This article tries to explain why teenagers are crazy. Basically, it has to do with an "imbalance" in the brain between the areas that control social and emotional information (socioemotional system) and the parts that regulate behavior and makes the ultimate decisions (cognitive-control system).
The socioemotional system becomes more assertive during puberty, while the cognitive-control system gains strength only gradually, well into our twenties.
According to Steinberg, the socioemotional system, becomes very active during puberty allowing adolescents to become more easily aroused, experience more intense emotion, and to become more sensitive to social influence.
He explains that as a result “There is a window of vulnerability in teens between puberty and mid-to-late adolescence in which kids have already started to experience the increased arousal of the socioemotional system, but they don’t yet have a fully mature cognitive control system,” he says. “Because their cognitive-control system is still not fully mature, it is more easily disrupted, especially when the socioemotional system is quite excited. And it gets excited by the presence of other people.”
“The presence of peers increases risk taking substantially among teenagers,” writes Steinberg in his article. “In one of our lab’s studies, for instance, the presence of peers more than doubled the number of risks teenagers took in a video driving game. In adolescence, then, not only is more merrier -- it is also riskier.”
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