Larry Steinbergs latest book is Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence. (rromer/Flickr)

We generally think of adolescence as ending at about age 18. But Larry Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University, says new brain science is starting to reveal why teenagers seem to stay teenage through their mid-twenties.

Steinberg joins Here & Nows Jeremy Hobson to discuss the findings in hislatest book, Age of Opportunity: Lessons from the New Science of Adolescence (excerpt below)

He also explains why the adolescent years are so developmentally crucial, and what parents can do to raise happier and more successful kids.

On adolescence lasting longer

If we look at the average of age of puberty now in the United States, girls are starting puberty around 11 or 12 years old. If you look at when young women are getting married in the United States, the average age is 27 or 28 years old. So were talking about a pretty long span of time and the same time interval lengthwise for boys as for girls. We know that when people go through puberty the sex hormones associated with that affect the brain as well as the rest of the body. We can mark the beginning of adolescence in one way by looking at when thats happening, so that really is determined when someone goes through puberty. On the other hand, we can look at the end of adolescence in terms of when the brain is not maturing so much anymore and that seems to be going on until people are in their mid-20s or so. Roughly speaking, we can look at this period and bracket it as going from age 10 to age 25.

Onhow education should change in light of this

One thing that we should do in school is to focus more on what experts are referring to as non-cognitive skills and that would include things like perseverance, determination and grit. If you think about the challenge about becoming an adult now, you need to be able to stay in school for a very long time. You need to be able to stay in school through the completion of a four year college degree to get a decent-paying job, and that requires that we help young people develop the capacity to delay gratification and to persevere, even at tasks that theyre maybe not so crazy about.

On the opportunityof adolescents malleable brain

One of the main themes of the book is that were discovering that the brain during adolescence is very malleable or very plastic. What that means is that the brain has a heightened capacity to change in response to experience. That cuts both ways: on the one hand it means that the brain is especially susceptible to toxic experiences that can harm it, but on the other hand it means that the brain is also susceptible to positive influences that can promote growth. Thats the kind of opportunity that I think we need to think about in relation to adolescence and its an opportunity I think were squandering.

Original post:
The New Science Of Adolescence