Study Shows That Teens Don't Care -- Michael

It's true. Your teenage kids really don't give a rat's ass about you.

Sara Goudarzi, LiveScience Staff Writer

LiveScience.com

1 hour, 54 minutes ago

If you ever sense that your teenager is not taking your feelings into account, it's probably because they're just incapable of doing so.

The area of the brain associated with higher-level thinking, empathy, and guilt is underused by teenagers, reports a new study. When considering an action, the teenage medial prefrontal cortex, located in front of the brain, just doesn't get as much action as adults.

You can try whacking them on the medial prefrontal cortex with a big stick. That usually gets their attention.

In the study, teens and adults were asked how they would react to certain situations while their brains were being imaged.

Although both adults and teens responded similarly to the questions, their brain activity differed.

The medial prefrontal cortex was much more active in the adults than in the teens. However, the teenagers had much more activity in the superior temporal sulcus, the brain area involved in predicting future actions based on previous ones.

That means they are conniving little bastards.

Adults were also much faster at figuring out how their actions would affect themselves and other people.

"We think that a teenager's judgment of what they would do in a given situation is driven by the simple question: 'What would I do?'" Blakemore said. "Adults, on the other hand, ask: 'What would I do, given how I would feel and given how the people around me would feel as a result of my actions?'"

In other words, teenagers are reckless and stupid.

Seriously, is there a parent anywhere on the planet with teenage kids who did not already know this?

Study: Why Teens Don't Care

posted by Ace at 07:54 PM

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