Teen Dream

she can see flames shooting up. She says, she sees herself falling off the edge of the world, and she is amazed that she survived, not the outside world, but the inside one. Parents of almost every child find the age of puberty or early adolescence full of problems. The knowledge that these difficulties are normal and usually only temporary,

helps fitter and family friction into more constructive channels. There's no doubt that the teenage years are marked by turmoil, but this betwixt and between stage is a relative newcomer, born out of the twentieth century, when increasingly wealthy nations did away with child labor and instead focused on education. By the nineteen fifties, adolescents emerged as its own bona fide phase of development. The adolescent is self centered, bills

responds to every situation that's concerned with how it affects him. Today, we treat teenagers like another species, beings fumbling for the portals into adulthood. We admire them, we fear them, but mostly we forget that at our core, each of us is still falling off the edge of the world. We are still that teenager. In this episode, we talked to

a neuroscientist about the teenage brain. As a result of the increasing activity of this biole logical stress system, UH, teen and young adults seem to have a more robust reaction to stress. And we talked to some intrepid teens about what it feels like to be on the edge of adulthood and what the media gets right and what

the media gets wrong. Well, of course there's a whole other experience compared to back then, but there's even a different experience because of your gender or like like your race, like it goes even deeper than just being simply that age. But first, let's take a step into the inner sanctum

of the teenage girl with photographer Ronya Matar. Have a photo in the book about like a little teen age girl in the Palestine refugee camp, and she's she's wearing a headscar but she's addressed exactly like a picture in her closet of Hannah Montana, as she's striking the exact same places Hannah Montana, And there was something so endearing about that. So I photograph girls in the United States

and in the Middle East. I mean, for me, this was also the whole project about identity, but it's also about my current identity at my daughter's identity as being from the two cultures. And it so happened that anytime you might put the news on now you're going to hear about some terrorists, something happening in the middles or about refugees, and we forget that there's the normal people

behind the scenes are just the same. So for me, this work became really on focusing on that universality through the girls and Ronne's book A Girl in Her Room, An essay by Susan Minett describes the bedroom as the first cocoon a girl will create for herself. This is

a chrystalis. If we could see inside, we would witness one of the most extraordinary changes in the animal kingdom metamorphosis the girls in a way are really growing up and trying to to kind of get a sense of who they are and how they are perceived in the world by their friends, by other adults. By I mean, they're really trying to come to terms with their identity. And I said that the room was the place where they would experiment with that. What they surrounded themselves on

the walls, stuff on their bed everything. It was such an intimate setting. The impetus for a girl in her room came from Ronney's then newly emerging teenage daughter. When my daughter turned fifteen, especially saw the change in her. She had been a townboy soccer player before, and all of a sudden, she was just like becoming this girly girl who I felt I hardly recognized. So I kind of became fascinated with with the changes she was going

to and thought I was one of photographs something. And then her friends would come and I started kind of photographing them, and then I realized that these girls are in the case of my daughter, because I don't know some of them as well, but my daughter was like a whole different person that I had never seen, and they all kind of started to sound all was the same.

It's the same expressions and ponalities and the same straight hair, and um, so I decided, you know, maybe it would be more interesting for me to photograph each girl by herself. And when I started photographing each girl, I kind of started originally with that friends of my daughters or daughters of my friends, and um, it so happened that we did it in their bedroom, and I quickly realized that

this was my project. The room not only provided sanctuary, but it reflected aspects of the girl's personality back to the camera. When the girl was around in her room, it was she was more she was being herself. Second, I could see that there was such an interesting, really organic relationship with this with the girl in her space. And Ronne's book of photos Susan Mine Rights Pink gives

way to glitter, stuffed animals, to figurings. Pictures of animals are replaced by pictures people and with objects no longer selected by a parent. Then to the she adds her own creations, and soon the walls are taken over and the closets in the bed. The teenager's room is her cave.

