Why Teenagers Act Crazy | Hacker News Reader

Why Teenagers Act Crazy

nytimes.com

67 pointstokenadult32 comments

"I'm suspicious of this theory that thirteen-year-old kids are intrinsically messed up. If it's physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists at thirteen? I've read a lot of history, and I have not seen a single reference to this supposedly universal fact before the twentieth century. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance seem to have been cheerful and eager. They got in fights and played tricks on one another of course (Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully), but they weren't crazy.

As far as I can tell, the concept of the hormone-crazed teenager is coeval with suburbia. I don't think this is a coincidence. I think teenagers are driven crazy by the life they're made to lead. Teenage apprentices in the Renaissance were working dogs. Teenagers now are neurotic lapdogs. Their craziness is the craziness of the idle everywhere."

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

"Largely because of a quirk of brain development, adolescents, on average, experience more anxiety and fear and have a harder time learning how not to be afraid than either children or adults."

This doesn't pass the smell test. Historically, in every culture, young adults (and especially young men) have always been the big risk-takers; from moving to a new country, to dealing drugs, to enlisting in the army, to killing oneself for Allah.

The article goes on to answer that two paragraphs later:

"You may wonder why, if adolescents have such enhanced capacity for anxiety, they are such novelty seekers and risk takers. It would seem that the two traits are at odds. The answer, in part, is that the brain’s reward center, just like its fear circuit, matures earlier than the prefrontal cortex. That reward center drives much of teenagers’ risky behavior. This behavioral paradox also helps explain why adolescents are particularly prone to injury and trauma. The top three killers of teenagers are accidents, homicide and suicide."

That both violates Occam's razor - you need to postulate two mechanisms instead of one, with no evidence presented - and common sense. On the battlefield, the brain's "reward center" (whatever that means) certainly isn't being activated. Yet the army doesn't refuse to recruit 20-year-olds because they'll inevitably be paralyzed with terror when the guns start firing. Indeed, 20-year-old men are the first people that every army wants to recruit, in all cultures and all time periods.

It may not be activated on the battlefield but it's certainly activated as you sign up for the battlefield.

Back then it was to be called brave, death wasn't as scary as it is now. Now, we all want to lead long lives and so the things that scare us now are different from what scared them earlier.

Because they are physically in good shape, healthy, and easily manipulatable.

Glory of battle. Glory of startups. Glory of anything. Give me a 20 year old male and some cultural pressure, and I will make you a blind follower of anything.

And have few, if any, life achievements to 'lose'. Be it career, wealth, family - whatever.

> Yet the army doesn't refuse to recruit 20-year-olds because they'll inevitably be paralyzed with terror when the guns start firing. Indeed, 20-year-old men are the first people that every army wants to recruit, in all cultures and all time periods.

That's what basic training is for. That, and developing unit cohesion.

Everyone gets paralyzed by terror when the guns start firing. You work through that with desensitization. Part of the training is being shot at by blanks. Young people are recruited because of the items Swizec listed, not because of some magic brain wiring they have at that age.

If you don't work through it, you get dead. Which is roughly how firefights between untrained gang members shape up. They freeze up and get shot. Bystanders freeze up and take a stray bullet. As simple as that. That's the fundamental difference between a trained and untrained gunman.

Occam's razor is a good heuristic for choosing physical laws, but not for human behavior. It's very common for behavior to be driven by two opposing instincts.

I found myself a bit suspicious of these two statements as well:

> The amygdala — is precocious and develops way ahead of the prefrontal cortex

2. > the brain’s reward center, just like its fear circuit, matures earlier than the prefrontal cortex

I had a quick Google but couldn't really find any satisfactory research that would support this. Anyone have any papers? What does "mature" really mean in this context, how is it being measured?

That's so true. Having spent some time in Asia as a teen, I remember being surprised and impressed by how "normal" (or shall we say "mature" teenagers in South East Asia behaved when compared to their peers in Western Europe). This was in stark contrast to what the majority of adults back home believed to be a fundamental "law" for each generation, but somehow it seemed to have to do more with culture, family situation (large families vs small family in Europe, responsibilities, upbringing, religion etc. etc.) not so much a "phase" of "brain development".

Risk taking and enlisting in armies or expeditions or whatever is different to being fearful and crazy (which is what the article is saying).

I prefer the pg explanation - the reason we have messed up teenagers is they don't have any life direction or things to do.

I was speaking to a relative recently who just made it out of the teenage years. He is completely normal in every respect - doing well with his education, socially well adjusted, healthy, polite. But he had purpose and direction to his life very early on - learned to fly at age 16, got a part time job at 17, had specific interests that he pursued. He mostly ignored trying to fit into the social teenage life and this seems to have been a useful hack in getting around wasting time being an emotional wreck.

I think give any teen a direction - even if it is front-line infantry - and they don't develop the neurotic self obsession that is common.

Perhaps the reasons that young adults are enlisted in armies and for other risky activitys is precisely because they lack the experience to judge risk well, and because societies have found providing them regimented direction is better than leaving them idle?

I grew up in a rather unusual environment where there was a high level of structure, a clear 'purpose' to life, and a safe, understandable environment to learn in. I did not really experience adolescence until well into my twenties when I had moved back into a more standard Western-European way of life. In my attempts to deal with that I found a support group of people coming from similar backgrounds, and regardless of their personality they largely had a similar experience.

Anecdotally that at least seems to support your theory.

My problem with articles like this is that it ignores the fact that adults frequently act fearful and crazy too - especially when acting collectively and/or politically.

