In 1955, Nicholas Ray’s film ‘Rebel without a cause’ created a stereotype that remains in the collective imagination: the adolescent as an untamed figure . In the film, Jimmy Stark – the eternal James Dean – was the spitting image of the tortured boy. Since then, that stage of life marked by opposition to everything, among other things, has been thoroughly studied. Psychologists and sociologists investigate whether their behavior obeys a social rite , is due to a cluster of biological factors that are activated at a given moment, or whether it is a combination of both. Here we try to answer some vital questions that arise between the ages of 11 and 19 .
1. Why are they always ground up and eat like limes?
The surprising voracity of adolescents responds to biological reasons : as puberty is reached, the need for nutrients increases, since at this stage they grow rapidly . However, they seem to be always tired. This fatigue is often attributed to hormonal changes , adaptation problems and overexertion. Another cause of this slump could be a delay in the biological clock that controls the rhythms of sleep . According to a team of Australian researchers from Swinburne University of Technology , puberty lives in a continuous jet lag, causing them to wake up a couple of hours earlier than normal. That translates to a lack of energy and a feeling of grogginess.
2 What is his zombie face?
The difficulty that many adolescents have to sleep at the most usual hours has to do with a change in the circadian rhythm . According to this hypothesis, their biological clock is reversed with respect to childhood and maturity so their body asks them to fall asleep and wake up later. A permanent jet lag.
A study by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Berlin, published in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters, has revealed one of the factors involved in this biological alteration: the lack of natural light . In one experiment, scientists asked volunteers to wear special glasses that avoided short wavelength or blue light for several days. This trap involved an average 30-minute delay in the onset of sleep . These experts point out that, by not receiving daylight, the onset of production of melatonin, a hormone that signals to the body the need for sleep , is delayed. Well, the appearance of this hormone was delayed six minutes for each day that exposure to blue light was limited. The findings are consistent with data from other studies that indicate that the highest level of melatonin in adolescents occurs first thing in the morning, when other people wake up.
3. Why do they never think about things?
For adults, teenagers seem to be in chaos . Ideas that do not match his personality arise from his mind and his decision-making seems based on incoherent and unstable criteria. However, a team of researchers from Temple University in Philadelphia , in the US, has denied in the journal American Psychologist that the problem is due to its alleged irrationality. The truth is that young people of this age reach conclusions in the same way as adults . Their problem is that they lack the social skills necessary to maintain their decisions, they have not acquired the sufficient capacity for coordination between what they think and what they do. In the investigation, carried out by age groups, it was concluded that their resolution skills soon reached the level of any adult . The adolescents demonstrated being able to make a reasoned choice when faced with two alternatives raised about different aspects of their daily life, health or legal problems. Despite this, it was found that the majority lost that logical capacity as soon as their friends intervened in the process .
4. Is it true that they are not concentrating?
Many times it seems that the slightest encouragement causes a teenager to abandon whatever activity their parents consider important. According to a study by the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College in London, part of the brain structure of childhood is maintained in adolescence. Thus, the brains continue to perform unnecessary tasks even when the subject should be focused on a single issue. Using MRI scans, the researchers found that when a young person tries to concentrate on a task while ignoring distracting stimuli, they are highly active in the prefrontal cortex , an area involved in everyday decision-making. That is, while you are trying to focus your mind on a job, you are thinking about your relationship problems, arguments with friends or your studies.
5. What seduces you so much about drugs?
On this occasion, scientists from Yale University have provided relevant data on the physiological bases of another classic phenomenon of this age: greater vulnerability to addictions. The vast majority of people who depend on substances such as tobacco, alcohol or cocaine have started using it during adolescence . The question is whether, in addition to psychological factors, such as the importance given to the opinions of friends and the role that the individual has in the group, there are biological triggers that explain the propensity to smoke, drink or take drugs.
A study that has appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry maintains that the areas of the brain that exert self-control over impulses are not fully formed in adolescence. Therefore, the addiction tendency is not only a behavioral disorder, but also a neural development problem. According to the experts of the aforementioned university, the great biochemical changes that occur in this stage of life lead the person to seek new experiences without the physiological containment mechanisms being ready .