So perhaps these scenes of girlhood morphing into womanhood are so compelling because they reach across time and connect to all of us who, at one time or another we're grasping for who we were or who we wanted to become. You know. It's something very interesting happened because at that point I was really interested in photographing girls in this country and because this is where I lived and where

my girl, my daughter's growing up. And then somewhere as I'm doing this project, it's really struck a chord with me, like I was those girls when if I gave earlier in a different country and different culture, but I was I was the same, and there was something This is when it tissed me at the whole universality of it, and I decided to include girls in the Middle East. But it's exactly what you say, like, um, it put me back into my teenage here just like something. There

are things that never changed. And maybe the pictures on the wilds are of different rock stars, but I also had pictures of rock stars back then. I mean I had something a little different happening. As I was growing up doing the living in Civil Wars, I was collecting sharpnell and bullets, bullets also from the street like whenever they was fighting. The next day I would go out with my friends and little collectors, and they were also stayed in my room. But this was also part of

the identity I was growing up. The team's geographical locations in socio economic status varied widely, but still there were more commonalities than differences among them. The cover of the book, her name is Chris Pilla. I love this photo because you you look at it and you really think this is a young woman in the United States or anywhere. You would never think this is a living new girl.

She's blonde or faith blonde. She's so she has a gigant to take photo of Marlin Monroe behind her, and she has this kind of attitude playing down, which is for another kind of universal teenage girl in her bedroom attitude as and and it shows people off a little bit because people assume that if she's going to be from the Middle East, she has to be covered or oppressed of blah blah blah with the whole kind of rhetorically here all the time, and that's not the case.

There are other markers of teenage universality beyond pop culture expression. And what was interesting is even in the refugee camp and anywhere it felt like there was always the mirror

and often the laptop and Facebook. And for me, these were like in some way the outside world coming into the room, or because the mirror is like okay, all they're kind of seeing how they want to portray themselves to others right in some way, and and Facebook is the way they come indicating with the outside words from the comfort of their bedroom. In this sense, mirrors and

social sites like Facebook are conduits to identity. Think of all the images and expectations that team girls are inundated with now, think of all the attendant anxieties that come along with living in a time where the gaze has intensified. But they put on the wall is often what they

want to be. And there's another young woman, her name is Fianna, and she surrounded herself with all these beautiful models in her wall, and there was something painful about that in some way, and and she said something like, you know, as I was getting photographed, I kept thinking how do I look? And compared to the pictures on my wall. We tend to think of teenage girls is armored up in their makeup and their defiant stances. But as Ronya points out, that's often the condition of vulnerability.

I found with the the gut to have that they have this armor for the outside world, and if you take the time to really be with them in the room and kind of whatever, you see how vulnerable they are. This was really a revelation to me. It was all

the girls. There was another girl in the book as well, and her name is Dizzy, and she was wearing a sweater, and as I was photographing and she got more at these, she showed she took off for a sweater and I could see that she had cuts on her arms, and and she's somebody who when I saw on the street, looked like somebody who had build an armor, and she had, you know, she had the attitude you might think off a teenage girls, and all of a sudden, when she

took off that, I'm like, oh my god, she's she's struggling. And it was really actually very powerful moment to me because then she told me, I do want to photograph them because when I look at them, it reminds me of what I overcame, where I was, and where I am. So there was something also very powerful about that that's also very vulnerable. Photographing the girls gave me a portal into teenagers that helped her to reconsider her own children.

With me spending so much time with them and really building that trusting relationship, I could see the vulnerability and how hard it is to be a teenage girl. And it really made me so much more understanding of my own kids in some way, to give them more space in some way and to often ignore this kind of um attitude that I could have worried about otherwise, because I'm like, Okay, no, this is this is just part of growing up and they have to do that part

of cutting the cord. And I'm their mom, and these young women I was photographing there's no way their mom could have taken the photos I took. So it was something that really made me understand that quite a bit. One thing that's interesting is as I'm photographing them, I'm really bonding with them after the point that I think I'm one of them, and I'm would pass the mirror and I'm like, oh my god, what am I thinking? So what just wron? You want you to take a

way from what she saw through her lens. Some people have a harder time looking young girls being photographed. All of a sudden, people associate also of uh, you know, like, okay, there's sexuality and those I'm like, there's nothing sexual. It's it's there's something empowering about owning up to being a girl and too. You know, you could be you could go plase soccer the next day, but you still are

