A Challenging World for Today's Teens

Just a couple of generations ago, children learned at the knee of their elders within a social-emotional matrix of experience. This allowed the three executive systems to be activated, developed, and integrated during engagement with the analog environment. Today’s adolescents, most of whom have grown up on screens, have had far fewer of these neural-integrating experiences during development. Some aspects of their cognitive abilities have been developed (i.e., scanning, multitasking, information management) while others have decreased (i.e., memory, sustained attention, deep focus). A handful of face-to-face relationships have been replaced by scores of digital ones, and the development of a social identity has been added to, and sometimes replaced by a curated avatar. 

While the world of the teenager has gone through a radical change, the mentality of education, the structure of schools, and the idea of the classroom has remained static. Although screens fill the classroom, and sometimes even replace them, the expectations remain the same despite the fact that we have learned a great deal about brain development, and that the brains of students are no longer the same as they were twenty years ago. We can see this play out in something as trivial as the average school start time, which is typically quite early. While it might work for a lucky few, it’s a poor match for the biochemistry and development of many other students. Waking up early, being forced to engage in a rigid curriculum, with little physical movement and social connection, is at odds with the way we evolved to live and learn. 

The bias towards cold cognition in the classroom came into focus during the industrialization of our country, during which efficiency and quantifiable measures of success were prioritized above all else. Like a well-oiled machine, our kids would line up on a conveyor belt and work their way through a system that was designed to spit out a perfectly pressed child whose skills could be readily assessed and compared to his peers. What this system did not account for was the extraordinary variability in human intelligence. For every genius mathematician, there is a genius musician who speaks a different, equally valuable, language. Unfortunately, not every child will be given the chance to explore their aptitude for subjects such as music, kinesthetics, interpersonal skills, or linguistics, because they’re more difficult to standardize and assess and therefore less of a priority in the classroom. For this population of adolescents, school can become a profoundly stressful experience that leaves them feeling fundamentally broken, misunderstood and flawed. It’s no surprise that many of them will also be diagnosed with disorders such as depression and anxiety. 

What we’re essentially describing is the deprioritization of social-emotional factors. Our modern education system tells youth that there is one way to be smart, and we undervalue emotional intelligence, creativity, innovation, musical, leadership, physical, interpersonal intelligence, and artistry. When we fail to consider the sheer breadth of our EF, we run the risk of misunderstanding what a particular adolescent may need in order to thrive. In simpler terms, we might become so hyper-focused on the fact that they’re not very good at science that we fail to discover that they have phenomenal oratory skills and would make an excellent politician. In order to optimize education and give every student a chance to thrive, it’s essential that we consider the basic tenets of executive functioning. 

 We learn best when learning is:

(1) social

(2) experiential and not purely theoretical 

(3) relevant to our lives. 

If these factors aren’t accounted for, 2nd executive functioning may be lessened and the overall integration of all three systems will be compromised, leading to adolescent struggles that could easily be mistaken for attentional deficits, behavioral issues or a lack of intelligence. In reality, the first thing we should consider if an adolescent is experiencing challenges at school is whether or not they are learning in an environment that fosters connection to others, hands-on experience and relevant subject matter. If these needs go unmet at school, consider the possibility of getting the child immersed in another  environment such as boy scouts or theater, where a child is given an alternate outlet to explore their interests that is more aligned with the way that we’ve evolved to learn.