Brain truth:

The teen brain tends to make decisions based on emotion rather than logic, especially when they are stressed. This is because from the age of around 11 to 19 the Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is off-line, at times, for myelination (white matter generation) to occur.  

Neural pathways that are not being used are pruned, some are refined and strengthened, in preparation for adulthood.  Without our PFC in full function mode, we can’t access our logical thinking processes as effectively.  Given that our PFC is associated with problem solving, critical thinking, decision making, organisation, empathy and planning this is why critical thinking for teens can be tricky. This explains why teens sometimes make errors.  Additionally when any brain is stressed the lower regions of the brain dominate taking away our access to the PFC. The teen brain is vulnerable to a double risk.

 

Strategy:

 

1) Ask, what am I feeling right now and is emotion impacting on my decision?

 

2) Consider that feelings give us information, logic makes us stop and test it.

 

3) Use the 4P Tool Pause, Probe, Prove, Position for critical thinking.

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Story:

 

Samual Jones (not his real name to protect his identify), a 16 year old from California, is a strong example of the importance of overriding instinctive emotion for the slower more logical thinking. In September 2022, Samual was with friends who were doing a dangerous activity called “couch surfing”, sitting on a couch while it was dragged behind a moving vehicle so they could film it for social media. What makes the story so powerful is that Levi had initially refused to do it. His mother said he had actually told her how proud he was that he had resisted.

But the following week, he changed his mind. His friends had done it without being hurt, so it apparently began to feel safe. His mother explained: “Since he saw all of his friends do it and they walked away safe, he must’ve thought it was OK.”

On September 8, Sam got onto the couch. A couch leg broke, he was thrown off and suffered catastrophic injuries, including a fractured skull, traumatic brain injuries, spinal fractures, broken ribs and facial fractures. He spent his 16th birthday in a medically induced coma.

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Question:

 

1) When is emotion helpful to decision making and when should only reason be considered.  Good decision making for critical thinking requires a balance of emotion (signals a message), logic (evidence) and intuition (cues picked up unconsciously due to prior experience) mixed just right for the context.

 

2) How can you slow down your thinking to reflect on reason and logic before you jump in?