owning up to your body changing and all that. And there's something I feel like, it's important for me to look at the work with respect that the girls deserves. To wear her hair and clothes, according to the latest style is much more important than to wear them in the most becoming ways. She's not mature enough yet the world knows best, and she wants to be sure of her place in the world. And the Wired article a

troubling adaptation the beautiful teenage brain. David Dobbs writes, quote in scientific terms, teenagers can be a pain and ass but they are quite possibly the most fully crucially adaptive human beings around. Without them, human beings might not have readily spread across the globe. In this segment, we talked to Elaine F. Walker about vulnerability and the teenage brain. Early teens are years of uneven development, that are spirits of mental energy as well as physical and at other

times nothing seems to be happening. Research on adolescent brain development, brain function and behavior is an area that is very active right now and we have a lot to learn. I'm Elane Walker and a professor of psychology and you're a science at Emery University. For thirty years, Elaine has been conducting research on risk factors for aarious mental disorders,

especially schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. And guess what being a team can be a risk factor, depending on, of course, genetics, but also the kinds of stressors teams are exposed to. Not to mention certain drugs. Certainly, at this point, there's plenty of evidence that adolescents are more responsive to certain emotional stimuli than either younger children are adult. And then there's the stress response as regulated by the hp A

axis or hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access. The main thing is that cortisol, the stress hormone, is released, and the brain gets wind of this hormone and tells the hypothalamus and pituitary glands to chill out, which both puts the body on high alert, but make sure that it doesn't go overboard. The problem is when there's a persistent elevated cortisol released that left unchecked, can lead to changes in brain struck

and behavior in and of itself. That normative increase in cortisol release may make adolescence a more vulnerable period because the stress system hp A axis is ranting up its activity. It's basically one part amped up emotional response to stress and one part dicey environmental conditions along with the brain still under renovation state that could present a tipping point.

The fact that so many psychiatric disorders have their peak onset period during adolescents in young adulthood is probably a function of the fact that brain maturation during adolescent is playing a role in triggering the manifestation of vulnerabilities. This means that for teens who are at the risk of schizophrenia, puberty could set the stage for the disorder, and hints

of it can emerge in something called prodromal symptoms. Symptoms that are associated with heightened risk for latter schizophrenia include subtle version of the defining features of schizophrenia and and other psychotic disorders. Uh The individual might report that they think fromtimes that they're hearing their name called, but when they check, there's no one there, and they attribute that

perceptual anomaly to just their imagination. Turns out that those who go onto full blown psychosis have higher levels of cortisol, have exposure to more stress, and are more likely to use cannabis. The thing about this that's so fascinating is that the same underlying plasticity that sets the conditions for vulnerability to brain changes like psychosis. Maybe the saving grace for the team who can be identified early on this work is still in the investigated stages, so many of

the studies have not yet been replicated. However, it does appear that the likelihood that an individual will develop a psychotic disorder can be reduced if they are provided with cognitive therapy after they begin to show the prodromal sign. This kind of neuroplasticity is in itself a big risk by nature the idea that to ride the edge of development, you have to ride the razor's edge of a shape shifting brain, negotiating the twists and turns of risk, reward,

and emotion. Let's watch some of these youngsters as spend Friday afternoon and evening we'll see what some of the common troubles are. Oh no, I don't think they're ready for these hot tracks. Good Ready. Box Communications is a multimedia and journalism program for uncensored teen publishing and self expression. Four vox teams took over the studio to record their thoughts on gender, how they're represented in the media, and how media like you know, high school musical shaped their

ideas about adolescence. My name's Catherine, a k A. Cat On eight seen my glorious gap years ending gloriously. My name's Manuel. I am eighteen years old. I turned nineteen on Sunday. I graduated from North Atlanta High School at last year, and I also took a gap year. My names some Eira. I'm seventeen. I go to the Cap School of the Arts. I'm Caleb. I'm eighteen. I'm girl in status now I go to Best Academy High school. What do you think the media gets wrong and right

