The Terrible Teens

We know that, in general, older frontal lobes are better developed. But if you take that where this author wants it to go - that we should remove most choices from teens' lives until their brains are fully developed - would their brains ever develop?

That is, do we think brain development is a function of time, or a function of experience?

If it's simply a function of time, then perhaps keeping those under 25 in a padded cell will make the world a better place. But I have a suspicion it's not - that teens who are parented according to this advice will have worse judgement down the road than those who are allowed to make mistakes.

Incidentally, I'd argue that the dangers of teens and alcohol are ~90% related to driving. The rhetoric around suburbia at its inception was "a safe place to raise your kids" but it is in fact car-dependent culture that makes alcohol so dangerous for teens. City kids can stumble home on public transit; teenagers in "Real America" have a choice between driving drunk or not coming home that night. The more your parents favor the padded cell approach, the more you fear not coming home, the more likely you are to drive drunk.

Perverse incentives and the law of unintended consequences are as alive in parenting as they are in policymaking.

>Sixteen-year-olds are dangerous drivers. Their rate of fatal crashes per mile is three times as high as the rate for drivers age twenty and over, and nearly twice as high as the rate for drivers eighteen and nineteen.

The article suggests not letting teenagers drive. If this were to be done, would accidents as a whole be reduced, or would the accidents just move up an age cohort? If it's inexperienced drivers in general that are dangerous, then not letting teenagers drive won't help.

>He found that teens took more risks when their friends were around

Steinberg attributes this to peer pressure and teenagers calling each other chicken. Yet I wonder if this isn't just a special case of the bystander effect. When there are many teenagers together, everyone expects somebody else will be the voice of reason and caution. If none of my friends complain when I steer my car with my feet, it can't be that dangerous. Surely someone would stop me if it was actually a stupid idea...

If that were true, supervising teenagers all the time might actually make them more reckless, not less.

I think it's very risky to just take your prejudices at face value and looking for scientific evidence afterwards.

Their paywall is sooooo close to getting me. I enjoy their articles and blow through my allotment rather quickly. I would like to see a micropayment service that works on a per article basis.