Sex, Brains, and Video Games [Jennifer_Burek_Pierce]

"In this guide, Jennifer Burek Pierce provides a look at today''s teen through the lens of neurological, psychological, and educational research. Putting this research in the context of library services, she challenges librarians to question their assumptions about teen patrons and provides new answers based on research findings. Much as early literacy research informed library services to our youngest patrons, Sex, Brains, and Video Games outlines what others who work with adolescents have learned from their professional activities and how that knowledge can encourage new priorities and partnerships in youth services." "With further reading suggestions rounding out each chapter, this guide offers school, public, and academic librarians further ways of thinking about young adults and the services provided for them."--BOOK JACKET.

Sex, Brains,

and Video Games

A Librarian’s Guide to Teens in the Twenty-fi rst Century

Sex, Brains, and Video

appearing in this book, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, on the  accuracy or reliability of the information, and does not assume and hereby disclaims  any liability to any person for any loss or damage caused by errors or omissions in  this publication.

Composition by ALA Editions in Electra and Sans using InDesign 2 for a PC  platform.

Printed on 50-pound white offset, a pH-neutral paper stock, and bound in 10-point  cover stock by McNaughton & Gunn.

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American  National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed  Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.   ∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Burek Pierce, Jennifer.

    Sex, brains, and video games : a librarian’s guide to teens in the twenty-fi rst    century / Jennifer Burek Pierce.

t

For HS and MRB

my editor for a previous essay on adolescence, has proved a steadfast and gracious mentor in publish-ing  and  other  scholarly  endeavors.  Thanks  to  her and to publisher Ed Kurdyla for permission to revisit the chapter on adolescent sexual and reproductive health information seeking, which Scarecrow Press 

published in early 2007. My gratitude to American

Libraries editor and publisher Leonard Kniffel for 

many  years  of  kind  encouragement  and  advice, 

as well as his permission to include selected work first published in the magazine, is substantial. The patient  and  thoughtful  encouragement  of  Laura Pelehach,  my  editor  for  this  project,  is  likewise much appreciated, as is the attention of copy editor Cynthia Fostle. Beverly Goldberg and Andrew Ho provided  feedback  that  helped  me  move  forward with  confidence,  and  Bethany  Templeton’s  untir-ing  efforts  in  obtaining  articles  and  corralling  my errant  citations  were  essential  to  completing  this manuscript. Thanks, too, to Emily Pawley, who at Christmas 2005 told me to stir the mince pie filling and make a wish

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

t

s a friend and I planned a casual outdoor dinner one summer night, she offered the following head count: 

“We’ve  got  six  adults,  three  kids,  and  possibly  two aliens.”  It’s  not  that  she  anticipated  that  the  Mid-west might become a landing site for extraterrestrials. 

“Aliens” was her label for the teens of the household, who were as likely 

to be lured away from home by a spontaneous call from friends or simply 

to avoid the gathering even without competing invitations as to join us for our traditional Memorial Day barbecue. It was said affectionately and with laughter, yet this characterization of teens reflected a certain amount 

of bewilderment—and tolerance—for the changes that were taking place 

in their lives. It implied questions like Who are these young people? It  acknowledged  the  sometimes  sudden  and  seemingly  unpredictable changes in teens’ behavior. It suggested the difficulty of knowing what is going on in adolescents’ lives and minds. If this is how parents, present in their lives from the beginning, feel about adolescents, how are those of us who work in libraries, who may see teens only sporadically and for short periods, supposed to work effectively with them?

tions about adolescent development based on contemporary research. It draws on the fact that many individuals are asking questions about adoles-cent development. While having the potential to inform library services 

This book seeks, perhaps ambitiously, to address these and other ques-to young adults, much of this research is itself relatively young and in 

Introduction

A

to young people. At root, then, this book explains what others who work with adolescents have learned from their professional activities, how that knowledge might revise our thinking about teens, and how to encourage new priorities and partnerships in youth services

