The Mind, Explained (2019) s02e02 Episode Script

[narrator] "The youth are heated by nature
as drunken men by wine."
This is what Aristotle
had to say about teens.
Socrates was more specific.
"They have bad manners,
contempt for authority."
"They show disrespect for elders
and love chatter in place of exercise."
For as long as there have been teens,
there have been adults bemoaning them.
"What are some stereotypes of teens?"
Lazy.
- Lazy.
- That we're lazy.
- Being addicted to your phone.
- Contrarian.
We don't listen or follow rules.
- Rebellious, but in a stupid way.
- Kind of bratty.
- None of them are ever positive.
- None are positive.
I don't know if it's important,
but I relate to all of these adjectives.
I don't think
that's necessarily a bad thing.
[laughs]
[narrator] Young people
in different cultures
face wildly different
norms and expectations,
and yet certain teen behaviors
seem to be universal.
Even though they aren't necessarily
enjoyable for the people around them.
Stop! Mom, he's cutting your hair!
[narrator] Or for the teens themselves.
I didn't want to be a teen.
I wanted to stay a child
because your teenage years can be
really hard.
[narrator] So why do we all
go through this phase?
What's really going on
in the teenage brain?
[theme music playing]
[indistinct shouting]
[woman] She's never at home. When she is,
she's so irritable and contrary. Why?
When it comes to drugs and alcohol,
just say no.
It's this hormone that causes the changes.
[beatboxing]
- [teen] Big ladies man. You score?
- What do you think?
If you'd just get rid of that
that feeling that I don't belong.
[laughs] Okay. "What's one thing you hope
your parents never find out about?"
Now, why would we say that recorded?
[narrator] Every adult
was once a teenager.
Every president,
every pope, every bombshell.
But then we grow up
What do I do?
- [man] Just open it up.
- Oh.
[narrator] and forget
what it was really like.
Where should you like my phone to be?
Is that better?
[man] Your jacket. Tuck it in the bottom.
[narrator] So we're gonna let teens
explain their own brains to us.
- [man] Perfect.
- Okay. So, hi, my name is Sohini Alim.
I'm a senior
at Townsend Harris High School,
and I'm the president
of the neuroscience club there.
So some of the teen behaviors
that we really see
throughout species, cultures,
is risk-taking, novelty-seeking,
and peer relationships.
[narrator] First, risk-taking
and novelty-seeking.
- Doing things they've never done before.
- [brakes screech]
Many of them ill-advised.
Like jumping
your friend's parents' Range Rover.
[teens laughing]
[narrator]
Or trying to literally couch-surf.
Yeah, a lot of the things I do
some people would say are a dumb risk.
You got the money? $13.35.
[narrator] One time,
Nick showed up at a mansion
where they were shooting a reality show,
pretending to be a pizza delivery guy.
Yeah. They said they'd pay me double
if I did a backflip
off their roof into the pool.
So I did that.
[crowd gasping]
A lot of older people don't understand.
[narrator] For generations, older people
chalked this kind of behavior up to
[deep voice] hormones.
[narrator] And levels of certain hormones
do surge at this age,
triggering all the fun bodily changes
we know as puberty.
However, it's definitely not
the main culprit
in, like, why teenagers
are so "difficult."
[narrator] Why are teenagers so difficult?
That isn't just something
parents of teens would love to know.
It's a question
with real political stakes.
Every country has to decide when
young people are ready for certain things,
and the answers are all over the place.
Take voting.
In Wales, you get that right at 16,
but in the United Arab Emirates,
you can't cast a ballot until you're 25.
While in the US,
you can be tried as an adult at 16,
two years before you can vote.
In some states, it's even younger.
And if convicted,
you could even be given the death penalty.
That is until 2005,
when the Supreme Court banned it
as cruel and unusual,
in large part
because medical organizations
submitted new neuroscience evidence.
They explained,
"Scientists can now demonstrate
that adolescents are immature
not only to the observer's naked eye,
but in the very fibers of their brains."
I mean, just to explain
what's happening in the brain,
we just need, like,
a little vocabulary to go with that.