6. Why are they so reckless?
There is also an organic cause behind the reckless behavior that many teens exhibit. A study at the University of Texas , at Austin (USA), led by Professor of Cognitive Psychology Russell Poldrack, determined that in this vital stage a great activity takes place in the mesolimbic system , a region where the predominant neurotransmitter is dopamine. This chemical messenger is heavily involved in the brain’s reward system . All natural pleasurable experiences – for example, caused by food or sex – and artificial – induced by drugs – concur with a release of dopamine . The more the dopamine system is activated, the greater the feeling of euphoria that is experienced.
On the other hand, dopamine is more related to the expectation of the reinforcement than to the reward itself , that is, it is released more with the desire than with the satisfaction that it produces. High-risk behaviors, such as bungee jumping or experimenting with drugs, are stimulated by this substance. And this is consistent with research from the University of Texas, according to which adolescents release a large amount of dopamine at certain times. This makes them prone to certain risky activities that they may regret when neurotransmitter levels are lowered.
7. Why do they have sudden mood swings?
Physiological alterations largely explain why adolescents tend to be more moody than usual . The discharges of hormones that are released into the body can produce rapid transitions from sadness to joy or from kindness to anger. But there is another factor that is fundamental, according to recent research by the Sleep Scotland organization in Edinburgh (Scotland): lack of sleep. This group has detected that changes in mood correspond to times when we sleep for very few hours . In the case of puberty, it is mainly due to the large amount of time they spend at night playing video games, television or the Internet. This means that many young people only sleep between four and five hours a day, which has a decisive influence on their drastic emotional changes.
8. Do you care a lot about what your colleagues think?
The psychologist Helen Jones Emmerich , from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, scientifically found something that seemed like common sense: adolescents depend more on the opinion of their friends than on their parents. This influence occurs especially in subjects such as the way of dressing, the habits of fun or the way of solving school problems . In matters such as the choice of a job or the resolution of a deep moral conflict they have less weight, but the influence of their peers is still present.
According to some researchers, adolescents depend so much on the judgment of others because at that age there are many psychological factors that are only optimized when they have good feedback from their friends. For example, in one study, psychiatrists David Moreno, Estefanía Estévez, Sergio Murgui and Gonzalo Musitu came to the conclusion that the social reputation of the young man largely explains his greater or lesser feeling of loneliness, self-esteem and life satisfaction. On the other hand, these researchers warn that at these ages it seems essential to satisfy the expectations of the reference group , which can be a positive factor for certain young people, but at the same time promote their more violent and antisocial side.
9. Why do so many mobile messages come?
Research from the University of Michigan and the Pew Internet & American Life Project has revealed that adolescents conduct most of their communications through text messages , despite the massive use of email and the success of social media, such as Facebook or Twitter. The volume is impressive: about 38 million WhatsApp messages per minute . The reasons have to do with a format that imposes brevity – which they like – and almost universal diffusion, since practically everyone has a mobile phone . 89% of Spanish adolescents have at least one electronic device that allows them to access these instant messaging applications. The study also finds another factor that explains this expansion: the sense of privacy . WhatsApp messages look like secret notes, which makes them the ideal medium for intimate messages. However, there is a curious fact that makes us reflect on the type of communication established with parents: in most cases, adolescents prefer to use voice calls to talk to their parents . Maybe because they don’t tell them all their secrets?
10. Why are they so susceptible?
Young people are picky when it comes to putting up with jokes on certain topics. That is something that everyone has been able to verify thanks to the face that the teenager has when he considers that he has suffered a joke in bad taste. But few researchers had thought to link this suspicion to hormonal changes . Dermatologist Sam Shuster, from Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital , in the United Kingdom, had a habit of riding a unicycle down the street. Over time, he began to observe that the reactions of the pedestrians were similar and easily grouped by age and sex. That led him to think that there must be some underlying biological factor, so he decided to conduct a study. The result, which appeared in the British Medical Journal , supports the hypothesis that the discharge of androgens such as testosterone produces a more aggressive reaction to shock .
The most violent attitudes – for example, pedestrians trying to make him fall off the unicycle – almost always came from children around 11 years old . This response is channeled with age and leads to verbal attacks, typical of adolescence. But that biochemical tendency to reject any act that the young person considers an adult eccentricity persists. It is as if there is a propensity to be offended when a mature person is considered to be making a fool of himself. Shame on others, need to place parents in their role, or simple lack of sense of humor? Who knows!