about being a teenager? I don't know. I see a spectrum really like I either see like teen celebrities like Kylie or like local news teenagers that are only like you know, oh you know, they were body slapped by a police officer. In the classroom or you know, there was something crazy on the streets. What I see our minority teens only being reported on when something bad happens, and um, when non minority teens white people. Um, you see things like these four college girls died in a

car accident. Well that's that's sad, of course, but that happens all the time. Why are you following that? And of course here in Atlanta we have a huge operiods and jug abuse, but it's really only reported on minorities who are doing it, when in reality it's the wealthier areas of the city that have the highest use. When I think about teams, I think about how we're portrayed in movies. Yes, as if like every single high school

in America has this major peg mentality. Gods to your loaners, here, jogs, here, the popular kids. I'm like, that never worked at my school. I just want to say that high school musical let me down, because I thought it was going to be exactly like that. It's not musical schools all boys, But I just there are, like you, all the jocks, and then there are the nerds and the geeks and like

the people that just don't do anything at all. But I think that, like from from what I've been able to experience from high school, Like, even though there's division, I feel like teams now aren't judging like millennials aren't judging each other based on like characteristics. More teams are really now judging itself off of like what's our resume look like girl? Or like what you're doing, or like

you like your status? Like it isn't really about like I mean, physical appearance is still always going to be something teams you know, if you think or not. But other than that, I mean the whole like jocks versus nervousing. That is, today's teams seem to be on the whole better adjusted. In two thousand and fifteen, the Centers for Disease Control released the results of the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey and found that today's teens smoke less, drink less,

and have sex less in the previous generation. For instance, ten point eight percent of teens today smoked cigarettes twenty years ago. That was thirty four point eight percent. Today's teens are also forty six percent less likely to be in strength and teenagers twenty years ago. In fact, they're twenty one percent less likely to have ever tried alcohol at all, and yet they just can't shake the reputation

that they're overdoing it, especially emotionally. What adults have said in my life like, um, when I overreact about things, Um, they say, because by the time you're an adult, the things that we think about are much are like small things to them, like all that petty stuff that goes on in school, that small stuff. At some point it's

kind of like it's non existent, like an adulthood. So they don't really according to at least when my adults like adults, But I feel like adults really just like something. Adults probably just lied to you because adults have been justice petty teenager. I mean, since social media is huge, adults are just as petty on Facebook as we are petty, oh gosh, Like they're making memes just like we are, and they're laughing at all the same things that go down,

just like we are. And if adults are exposing themselves as petty and social media, even as a mirror points out, they tell teens that the little indignities of life don't matter. What exactly does it mean to be in an adult anyway? For me? Adulthood isn't necessarily turning eighteen or getting a car or a bank account. It's how you carry yourself. It's how you react to situations, how you adapt to things, how how you express yourself, and how you treat others. Yeah,

that's that's basically how I view it. As an adult, you're only pushed to build relationships for other adults who have opportunities for you. So understanding that whatever you say or whatever you do has a consequence to it. I mean, I think that's what adult means. Sometimes it's hard to argue what adult hood means because you know, like people are human, so they're gonna they're gonna slip up sometimes. Yeah, Like adulthood has so many different nations to so many

different people. Yeah. I think I'm pointing to say, is that adulthood has nothing to do with your age. I think that's something that we all kind of agree on. Yes, I remember when I turned eighteen, I'm thinking, oh my god, there's gonna be this amazing flash of light, gains superpowers. I'm gonna say, save the word. I was just so in my imagination. I'm sorry, but like, but like, truthfully, I feel the same way that I felt when I was five, when I was ten, and I was twell, like,

there's no grand transition to this. One day you just look up in your eighteen and the first question, I'm like, oh, I'm an adult. And then I'm like what, No, Like, wow, okay, new transition. Is there an an instruction? Man? This leads to a discussion of expectations. I guess from the African American point of view, as a black man, you know, you're supposed to go out what's supposed to do and come home and bring home the money to support your family.