The Purpose of Young Adult

Services, Then and Now

    Library services to young adults should aspire to two fundamental     objectives: to engage young people through meaningful and ap-pealing responses to their recreational and informational needs, and to simultaneously  support  good  developmental  outcomes.  This  dual  pur-pose creates a balancing act for library professionals as they try to figure out what teens want while giving them what they need. These aims may appear  straightforward,  reflecting  a  common-sense  approach  to  serving young people, and in fact, advocates of youth services have long espoused these  aims.  Think  of  Samuel  S.  Green’s  description  of  youth  services when he wrote, “I would also have in every library a friend of the young, whom they can consult freely when in want of assistance, and who, in ad-dition to the power of gaining their confidence, has knowledge and tact enough to render them real aid in making selections.”1 Yet what it means 

ing environment for teens, while on the other, helping to make them into reasonable and healthy adults, has varied considerably over time. A quick glance at the profession’s past offers examples of the ideas librarians have had about youth services that contrast starkly with our own

to carry out the work of, on the one hand, making the library a welcom-In  the  earliest  years  of  the  profession,  librarians  were  concerned that their young patrons read too much and wanted the wrong sorts of books. The 1879 complaints of one Mary A. Bean against young people’s 

“craze for books” and “indiscriminate reading” were as laudable to her contemporaries as they are laughable to us.2 Bean’s concerns, now so far removed  from  the  mainstream  of  professional  librarianship  as  to  seem nearly alien, were very much congruent with the thinking of her time. These were the early years not only of librarianship but also of psychol-ogy. It would be close to twenty-five years before the first full-length book 

would become a prominent speaker at library and education conferences 

in the early twentieth century, cautioning librarians and teachers about  the damage that could come about as the result of young people’s reading  habits. To Bean and her contemporaries, adolescents were sometimes try-ing but not unsympathetic individuals who could be encouraged to like what was good for them by improving their taste from its youthful fixation 

on romances or adventure stories to an appreciation of the classics that showed  real  discernment.  In  other  words,  teens—who  would  not  have been  known  by  that  name  and  instead  were  included  in  references  to boys and girls—were unformed but educable, as long as they didn’t linger under the influence of the wrong sorts of books

Early  youth  services  librarians  in  this  country  were  not  hostile  to teens,  only  very  much  concerned  with  their  well-being  as  reflected  by their reading habits. There was dialogue about adolescent boys and girls and the ways their needs differed from those of younger children. Librar-ians strove to shape young minds in ways that would support the develop-ment of adult lives and careers, not unlike the way their contemporaries 

in Progressive Era reform worked to improve society by putting forward new  ideas  as  well  as  bringing  about  actual  changes  in  people’s  living conditions. Despite these advances, pleasure in light reading remained largely suspect because of its apparent failure to contribute to enlightened thinking. There was the potential that frivolous or racy books would not only damage young people’s futures in this life but also damn them in the next. In 1895, George Cole warned librarians that

Today, any librarian would say we now know better than Bean and Cole. We no longer worry that our books will corrupt young people or discourage them from seeking gainful employment by filling their heads 

as recent as the 2006 ALA letter opposing the Deleting Online Predators

Act of 2006 (HR 5319, 109th Cong.).4 We’ve turned, over the years, from guarding teens’ tender minds to launching them into a brave new world 

of information and entertainment resources. This stance is intended to reflect respect for the young person’s growing autonomy as he or she wres-tles to create an independent and newly adult identity

The professional literature in our journals and magazines extends this theme in other directions. There are expressions of concern about incur-sions against young people’s rights to privacy: Should parents be able to review library records to see what books their child has borrowed? Does this change when fines or replacement fees are incurred? Can parents limit the materials to which their child has access, whether this involves books with content of which parents disapprove or R-rated DVDs? Is it 

ies quietly do, to request special library cards that restrict their children 

a violation of professional ethics to allow parents, as at least a few librar-to checking out material from the children’s collection? Should parents 

or guardians be involved in reference transactions? Many writers in the profession have argued that young people’s rights merit absolute defense; some have even suggested that it may be parents against whom teens need 

ing to find help at the library is a specter that has been raised more than once. How could one argue with the idea of meeting young people on their own terms when the people most responsible for ensuring their well-being might harm them? These ideas about teens’ needs evoke a compel-ling image of the young person as independent, perhaps even abandoned 

to be protected. The hypothetical situation of an abused young person try-by  their  traditional  caregivers;  lacking  safe  places  and  well-intentioned advisors; without resources . . . aside from what might be found at the public library. It’s more than a truism to say we’ve come a long way since the profession started; it is indisputably true, and it is time to evaluate the ways our professional actions serve teens’ needs and interests

