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This is one of the more damaging pop culture beliefs of our times. Probably worse than the pop culture interpretation of Dunning-Kruger. It's mostly wrong. Here

• leereeves 1y ago
  It's an oversimplification to be sure, but based on solid science. There's no hard line "with seemingly magical properties" at 25, but there are enormous changes between 16ish and 25ish. The author you cited agrees, on the same site, in a different article: > A growing body of research strongly suggests that brain development continues well into people’s 20s and beyond. ... There is strong scientific consensus that people’s decision-making abilities can evolve between their early and late 20s https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/teen-brains-neuroscience-justice-law-supreme-court.html https://slate.com/technology/2022/12/teen-brains-neuroscienc...
  • Jach 1y ago
    That's a good followup article, but it doesn't really contradict anything and the myth is still a myth. So no, it is not based on solid science, and the whole framing should be discarded because it will just be used to rescue the hard line oversimplification. (fMRI research by itself is also not solid science; it can definitely be a useful tool and can support things, especially if paired with other behavioral and developmental science, but it has many flaws with methodology in interpreting data as well as often being statistically underpowered. At least the papers themselves are typically better than press in using appropriately uncertain language. e.g. an imaging study mentioned in the article found huge variation in actual age with a "maturation index", showing 8-12 year olds can have the same maturity as 25-30 year olds, the r^2 for their asymptotic growth curve was only 0.555.) Some things that are better supported by multiple lines of scientific research, to quote two consecutive bits from the second article: "young people’s general cognitive skills, including their ability to reason, don’t change much after the age of 14 or so." "What does change with age is the ability to reason while distracted; emotions and peer pressure are more likely to hamper decision making in teens and early twentysomethings." These things are really outside of the pop idea of "your brain isn't fully developed until 25".
    • leereeves 1y ago
      > Some things that are better supported by multiple lines of scientific research, to quote two consecutive bits from the second article: "young people’s general cognitive skills, including their ability to reason, don’t change much after the age of 14 or so." "What does change with age is the ability to reason while distracted; emotions and peer pressure are more likely to hamper decision making in teens and early twentysomethings." Yeah, that's pretty much saying the same thing I posted. "Young people’s general cognitive skills" (SAT and ACT scores) develop early and "don’t change much after the age of 14 or so." "What does change with age is the ability to reason while distracted; emotions and peer pressure are more likely to hamper decision making." In other words, "Good judgment isn’t something [teens] can excel in, at least not yet." By the way, I don't know if you noticed, but what I posted wasn't a popsci article, it was from Stanford Children's Health.
      • Jach 1y ago
        No, I really don't think it's accurate to say that the line about peer pressure and emotional distraction having more of an impact on teens than adults, which is grounded in research on risk-reward behavior in presence of peers, is just "in other words" the same as the claim about teens not being able to excel in good judgment. That's a huge leap and not supported. Teens can and often do exercise good judgment, including in high-stakes or emotionally charged situations. They often fail, too, but so do adults, even sometimes adults who "excel" at it. A key phrase in the Slate quote is "more likely to hamper" -- this is important and careful wording, because context matters, both in teens and adults. Sometimes a specific context (like presence of peers) matters a lot more in teens. Yes, I did notice the source, and I found that more unfortunate because it's using Stanford's name to peddle crap. It might not be a literal popsci magazine piece, but it's peddling the same popsci flavored falsehood about how the brain isn't "fully developed" until age 25 or so and it follows the same popsci tropes of grossly oversimplifying, exaggerating, and using science words to sound legitimate while discouraging actual scientific inquiry. The article's actual audience is layman parents, not even the general public, and clueless ones at that if they need to be reminded about things like "become familiar with things that are important to your teens". As another example, its claim of saying "Adults think with the prefrontal cortex ... Teens process information with the amygdala" is not just grossly oversimplifying, it's just wrong. Both use both. It's just a very bad article.