So, I don't know
if you're familiar with this,
but gray matter and white matter
[narrator] Our brains are made up
of neurons. They look gray.
And as we grow up,
more of those neurons get wrapped
in this white stuff called myelin.
With myelin, neurons can talk
to each other about 3,000 times faster.
It's like upgrading
to fiber optic internet.
This is a huge process. This is a huge
renovation that happens in your brain.
[narrator] This process begins in the back
of the brain before we're even born.
By the time we're teens,
it's gone a long way,
but it hasn't finished.
And the part that develops last
is the very front,
which happens to be the part of the brain
that sort of makes us human.
Your frontal cortex
is a part of your brain that controls
rational thought and reasoning.
[narrator] So when a teenager
is confronted with a decision,
this rational area
is slower at communicating
with other parts of their brain,
so those other parts
end up taking the lead.
Especially this one, little feisty part.
The amygdala.
It's kind of in the middle
in the bottom, right here.
[narrator] This is our brain's
emotional center,
and it explains a lot of teen behavior.
Sometimes you do things and you say things
and you cannot control yourself.
You know, I'm having a lot of mood swings.
I do feel like I'm going through
My brain is developing.
[narrator] At age 18,
while a lot of places say you're an adult,
we now know your brain isn't,
thanks to MRI machines.
We're actually able to observe the change
from gray matter to white matter,
and we observed that it stopped at 25.
That's right.
You don't have an adult brain
until you're in your mid-twenties.
See, I still don't feel
like an adult. At all.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
[narrator] But that's only part
of the reason teens do reckless things.
Superman flies, baby!
[narrator] See, the teenage brain
isn't just a less logical adult brain.
It also works
in a fundamentally different way
with a logic of its own.
Being a teenager
is like driving on a freeway
because everyone
never goes the speed limit.
You have to keep up with traffic
and go the speed limit
that everyone else is going.
[accelerates]
[narrator] That's true metaphorically
and literally.
Teens are a lot more likely than any other
age group to get into a fatal car crash.
And if there are other teens
in the car with them,
that risk goes way up.
And the reason why
is more complicated than you might think.
In 2009, researchers had
people of all ages
play this driving video game.
Finishing faster
meant a bigger cash prize,
but if you drove too recklessly, you were
more likely to crash and lose time.
What they found, perhaps surprisingly,
is that adolescents and older adults
took the same number of risks.
So teens actually judge risk
just the same way that adults do.
[narrator] But then the participants
drove the course again,
only this time, their friends
were watching them from another room.
The result?
The adults took
around the same number of risks as before.
while the teens took significantly more
just knowing their peers could see them.
And unlike adults,
certain regions of the teens' brains
were noticeably more active.
Regions associated
with anticipating rewards.
When any of us want something
that would immediately feel good,
we experience a spike of dopamine
that tells us to go out and get it.
But when we're teens,
that spike is higher.
Which means that almost
any kind of thrill or new experience,
taking a flight, going to a party,
getting a new outfit, or scoring a date,
may never feel as exciting as it did
when you were a teen.
Here's the bike jump and the bike.
One of my worst slash funniest,
craziest video pranks
was I went to a national forest
[screams]
- [laughs]
- I did a couple of backflips.
Another kid did a double backflip.
So he one upped me.
And everybody was excited
about what he did, so I was like,
"Watch what I'm about to do."
So I got the gas in the back of the truck
This might be the worst idea you've had.
And threw it on the bike jump.
Light it!
[teen] Oh fuck.
[teens yelling] Go, go, go!
No way, man!
Holy shit.
[crowd screaming and laughing]
And then I was top dog at that place
for doing the bike jump on fire.
And I ended up getting
three misdemeanors for that.
I don't think I didn't damage it.
You'll have an opportunity
to contest this in court. Thank you.
[narrator] Those three teen traits,
risk-taking, novelty-seeking,
and peer relationships,
are all intertwined,
because when teens
are around their friends,
the potential rewards
of doing new or risky things
feels so much more rewarding.
When your account is blowing up
and you keep refreshing
and there's more comments, more likes,
you've hit the jackpot at the casino.
It's a pretty awesome feeling.