The philosopher and poet George Santayana famously observed in 

his Life of Reason, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned 

formation history—times when people were denied access to materials thought to be sensitive or controversial and times when people were pro-hibited from using libraries because of their age, their national origin, 

to repeat it.” In librarianship, we credit ourselves with remembering in-their politics, or the color of their skin. In an effort not to repeat those dark times,  we  have  articulated  goals  of  providing  services  to  all,  including young people. We have statements of user rights, with names that echo our most foundational documents of national governance. We promote access to information and freedom to read in a Library Bill of Rights and similar statements supporting individual opportunities for access. There 

is  training  in  serving  the  underserved.  These  and  other  activities  show librarians’ commitment to connecting young people and ideas of many sorts and in many forms, of meeting obligations to young people that oth-ers have neglected

mation overshadows other components of the profession’s past—chiefly, 

Yet this enthusiasm for equality of users and unfettered access to infor-an awareness of the relevant expertise of other fields. When psychologist 

G. Stanley Hall published his two-volume work Adolescence in 1904, some 

have argued, he invented both adolescence and adolescent psychology.5 Librarians were among those who considered the advice of the first ado-lescent psychologist as they grappled with efforts to serve and to guide the young people who entered their facilities. As the twentieth century wore 

on, efforts to understand teens persisted. A writer for Publishers’ Weekly in 

1929 observed, “Of recent years the adolescent girl has been much in the public eye. Her psychology, her behavior problems, her needs, all have been discussed at great length.”6 Librarians of that era were encouraged 

cence and the reform impulses of the Progressive Era engaged librarians’ interests in finding ways to support young people’s development

to follow these discussions. Together, the American discovery of adoles-ians, among whom even Bean and Cole could be numbered, would strike few of us as truly progressive. Yet as the Progressive Era unfolded, these librarians did something right in seeking out the ideas and advice of those whose research in the social and behavioral sciences would contribute 

Many ideas about youth services put forth by Progressive Era librar-to their ability to work effectively with young people. They understood that their own professional training could and should be supplemented 

by those who had other kinds of information about teens. They believed that their work with adolescents would be improved by seeking out ideas beyond the boundaries of their own field. Educators and psychologists were among the experts these professionals consulted, but these librarians also monitored prominent general-readership magazines that from time 

to time published commentaries about young people and books

temporary environment is most appropriately guided by the profession’s 

It has been argued that providing library services in a dynamic con-core  values  and  enduring  principles.  While  the  profession’s  past  and present values are far from irrelevant, I argue that professional service to young adults is far more complex than the ideals we espouse as librarians. 

being, librarians must have an informed understanding of adolescence. More than personal memories of that sometimes strange and awkward time, librarians’ sense of what it means to be an adolescent should derive from contemporary research that offers changing and even challenging perspectives  about  our  young  clientele.  More  than  knowledge  of  cur-rent young adult titles, the latest teen enthusiasms, or even the library and information science research literature should inform a young adult librarian’s professional practice. The work of other disciplines is essential 

To work toward the ends of engaging youth and encouraging their well-to understanding teens in the twenty-first century, and it can help us as we think about the issues involved in balancing our efforts to connect with teens and to support their transition into adult life

WHO IS A YOunG ADuLT?

A GLOSSARY

Toward the end of a recent ALA Conference panel for young adult librarians, one practitioner brought up this question: Who is the young adult? The problem, she observed, was that different people seemed to describe entirely different age groups when using the phrase librarians have adopted for patrons between the ages of twelve and eighteen What was a young adult librar- ian to make of this confusion? she asked How were young adult librarians to know when someone talking about young adults was actually talking about young adults? This librarian was cor- rect in noticing that the people who are called young adults don’t always belong to the group whom she intends to serve; further, the young clientele of young adult departments may be given different names as well.

