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Behind their Screens What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing) by Emily Weinstein and Carrie James
Erik Jahner, PhD
Erik Jahner, PhD

So, you think you know what effect social media has on teens? There is one problem: too much screen time. Many of us have very strong opinions like this mostly developed through poor media coverage of the research, but you will develop much a more nuanced, well-reasoned and balanced argument through this book that will have you carefully reevaluating what you think you know. In Behind their Screens What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing), Emily Weinstein and Carrie James discuss data gleaned from thousands of teen interviews as they tried to understand the relationship between teens and digital devices and platforms. Both authors are Harvard researchers and parents bringing to their writing the insights from both research and understanding of what it means to be a parent for teens today. The book is a very nice succinct and clear summary of the research done to date on the issue.

Teen lives today are highly politicized and sensationalized, and often media insights are presented as absolute truth. This book asks you to look at the research a bit more deeply and to ask important critical questions. You are not expected to accept the authors’ conclusions at face value, instead, they walk you through multiple interpretations, making sure you first know the right questions to ask. While the entirety of the text gives detail about the methods and motivations of the authors’ research, the appendix further explains their methods enabling practitioners and researchers alike to learn from the careful consideration Weinstein and James gave their design. In many ways, their research design itself shows us how to communicate with teens. Much of which involves simply giving them the space to speak but also knowing what potential responses a carefully constructed question will afford.

Grounded in Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory of human development, the teen develops a nested set of societal, social and biological systems. To understand social media practices, we need to examine teen relationships with not only peers but also parents and adults who seek to find solutions for teen behavior and perhaps put too much blame on social media.  We also need to respect their biological development, and how their neural circuitry sets them up to value rewards in different ways at different ages. The authors here are not simply trying to ask if social media impacts stress, anxiety, self-image, and depression in simple causal relationships; they put value in the context and the interaction of teen values and goals with digital practices. Skillfully, these authors managed to bring all of this complexity into a clear, informative, and entertaining read.

Individuality and variations in perspective are recurring themes in the text; teens are unique and complicated and there is no panacea that explains all relationships. They correctly point to individual variations in developmental trajectories for teens, the systematic variation in how teens interact with and internalize their relationships with the digital world. And, while always systematic, they remind us throughout that this is a complex system of relations that does not always have simple answers. Really, the best way to understand a teen is to listen.

The book covers a wide array of topics, and the authors do not shy away from the tough questions. Topics cover teen perspectives on politics, trading nudes, sexting, and teens’ understanding and concerns about their digital footprint. Through each of these topics, they ask not only what the impacts on teen wellness are but more importantly what are the reasons teens engage in these behaviors. What are the perceived benefits for teens and the social implications for engaging and not engaging?

Overall, the authors make a very clear case that we need to not simply tell teens how to use digital devices, offer them well-rehearsed sound bites, and beat them over the brow with restrictions, shaming, and warnings. While this may make us feel we have done our job this is not the more difficult work of trying to engage them in meaningful discussion where we all could learn something. We need to spend time with them, listen to them, and respect that they are engaging in digital behaviors for reasons: teens are not simply little adults; their motivations and experiences differ from ours. Our responsibility is to better understand those reasons and be there to help them write the stories that will empower them in their own development.

Attack of the Teenage Brain!: Understanding and Supporting the Weird and Wonderful Adolescent Learner by John Medina
Rebecca Gotlieb
Rebecca Gotlieb

John Medina, developmental molecular biologist and New York Times best-selling author, has written a book about how to parent and teach teenagers in light of what we know about adolescent social, cognitive, and neural development.  In Attack of the Teenage Brain!: Understanding and Supporting the Weird and Wonderful Adolescent Learner, Medina emphasizes that designing better high schools will require us to consider the development of executive functioning skills during adolescence.

Paradoxically, while elementary schools and schools of higher education in the U.S. are exceptionally strong, our high schools have mediocre performance by international standards. Investing in executive functioning, or the skills that help us effectively and cooperatively get things done, may offer our best opportunity for improving U.S. high schools, Medina argues. Countries whose high schools perform better than ours, also have adolescents with stronger abilities to self-regulate, switch perspective, and temporarily store and manipulate information—the three core components of executive functioning. Medina reviews research by Walter Mischel (reviewed here by Learning and The Brain previously) that shows that the ability to delay gratification, a component of executive functioning, can predict many aspects of children’s future personal, academic, and career success.

To understand how to capitalize on adolescents’ executive functioning skills, it is helpful to understand how the brain changes during adolescence. Using clear, vivid, and accessible analogies, Medina explains several aspects of adolescent neural development that have implications for how we teach them. For example, adolescents’ limbic areas—areas responsible for many of our emotional responses—reach mature levels before the prefrontal cortex, an area responsible for decision-making, planning, and inhibition. This mismatching maturational profile partially explains why adolescence is a time of great vulnerability, why adolescents are more drawn to rewards than deterred by adverse consequences, why they are sensitive to peer influence, and why rational decision-making is still a work-in-progress during adolescence.

In light of these developmental vulnerabilities of adolescence, how could we design better schools for teenagers? The answer begins with factors outside of school. Feelings of safety and strong adult relationships are critical for learning.  Indeed, adolescents in homes that feel safe have stronger executive functioning abilities. Using a parenting style (or teaching style) that both sets high expectations of children and provides large amounts of emotional responsiveness and love benefits students’ executive functioning greatly, and thus also their performance in school. Similarly, modeling adult relationships (e.g., between two parents) where conflicts can be resolved using calm and honest communication can offer these same benefits.

Exceptional teachers can buffer against the effects of unstable relationships at home, but there is no substitute for good parenting. To help parents employ an ideal parenting style and model a healthy conflict resolution style, schools should provide night classes to parents to help them learn to create more stable relationships at home. A complementary change would be for high schools to require social-emotional learning initiatives that include a sequenced progression through skills, active application of skills, and a focus on a few critical social skills (e.g., empathy). These programs have been linked to students doing better in school and enjoying it more.

Age fourteen is the peak onset of mental health disorders. High schools should be designed to help navigate the mental health challenges that arise during adolescence. For example, while fewer than 20% of teenagers spend more than 20 minutes a day in physical activity, exercise has been linked to cognitive skill, academic performance, and cerebrovascular density in key brain areas. Most importantly, exercise is about as helpful as antidepressants in treating depression. Medina argues that a gym should be the center piece of a school and sitting time should be replaced with walking time.

Starting school later in the morning to align with the natural shift in sleep patterns that occur during adolescence could help improve mental health and academic performance, and actually save districts money in the long run. Electronic and social media use, and especially the stimulation of electronic multi-tasking, may be contributing to high rates of anxiety in adolescence.  Mindfulness exercise can be an antidote, helping to regulate emotions and mood, improve focus, and reduce pain. Medina calls for the integration of mindfulness practices into schools and the creation of mindfulness rooms.

As exemplified throughout this book, Medina makes an argument likely to resonate with Learning and the Brain readers—cognitive neuroscience and education typically are studied separately from one another, but to support adolescents’ success and development, we need to consider multiple forms of development together. Indeed the neuropsychologically derived principles that Medina suggests are likely to improve adolescents’ learning and well-being. Parents, teachers, and school administrators would do well to head his advice.

Medina, J. (2018).  Attack of the Teenage Brain!: Understanding and Supporting the Weird and Wonderful Adolescent Learner. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.