Post #144280
January 31, 2020, 03:35:43 PM
Full Article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/01/friendship-crucial-adolescent-brain/605638/Not anything to debate, but I thought this was a fascinating article. The gist of it is that adolescents are deeply sensitive to the presence of friends...their brain's award system become more sensitive and primed, which explains why they're more likely to take risky actions with friends, even if peer pressure wasn't actually happening. The article notes that this phenomena could be used for good too though...teens that have friends that make higher grades end up eventually making higher grades themselves for example. The article also has some interesting stuff about how a lack of friends and bullying can feed into this in a bad way too, and how the ways people deal with stress mentally change from childhood to teenagehood to adulthood.
Just an interesting read.