Those outside of library and information science (LIS) who work with young people have different vocabularies that reflect the history and norms of their respective fields Many other dis-

ciplines, including public health and psychology, refer to the group we call young adults as adolescents Adolescence has been divided into three phases—early, middle, and late—to ac- knowledge the developmental differences between a thirteen- year-old and an eighteen-year-old Still, there may indeed be instances when other fields use our preferred term or the co- hort that an individual writer describes includes teens as well as slightly older individuals; however, the surest assumption when someone outside the profession uses young adults to describe

a group is that this person refers to individuals who are no ger of middle school or high school age To these and other re- searchers, young adults are eighteen and older; in other words, they are those who have rather recently gained legal status as adults in the united States The combined newness of their sta- tus as adults and their age relative to others in the cohort makes them young adults.

lon-Librarians’ choice of the term young adults came about in

1957 after years of using a variety of terms to talk about teens The early journal literature of the field discusses services for “in- termediates” and “older boys and girls.” Although it has been contended that the term teenager came about as the result of marketing and advertising campaigns following World War II, 7

variations on that phrase were in use as these early als sought to work with teens One occurrence was a 1922 sex education pamphlet that spoke directly to its audience of teens Margaret Edwards, recognized as a key figure in the develop- ment of modern young adult services, disliked the word One can hear both the newness of the expression and Edwards’s disdain for it: “‘Teen-agers,’ besides being a bit undignified, may sound patronizing or scornful and does not seem to include the more mature sixteen- to nineteen-year-olds.” Her assessment of the terminology for labeling her young clientele seemed resigned to its inadequacy: “Who are young adults? They are people in their teens for whom there is no adequate nomenclature.” 8 nonethe- less, the label has endured, and in recent years, its long-stand- ing meaning seems to be on the verge of changing, as tweens,

profession-or preteens, have become a market fprofession-or young adult books.

Professions Invested

in Adolescence: Information

Sources and Potential Partners

    Who are these people with interests in teens and their develop-     mental outcomes? What information do they have that can help 

us to help teens? Researchers in a number of disciplines have sought to learn  more  about  young  adults  as  media  consumers,  computer  users, health-care recipients, and even simply as growing and changing individ-uals. Similarly, educators share some of our concerns about young peo-ple’s literacy. These fields are identified and described briefly in order to offer an overview of information sources that may be useful to librarians. 

In some cases, practitioners in these fields may be potential partners for librarians who want to draw on content-area expertise to support outreach and other programming for young adults

Communication researchers are strongly interested in teens’ involve-ment with mass media. Their definition of mass

media encompasses tele-vision and radio, magazines and newspapers, the World Wide Web and video games, and even movies, music, and blogs. These researchers use diverse methods to see what programs and pages attract teen attention, what teens make of the media, and what effects media consumption has 

nificant interest. Consequently, communication researchers know about what media teens turn to and what their brains make of the information available through all sorts of communication channels

on teens. The processes by which media create their effects are also of sig-Additionally,  some  communication  researchers  focus  on  sonal communication, or the interactions that occur between two people 

interper-mine patterns of expression and barriers to effective communication. As aspects of teens’ distinctive development become recognized, scholars of interpersonal communication have begun to consider the implications of cross-generational conversation and related issues

or sometimes small clusters of individuals. These researchers can deter-Health researchers may be in schools of medicine or public health, in departments of nursing or specialty fields. There are also federal, state, and municipal health departments that collect data and carry out programs to ensure the public’s well-being. Collectively, these researchers and practi-tioners produce a simply astounding body of literature each year. Among the  massive  number  of  publications,  there  are  articles  concerned  with ensuring teens’ healthy development. Some of these materials address ba-sic health-care matters such as access to doctors and clinics, while others 

focus on the reproductive and risk-taking behaviors that tend to distin-Since  G.  Stanley  Hall  argued  that  adolescents  were  a  distinctive population who were undergoing a sort of rebirth that resulted in emo-tional and intellectual turbulence while the processes of change worked themselves out, psychologists have been interested in teenagers. In the twenty-first century, researchers in adolescent psychology have consider-ably more tools at their disposal than did the field’s pioneers at the start of the twentieth century. One specialized research area is neuropsychology, which examines “the relation between brain and human cognitive, emo-tional, and behavioral function.”9 Some neuropsychologists use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and other new technology to capture images of the brain that provide insights into which parts of the brain are active or changing at different times. Other kinds of studies are also contributing to 

a changed understanding of adolescence. Because much of this research 

is still new, researchers sometimes find themselves reporting observations that  contradict  previous  thinking,  but  they  are  not  yet  able  to  provide specific recommendations that might guide our interactions with teens. Nonetheless, the recent and ongoing work in psychology significantly re-vises the theories of Piaget and other developmental psychologists whose models have been used to explain youth development

ploys a range of methods and comprises numerous special areas. Some work taking place includes scrutiny of newer genres, like graphic novels, 

