Unlocking the teenage brain

If you are the parent of a tween or teenager chances are good you have had some first-hand experience with the joys and complexities of the adolescent brain.

According to Dr. Dan Siegel, author of Brainstorm, The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, adolescent neurology is wired to experience greater emotionality, heightened creativity, increased need for novelty (or risk taking) and greater need for peer acceptance.

Meanwhile, most U.S. teenagers get a phone at the same time their brains are surging through these critical changes. Indeed, digital devices are a portal to all sorts of experiences that enchant the teenage brain. Some of them are amazing, and others, well, not so much.

Parents and other caregivers can support adolescents in the real world explore their heightened emotionality and creativity, explore novelty and experience greater belonging in their peer groups. This is not to say that these can’t happen in the online world as well, but we know from research that it is protective against addictive behaviors for young people to have these experiences in the real world.

Caregivers can help by asking the young people in our lives these questions:

💝 What do you LOVE to do?

🏅 What are you good at?

🎯 What causes or issues in the world are most important to you?

Note that their answers may change daily, or even hourly! That’s OK. They are trying on new identities, which is developmentally normal.

Our kids' brains are trying to get them to figure out who they are and how they fit in the world. The more young people can do this in a healthy way, the less likely they are to succumb to unhealthy device use.

(Sources: Siegal, 2013; Branje et. al., 2021; Boyd et. al., 2024; Blum, 2022)