Now I completely agree that, I mean from from the base, from the baseness of that, as a man, you're supposed to do that. But I feel like, then, well, well I'll take you along adding a black man to that. From what my family has shown me what a black man is supposed to be, I feel like in society and I'm not I'm not playing the victim here because I don't like playing the victim here, but black men are really like I'm not even gonna use exercise because

that's just such a huge and loaded word. Yeah, but I feel like black men have to do even more than just what a regular let's just say white man has to do. I mean, I feel like our image is always under attack. Kleen feels the pressure of holding up the mantle of being a black man to project and work to attain a positive image that his white male counterparts are already impuged with. And this is very much part of the culture of patriarchy in our American culture.

We're still definitely living under this patriarchy that men have to be this way and do this and women follow afterwards, which I personally would like to challenge um on my in my personal life and in family. I know my mom she likes the idea of the patriarchy man doing this, but I know, I think that's kind of boring. I think it is two And like I feel like my mom at times like she would want for a man to like be able to, you know, do all of those magical things that a man in America is supposed

to do. But I feel like I feel of the day and she feels like, well, I could really do this all by myself exactly, and what is and I hate to be the person, but like what does it mean to be a man or what does it mean to be a woman? And stuff like that. That's really the truth of it. Women can do the same things men can do. UM from from the female perspective and from what my family UM I believe expects from me. Is that you know, they want me to stand tall

and hold my own ground. Like you know, they firmly believe in the fact that there are things that women can do then men can do. So they hold me. I think, I feel like they hold me up to some pretty high expectations, which I feel like is both really amazing because they have such faith in me, but it's also a little constricting because what if I want to go off and do something else, and so it's like, m well, then I feel like it's two things to that. Like one since we grow true, I mean, that's a

decision that we get to make for ourselves. But then too, I feel like with the teenagers of today, I feel like that like the lines between men and women are completely blurred. So what do teens want from their parents and society? What you experience in life is letely different from what somebody else has experienced alive. So don't push your expectations or what you know or what you think

somebody should know onto everyone. If you enjoyed high school and you did the typical prom prom queen, prob king things like that. That's cool, but let some let us as teens be us, let us discover ourselves without your interference. And it's great that you know who you are. But I would like to experience my life and maybe be better or not as great doubt. Yeah, guide on the sign at stage on stage. Manuel's now and his second semester at Oglethorpe University. We reached out to him to

see what his thoughts are about current events. Hi, Julie Lass has changed since we last spoke in June. Here's some of my follow up thoughts. There is that political correctness that went out the door when the whole election started, and people are just you know, covering it up with oh, the economy is bad, this and that. But at the core of it, it's still this American thing, this American racism. I mean, there's I hate to say it, but sometimes

there's the there's nothing more American than being racist. If there's nothing else that I want for myself, it's just to be treated like a human being. Um. Right now, we don't know what's going to happen next with Trump in office m M m M. One of the most poignant stories we tell about ourselves is about emerging from the chrystalis of childhood into adolescence, a fleeting time when

we lived our emotions like a fever dream. That's because it's a time of radical transformation, one that we need not just to have the courage to take a risk to survive, but to change the world. A Stuff of Life has written an executive produced by me Julie Douglas and co produced by Noel Brown. Original music is by Noel Brown and editorial oversight is provided by contributing producer

Dylan Fagan and Head of production Jerry Rowland. This episode also featured music by Tristan McNeil, Aaron Grubbs, and Dylan Fagan. If you're wondering about the instructional clips for parents raising teams, those are from the nineteen fifty three film Age of Turmoil from archive dot org. We'd like to thank Ronya Mattar for walking us through the minds and spaces of teenage girls. You can find her book, A Girl and Her Room and stores and learn more on Ronya Matar

dot com. Thank you to Elaine F. Walker at Emery University for explaining the wonders and the pitfalls of the teenage brain. And many many thanks to our team participants from Box Team Communications Caleb Anderson, Manuel Portillo, Catherine Boyd, and Amra Dischaber for the adults out of the studio and recording your insights. You can find out more about Box Team Communications at vox A t l dot com. If you like what we do here at the Stuff

of Life, visit us on Facebook and Twitter. In the meantime, you can email us at the Stuff of Life at how stuff works dot com.