Adolescent Brains Still Developing

Something that prosecutors, who want to try teenagers as adults, children's rights activists, who think teens can best decide their family situation, and today's parents who think disciplining teens involves reasoning with them: teenagers are still children, and their brains are not yet adult brains. Key summary:

New brain research on adolescents has shown that although teens may look like adults and try to act like them, the area of the brain that regulates emotions and impulses is still developing, and the systems aren't yet completely connected.

Actual physical proof that an age of consent exists should also warn those people who don't think statutory rape is all that big a deal. Teens messing around? Understandable, and the teens should not be prosecuted. 22 year old making a 16 year old have an abortion? Prosecute the 22 year old.

And the trend toward prosecuting younger and younger adolescents as adults for violent crime is more disturbing in light of the results of the brain imaging. Children are not young adults. They are still children.

So, the next question comes: should we come up a variable age for adulthood, or do we legislate a hard line and stick to it? Examples of the hard line for adult decision making is the drinking age or the voting age. But some states have different ages for consent (usually tied to signing a marriage license without parental permission, or making healthcare decisions). And other countries have different ages for these things altogether. Just as puberty does not start at the same time for everyone, brain structures don't mature at a set pace either. But there can be a median age established for a "mature" brain, and more research can help make that clear.

So, the next time your teenager offers a bewildered "I don't know" as the reason for breaking a house rule, believe it, but still punish. They're still learning, you know?