[narrator] But the obsession
with our peers
that kicks in when we're teens
is about more than just chasing a high.
It's part of another fundamental change
going on in the teenage brain.
A revolution in your sense of self.
[Desmond] My elementary school taught us
everything was gonna be just fine.
Now I'm realizing
the world isn't, you know, all sunshine,
all, like, good.[chuckles]
[narrator] Starting as a toddler,
Desmond loved dressing up,
crafting outfits
from anything they could find.
When they were eight, they marched
the New York City Pride Parade.
[crowd cheering]
I was just trying to, you know,
look fierce in the Pride parade
and danced the whole way.
So I never initially thought
I would ever be famous.
[narrator] But some adults thought
Desmond represented something bigger.
Get ready for this trailblazing,
11-year-old drag kid.
Desmond, you're one of the youngest
and first drag queen slash kids.
[narrator] They started an Instagram
account, which gained a big following.
[Desmond] View all 53 comments.
We love the emojis. A lot of emojis.
[narrator] The comments
aren't always so kind,
but their mom tries to delete
the harassment before they can see it.
The idea of a kid in drag
outraged a lot of people,
and Desmond has been
an online target for years.
When we're little kids,
a lot of us get the message
that we should be true to ourselves.
But then every teen, in different ways,
starts to discover
that being yourself comes with risks.
From the moment we're born,
we have a sense of self,
- but it's pretty basic.
- [baby coos]
[narrator] As we get older,
it gets new layers.
Around the age of three,
we start to have a sense of our gender.
As early as eight or nine,
we start to develop
a sense of romantic love.
And then, in adolescence,
a new layer of awareness takes hold,
of being watched and judged constantly,
making you suddenly want to give up
the kid stuff you used to enjoy.
I really used to love
playing with, like, dolls for example,
Barbie dolls and so on.
I can't believe
that I used to play with these things.
[narrator] Like the imaginary friend
you may have had as a child,
teens have an imaginary audience
that follows them everywhere,
making them feel like they're continually
the central topic of interest.
Even if they're not.
"How can I be more popular?"
"How can I get more people to like me?"
"Is this stupid what I'm doing?"
You're always thinking about
what somebody else is thinking.
"Are they gonna like me or not?"
I feel like people
are always watching and judging,
even though they're obviously not.
Like, I just feel like that all the time.
[narrator] We have this imaginary audience
for the rest of our lives.
But as a teen, they're a lot louder,
berating them for anything
that could jeopardize
their standing with their peers.
Because, on a primal level,
teens have a new priority.
Um, I don't know
if I can talk about it on camera.
'Cause my dad's here.
But definitely, um, to reproduce.
So Okay, let me reiterate that.
A lot of the risk-taking behavior
is to push adults,
or people who are ready to reproduce,
out of their dens
and out into the ancient dating sphere.
[narrator] Pulling adolescents
away from the safety of their families
so they can find a potential mate.
That heightened self-awareness
means they spend more time thinking
about how they're perceived
by a potential mate.
I wonder if Pete'll like it.
[narrator] And their hypersensitivity
to reward and peer obsession
pushes them to put themselves out there
and to chat to a potential mate.
All of us are descendants
of rebellious teens.
The prehistoric teens
who stayed home with their kin groups
were less likely to pass on their genes.
And we aren't the only species
to go through a phase like this.
Some get rowdier.
Others get more into grooming.
In one study,
researchers gave mice alcohol.
The adult mice drank in moderation
- and the adolescent mice didn't.
- [cheers]
But only when they were around
other mice their same age.
But unlike other animals,
the mating habits of homo sapiens have
evolved a lot faster than our biology.
In 1950s America,
the average American man
tied the knot at 25
and the average woman at 20.
Since then, those numbers
have steadily creeped up.
A trend in a lot of countries.
So those teen traits
are losing their original purpose.
And they also carry a lot of new risks.
[school bell rings]
[horn honks]
[narrator] There are so many ways today
to get a fast hit of dopamine,
which, to the teen brain,
are especially tempting
and potentially addictive.
Teen pregnancy can now come
with serious costs,
which is why a lot of countries
actively discourage it.