Education research, like the research undertaken in psychology, em-ering the effects of video games on young people’s cognition. These find-ings regarding literacy and learning are of potential use for librarians.These  are  some  of  the  fields  on  which  LIS  practitioners  can  draw 

as means of encouraging reluctant readers. Some researchers are consid-in their efforts to provide meaningful and appropriate services to young adults. The studies conducted in these areas alternately build on and re-vise what we know about young people. Given the nature of the revisions that are suggested by this research, though, understanding what is taking place outside the profession is increasingly important if we are to work to-ward ensuring the well-being and healthy development of the teens who visit our libraries. It has been observed that youth literature is a vast and 

interdisciplinary  field;  this  turns  out  to  be  true  of  working  with  young readers as well.

Understanding Adolescence,

Here and Now

    There  is  increasing  attention  to  youth  development,  and  there     are many efforts to follow the emerging understandings of young people, not just in academia but in the popular press as well. Magazine covers and news stories call attention to the ways that young people in the twenty-first century differ from previous generations, if not because of what these teens and tweens know and do, then because of what is newly known about them. A glance at newsstand offerings shows publications 

like Harper’s and even the New ers, including Newsweek and the Washington Post, have made a recur-

Yorker joining the conversation that oth-ring feature in recent years. There are discussions of how the brain grows and changes, whether girls’ and boys’ brains harbor sex-linked differences, teens’ sleep patterns and alertness, and the social environments in which adolescents  operate,  including  online  activities  carried  out  through  

social  networking  sites  like  Facebook  and  MySpace.  One  2006  New

Yorker cover showed a back-to-school-destined youngster, head filled not 

ics, or even the only-just-finished summer vacation; instead, this young man’s brain was divided among adolescent preoccupations like Scarlett Johansson, AOL Instant Messenger, and manga, with a relatively small allocation for algebra lurking beneath the current, buzzy, electronic sub-jects. Inside, the magazine contained stories on the Mozart effect and in-fants’ acquisition of knowledge, plus cartoons on adolescent ennui. That 

with the once-conventional subjects of reading, writing, and mathemat-

same month Harper’s—best known as an intellectually left-leaning com-mentator on politics and current affairs—presented a print panel on the effects of video games on young minds. Occasionally the library literature provides a glimpse of these issues, too. It seems to be acknowledged every-where that young people form a distinct culture because of what happens 

in their heads

Librarians  must  attend  to  these  conversations  that  are  taking  place 

in a range of venues. In fact, the diversification of the places where such information can be found—it is no longer only the province of scholarly journals that demand a technical vocabulary—has increased the acces-sibility of evolving ideas about adolescence. Information and ideas about 

young people’s development are crucial to developing services and pro-ing the conclusions that scientists and other scholars are forming so that 

is time for the community of youth services practitioners to begin evaluat-we can apply the latest knowledge to our own work with young people. In the end, doing so may mean raising our own questions about young adults 

in addition to considering others’ answers

This book examines the ways in which the perspectives of other fields that  investigate  the  conditions  and  the  outcomes  of  U.S.  adolescence can speak to our aims of working with young adults in libraries. It strives, where appropriate, to use empirical research to answer questions about the nature of young adulthood. It calls attention to matters that should raise questions about our assumptions about teens and our resulting prac-tices.  It  points  toward  change,  but  identifying  all  the  elements  of  that change is beyond its scope. Instead, it outlines key areas of interest, gives attention to leading scholars and their work, and recommends resources that librarians might enjoy and find informative. In all this, it suggests further ways of thinking about the beings librarians call young adults

Library Association letter opposing the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006, 

