Extra Credit Five: Inside the Teenage Brain

            There has long been a stress between teenagers and their parents. Teens are struggling with feelings that they have never before experienced, and parents are thrown off because they feel like they don't know their own child anymore. There are several explanations for changing teenage behavior and how their brain development during these years will ultimately impact the rest of their life.

            Just before puberty, there is a growth spurt of cells in the cortex part of one's brain. This is responsible for the "craziness" demonstrated by teens, usually associated with a lack of warning for consequences of their actions. The frontal cortex of the brain is responsible for much activity, most commonly mood swings, also caused by a changing of hormone levels. There is also a changing in emotions, and in recognizing emotions in adults. This is commonly the reason why there is so much miscommunication between teens and their parents.

            On average, teenagers need over 9 hours of sleep per night. The majority of teens are getting less than 7.5 hours on average. This is due in part to a shifting biological timing system (an internal clock) during the teenage years, thus causing teens "not to fill their tank at night" when it is extremely important to do so. The importance of sleep is causing some middle and high schools to start the school day later. This, however, is very controversial among teachers and parents, with one side arguing that a later school day will increase academic performance (as studies have already proved, it does). The other argument says that a later school day limits the amount of after-school activities that a student can be involved in, and scientists say that sports, music lessons, and the like are just as important to the developing teenage brain as sleep is. There are some scientists that are actually saying that "movement and play may be more important than some academic subjects that students are doing." With science in this area developing and gaining ground, will politicians have to get involved to change standards on what (and when) teens will do inside the classroom? If it became a federal rule to push middle schools and high schools to start at a later time, test scores (as one would infer) would most likely increase. Is this the answer to gaining an edge in the global competition of test scores? 

            In my opinion, this documentary was very interesting. I can definitely see a correlation between my early teenage years with examples shown in the film. I would have liked to know more about the larger picture that this research is drawing. This documentary just showed research about small groups of teens. I would have found it much more informative if they researched teens on a large scale or national level. By doing that, we could have found out how teens behaviors affect things like culture and the economy. 

"Inside the Teenage Brain." Frontline. PBS, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/teenbrain/view/>.