- Organization – attention, planning, sequencing, problem-solving, working memory, cognitive flexibility, abstract thinking, rule acquisition, selecting relevant sensory information
- Regulation – initiation of action, self-control, emotional regulation, monitoring internal and external stimuli, initiating and inhibiting context-specific behavior, moral reasoning, decision-making
Executive functions are the basis of cognitive control. They develop all through childhood, sometimes working together, sometimes separately, and they help us interact with the world in increasingly complex ways. For example, working memory allows us to read. Cognitive flexibility allows us to see both sides of an issue. Self-inhibition forces us to complete our school assignments, but often fails us when we diet. Cognitive control gives us a huge amount of flexibility in our actions, unlike lower species whose actions and reactions tend to be reflexive.
Like the other things that happen during teenhood, it is no coincidence that executive function development is pretty much finalized at this time (spurred on by the emotional stresses and decision-making that teens must do), providing the basis for effective cognitive control. It is another one of those finishing touches at the end of the assembly line.
Teens revel in this finishing touch by demanding that they decide everything by themselves, an attitude that leads to a lot of distress at home. In fact, just an hour ago, my 17-year-old daughter overrode my decision to send my 14-year old, with a degree above normal temperature, to school today. The older sister literally ordered the younger sister stay home. She told me I had no right to decide.
Raised voices. It was exasperating[2].
But as we have seen, all these bits of teen trouble fit snugly into their grand program of development, even if it is one we often throw up our arms in frustration at. It helps them become independent adults.
The offshoot for language teaching
As always, the best-made language classes are those that access learner needs, not just language needs, but life needs. That guarantees engagement, and deeper learning. A basic principle of adult education is that adults are life-centered, seeking learning that helps them solve their problems. That is true for these youths as well, since they are on the cusp of adulthood. So let us assess these life needs.
First, they need autonomy. So, giving them as much ownership as possible on what they write, read, listen to, or talk about—personalization—is a must. That is not always easy to do, since the topics of study are often already decided for us. But if there is a particular topic you must teach for some reason, outline a need to know it. For example, if the next activity in your textbook is dull reading about how Jack went to the post office to mail a letter, you might preface it by saying, “Imagine you have just moved to London and you want to send a gift to your best friend for her birthday. How would you do it? Wouldn’t doing that for her be really important for you? Then you’d better learn how. Let’s read about how Jack does it.” In short, make the things you teach solutions to problems.
Preface assignments by showing how the skills they are practicing might be related to their future lives. Learning how to write allows them to communicate with people all over the world. Learning how to present will help them pass job interviews. Learning how to respond to greetings will make them seem sophisticated to the English speakers they might one day interact with.
Second, satisfy their need for moral development. I found that telling my learners Chicken Soup for the Soul–type stories was a great way to teach listening. They thirst for stories that show how others have solved life’s problems, that instill codes of behavior, that demonstrate social mores. You have to cull any collection to pull out those stories about human relationships, caring, family, and challenge, but with a good story, scaffolding is hardly even needed. Short touching videos do the same thing, like those in my YouTube collection here.
Likewise, activities related to values clarification or solving life problems work well, too. The most popular English course I ever taught was one I put together on The Psychology of Love. That course fed one of their most burning needs.
Of course, cherish (and exploit) their need to bond to their peers. Finding new friends is truly important for them, especially for teen women. Have them switch pairwork partners often, while keeping groupwork teams more intact. “Speed Dating” Circles (or lines) to practice interactions work wonderfully as friend-makers, as explained here.
Provide the seeds for achievement and competence. Any task that lets a pair or group of students succeed together satisfies many of their psychological needs, language needs included, and is appreciated. Project work, like collaborating to design a tour, or having pairs work together to solve crimes (like in my…ahem…recently published textbook) leads to the pure kind of pure fun that fosters deeper language retention. Their need for competence is a part of their move towards autonomy.
Finally…
Considering how difficult this time of life is for them, with so many pressures, the value of a classroom where learners make friends, have some fun, and feel good about themselves, all while they are learning language, is immeasurable. Fight the darkness of traditional language classes. Make yours an oasis of light, the light at the end of the growing up tunnel.
Their primary drive is to become independent from their families. Nature deems it so. So, ride that wave to their happiness and yours.
Endnotes
[1] Note that some researchers have added autonomy as an additional level in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
[2] Six hours later: I blush to say that the older sister was right. The younger sister decided herself to go to school, but an hour later, said she was feeling bad and came home. Apologies to the older sister made; healthy gloating initiated.
Curtis Kelly is professor emeritus of Kansai University, founder of the JALT BRAIN SIG, leader of the online course on neuroscience for teachers, and producer of this magazine. That was all easy. Raising two teen daughters is not.