You wouldn't have politics in its current forms if adult humans were fully rational and able to treat fear-mongering demagogues with indifference and contempt instead of adulation.

Perhaps the real difference between adolescence and that kind of adulthood is the fact that adult craziness is mainstream and socially sanctioned, so it's not seen as crazy, while teen angst is considered proof of immaturity because it's not 'responsibly' frightened like adults are.

The article was saying that teenagers have an elevated amount of fear and anxiety, not that adults don't have fear and anxiety.

And perhaps your agenda-driven armchair suppositions should be moderated by some of the hard factual data now coming out from fMRI and other observations.

Not sure why you have been voted down.

Oh wait, I do. This is Hacker News; where surface experts abound on every subject and you best not ask for facts, veracity or credibility.

The reason that comment was voted down is very likely its rather unnecessarily adversarial tone. It takes very little effort to have the same content and be polite while expressing it.

Why do people here care so much about that? Are we really that thin skinned? It's not like the guy called your mother a whore.

Why should people be nice when calling out armchair scientists for writing utter unsubstantiated bullshit?

You want nice? Fine. Give everyone the downvote ability.

If the forum is still elitist then expect people to respond adversely to bullshit.

If you want to provide evidence of a surplus of rational evidence-based policy in national and economic policy and international relations in the last hundred years or so, I'm sure you can prove my point is bullshit.

But so far all you've done is call me names, which isn't evidence as most people understand it.

Maybe not so ironically, it's a fine example of the kind of angry rhetoric I was talking about.

I never referred to you. Never even linked to your comment directly. Was talking about HN in general.

I also never asked you for any data. I would suggest learning to read before you try and form arguments. Like learning to crawl before trying to sprint.

This reeks of 19th and 20th century medicine trying to explain female "hysteria".

Explaining complex emotional and sociological behavior by rooting it in handfuls of brain slices is questionable to say the least.

Exactly. In reality :

Artificial intelligence algorithm acts totally bonkers because you're not telling it what you want it to do, telling it "it/he/she has to figure it out for itself". To put it another way : car without steering goes off the road.

If you do what seems to be common in Asian countries, pressuring the kids into either becoming outstanding students (which sadly means memorizing) or face homelessness at 18, and remind them constantly, you will get different results. Not entirely sure it's better though.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, strange about that.

A huge factor is the low consequences and low responsibilities required of the _typical_ teenager.

An adult at work beats up a co-worker? Fired, jail time, lawsuit. Same thing for a child? Detention or a day of suspension.

Likewise, adults are busy making money to pay for a place to live, food, etc. Teenagers - it's all free to them.

... in white neighborhoods.

Law enforcement against kids is a little more aggressive in non-white areas.

By citing "low consequences", are you asserting that giving harsher punishments to teenagers would 'correct' their behavior?

> The top three killers of teenagers are accidents, homicide and suicide.

Leaving as #4 disease. Are there any other killers in general other than accidents, homicide, suicide & disease?

And is it at all surprising that disease is rare among the young?

It's been awhile since I've seen a death certificate but as I recall, those are indeed the four boxes you have to choose from.

Do teenagers really act crazy? When we see children drawing on walls, we don't say they are crazy, we say they are children.

I don't remember acting crazy in my teens. In fact, I think I'm the same boring self that I was years ago.

What I think many adults are victim of, is being encapsulated in a little set of habits and behaviors, with the expectation that everyone else will follow the same rules.

Thus, when one sees someone old enough to not be a 'child' anymore, it's expected of them to immediately follow the same habits (thoughtless actions) then everyone else.

Well, it turns about that many habits are completely non-intuitive (and perhaps even irrational). For individuals going through the motion for the first time, they might pause for 2 minutes and try to understand what's going on, without ending with the same conclusions as everyone else.

If everyone was acting crazy, how would someone not acting like them look like?

My only wish is that articles like this had citations for some of the things they are saying. (For example: The amygdala develops early compared to the pre-frontal cortex, how early? At what age?)

I couldn't find any papers on the subject and would be grateful if someone more familiar with biology would point me to them.

From the article:

"... and make them more fearful adults"

From a game theory perspective is there absolutely anyone in a position of power in our existing culture who would not benefit directly or indirectly from a more fearful population? Anyone?

That doesn't prove anything. However, if a problem is found, it does indicate nothing will be done about it.

Very fox guarding the henhouse-like.

Teenagers act crazy bc biologically they are adults. If we were doing our job raising kids and not depriving them of real life experiences and honest learning opportunities, they would be better prepared to channel that amazing youthful energy, the risk taking, the ability to stay awake longer, learn faster, compete. They would be starting businesses of their own perhaps even competing against well established players and occasionally beating them at their own game. Most would simply become (find out) who they are and find their place in the world. They would be thinking independently, writing their own life script. Parents don't like that bc it doesn't validate the choices they made. Their child might fail in their endeavors thereby making the parents look bad, God forbid! Universities don't like it bc success is supposed to depend entirely on whether or not they get paid lots of money. Governments don't like it bc it would force them to change and adapt. Corporations hate it bc those kids are supposed to work for THEM for cheap and buy their CRAP. Did I mention clergy? They don't like it bc some of those kids might become something they aren't and usher in a new form of spirituality they don't 'agree with'. Kids (especially teenagers) are DANGEROUS. It's far better to undereducate them, setup barriers to keep them out of the real world, and deprive them of all the respect and responsibility accorded to 'read adults'. Then when they become neurotic and act out, claim that's the real reason kids need to be watched so closely and excluded from participating in the real world.

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