Troublesome Teen Tech

Since my husband and I have just begun to navigate our way through our children’s high school years, (and neither one of us have fully accepted the fact that we no longer live in the 1980s…) we are confronted with a “new phase” of our kids’ development. It’s cliché’, but it does seem like “only yesterday” when we were complaining about “teething.” Not today – now we are into full throttle orthodonture, driver’s ed, and cell phones – an entirely new parental ballgame is underway and loaded with worries.

During our high school’s parent orientation session, guidance counselors discussed how teens “executive functioning” abilities are not fully developed. PBS/Frontline has published an interview with Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, an expert in neuropsychology and cognitive neuroimaging, about her studies of the teen brain. This excerpt provides an excellent synopsis of the counselor’s point:

Q: What does your work tell you about young teenagers?

A. One of the implications of this work is that the brain is responding differently to the outside world in teenagers compared to adults. And in particular, with emotional information, the teenager’s brain may be responding with more of a gut reaction than an executive or more thinking kind of response. And if that’s the case, then one of the things that you expect is that you’ll have more of an impulsive behavioral response, instead of a necessarily thoughtful or measured kind of response.

(Read the entire interview here – PBS/Frontline Deborah Yurgelun-Toddhttp interview.)

Which brings me to my next teen tech worry (which is really part of a larger worry – like when he’s behind the wheel of a car – but there is not enough room in the blogosphere for me to enumerate all of my anxieties). How do we help our kids see that one slip of the hand, one careless, emotionally-driven “fwd” on the cell phone or the internet, can have lasting, unpleasant consequences for themselves and others?

Take the six teens in Greensburg, PA: “Three teenage girls who allegedly sent nude or semi-nude cell phone pictures of themselves, and three male classmates in a Greensburg Salem High School who received them, are charged with child pornography.” (Not going to look good on college applications.) Or the case of Phillip Alpert, who out of spite, sent nude photos of his ex-girlfriend to more than 70 people including her parents. According to the Seattle Times, he “is serving five years of probation for the crime, and he is registered as a sex offender — a label he must carry at least until he is 43.” OUCH. I’m not excusing these behaviors, merely noting that the consequences to the lives of all of these teens are pretty intense and long-lasting.

I remember full well living my teen life with a blissful lack of “executive functioning” – believing I was going to be young forever and nothing terrible would ever happen to me. Research indicates that “executive functioning” begins to more fully develop when we are in our 20’s.

Perhaps scientifically and statistically, that’s true. We begin to respond with the “thoughtful and measured response” Yurgelun-Todd describes once we have left college and entered “the real world.” But really, for me, it was the birth of this current teenager that hammered home for me the long-term consequences of our decisions, our actions. I realized once he got here and entered our lives, he would never leave, and I certainly and desperately never want him to.

So as much as I want him to enjoy his “lack of executive functioning” years – I am re-telling him the horror stories of other teenagers, their mistakes, and long-term consequences of careless or thoughtless technology use. This means my kids listen to me preaching against texting and driving, “cyber-bullying”, sexting. I re-tell the tales, and hope that the lessons are learned, but don’t ever hit too close to home.