The intensity of teen emotions
and their need for social acceptance
make this age uniquely vulnerable
to developing a mental illness,
and the most at risk of both
committing violence and experiencing it.
[newsman 1]
It happens almost every summer.
As more teenagers get out of school,
a spike in homicides and other crimes.
[newsman 2] The most likely victims
of sexual assault
are women aged between 16 and 24.
[newsman 3] We go to the front lines
of these teenage battles
to find out why so many kids
are willing to fight
and even kill their fellow students.
[narrator] The teenage brain
wasn't built for this environment,
but that doesn't mean
these traits aren't still valuable.
They just manifest in different ways.
The first time
I heard about the climate crisis,
I was around eight years old, I think.
And the more I learned,
the more concerned I became
and also the more convinced I became
that I had to do something about it.
[narrator] But it wasn't
until Greta became a teen
that she did something
that got people talking.
[newswoman 1] Greta Thunberg started
the school strike for the climate movement
and has held talks with the UN
Secretary-General during the summit.
[newswoman 2] This 16-year-old's
one-person protest to save the planet
has exploded.
[newswoman 3] Greta Thunberg is leading
a generation of climate kids.
[narrator] Around two in every five people
on Earth right now is a teen.
The biggest youth boom in history.
I think many young people,
especially teenagers,
develop a vision
of how they want to see the world.
And I think many people
are willing to fight for that vision.
Especially during your teenage years.
- [indistinct chanting]
- [Greta] We are not lazy.
We are the ones
who are most eager to change things.
Sometimes we just don't know how to.
- What do we do?
- Stand up, fight back.
We are the voice for change.
We are the pieces
to fix what America is falling short on.
[protester] We can
and we will change the world.
[narrator] Teenage activism doesn't always
get a lot of respect from adults.
My view is
they're gonna run the country one day,
so we should explain
why they're so frickin' stupid.
Ending violence in America is so easy
that even children know how to do it.
What we want is more learning in schools
and less activism in schools.
[narrator] But teens have been
center frame
in what we now hail as some of history's
most iconic acts of courage.
From the American South, to the border
that once cut through Berlin,
to the heart of Beijing.
It's the tale
of The Emperor's New Clothes,
that everyone is, uh,
just accepting this lie,
and the only one
who dares to question that is a child,
because we are not as afraid
to take risks.
We are much more open to change.
[narrator] In 2012, the US Supreme Court
said the same thing.
Seven years after striking down
the death penalty for juveniles,
the Court ruled that mandatory
life-without-parole sentences
for teen offenders
were also unconstitutional.
Adding that those sentences should be rare
because of children's
diminished culpability
and heightened capacity for change.
The teenage brain
is full of potential pathways,
and then the paths not taken
are gradually pruned away.
Our brain has
this "use it or lose it" principle.
A lot of people think, "You're losing
neurons. Are you getting less smart?"
That's actually not the case.
[narrator] The teen brain
is becoming specialized.
That peer obsession,
risk-taking, novelty-seeking,
it all pushes teenagers
to go out and have more experiences,
because whether they're big
or small,
those experiences save and strengthen
more connections in the brain.
It's the job of adults
to be the prefrontal cortex for teens
while theirs are still developing
during this window they only get once
to figure out which neural connections
they want to foster
and what they don't mind losing,
ultimately shaping
the person they're going to be.
At this point of your life,
the way that you use your neurons
is gonna have a lasting impact
on how they will function
for the rest of your life.
Drag has helped me become myself
and become a character
that I never could have,
you know, imagined without drag.
[narrator] Desmond is less interested
in drag these days,
instead spending more time on activism.
Now that I'm older
and I represent the LGBTQ youth
and a very big community,
I feel like it's a social responsibility
to use my platform to help others.
All I really know right now
is that I really like neuroscience.
I've been following that passion,
and that passion has led me
to this interview chair,
so, hopefully, it'll lead me
to, like, a laboratory or a hospital,
not as a patient, but as a surgeon maybe.
I don't really have a dream
or something that I want to accomplish
in my life.
I just want to be able
to look back when I'm older
and say that I did everything I could
and that I am
satisfied with my life.
[closing theme music playing]