  7.   Thomas Hine, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager (New York: Avon 

be  so  technologically  adept  that  they  are  capable  of electronic  multitasking  with  ease,  astonishingly  pro-miscuous yet overprotected, overscheduled yet unprepared for intellectu-ally rigorous testing, and more. Their youthful virtues and vices receive, if not the sort of outcry that has arisen in the past when teens evinced values and behaviors that differed from their parents’ ideals, then certainly a fair amount of media attention. Not all contentions about youth cohere, nor 

do the portrayals always stand up to scrutiny. Some media outlets turn our attention to the extremes of youth culture, and others offer researchers’ more subtle perspectives on the same activities. Sometimes a phenom-enon will seem to be genuine, based on media depictions of real young people and supported by experts whose advice may speak to parents and teachers but less so to librarians. Yet it is equally important for librarians to understand and apply emerging research on adolescence in their service planning, collection management, and other work with teens. Our abili-ties to welcome young people into our facilities and to engage their inter-ests can be enhanced by other professionals’ information about teens.Most librarians would acknowledge that whether because of media reports  or  actual  interactions,  our  views  of  adolescence  are  changing.  

We  think  of  young  people  differently  in  part  because  teens  think  of  

Myths and the American Teen

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temporary U.S. society emerged from concerns about how to sell things to teens. However, researchers with less commercial interests also sought to understand the implications of a maturing and technologically inflected adolescence; they have been slower to enter the marketplace of ideas, less vociferous in contending for our attention

of our recent questions about what it means to be an adolescent in con-ploring some of the contemporary research that likewise seeks to change the way adolescence is understood. This chapter highlights a few particu-lar claims that are promoted by the media and that will be examined fur-ther in the chapters to follow. These ideas might seem counterintuitive, yet recent research indicates their sense and their ability to help us make sense of the adolescents whom we try to work with in our libraries

This book responds to shifting cultural ideas about adolescence by ex-MYTH 1

Teenagers Are All But Adults

    News reports relay complaints about so-called helicopter parents     who seem to hover over their adolescent children instead of al-lowing them to be independent. The idea that a young person who drives, works part-time, and is on the cusp of legal adulthood isn’t capable of making  certain  decisions  independently  strikes  some  commentators  as incongruous. Yet research in multiple fields indicates (while not denying that parents can be overinvolved in teens’ lives) that every adolescent isn’t exactly an adult-in-waiting. New information about brain development and awareness of changing societal norms are two factors that have influ-enced researchers’ thinking about adolescent development

Of all the ways that ideas about adolescents are changing, perhaps most significant is the recognition that adolescence is in fact a time of profound change, intellectually and in other respects. Once psychologists believed that teens had acquired fundamental cognitive skills by the time they entered middle school. These days, psychological and sociological research raises the threshold at which young people transition to adult capabilities. New research has found more extensive brain development 

Although  the  research  getting  the  most  attention  pertains  to  teens’ brains, sociological observers see the environment in which young people mature as more demanding, too. It also has been observed that “as young people adapt their lives to a more complex world, it becomes more dif-ficult to say at which point they have reached adulthood. There are more paths to be taken through life and few maps to guide youth on the in-creasingly complex transition to adulthood.”1 For multiple reasons, then, concepts of adolescence and maturity are becoming extended

HEALTHY COMMunITIES,

HEALTHY KIDS

When the urban Library Council conference met at the Chicago Public Library in early December 2005, keynote speaker Dr Fel- ton Earls of Harvard university advocated envisioning neighbor- hoods as “small democracies to produce healthy environments for children to grow up in.” Doing so, he argued, was a step toward ensuring that adolescents would experience fewer risks

to well-being as they mature.

“If you want to understand something about human opment in urban environments, you have to come to Chicago,” Earls said His research, which shows a complex interaction be- tween neighborhood environments and health, cautions against stereotyping and easy generalizations Earls and his research team sought to explain apparently unrelated illness and mor- tality rates, ultimately finding patterns related to the strength of neighborhoods He noted that socioeconomic factors alone did not account for a “growing disparity” within the city and cited instances of neighborhoods that were poor yet cohesive and

devel-middle-class neighborhoods that were experiencing problems related to lack of parental supervision of teens.

Healthy neighborhoods possess a quality Earls refers to as

“collective efficacy,” meaning that residents work together for their mutual well-being “Libraries have to help us stabilize this fragile system of how people become active in their communi- ties,” he said “But young people have to identify themselves as citizens.” Producing healthy and successful adolescents, then, means working with all members of a community.

MYTH 2

Teens Hate Their Parents

    When  I  worked  as  a  young  adult  librarian,  there  was  a  par-     enting  resource  book  that  routinely  provoked  laughter  in  the  

department. It was called I’m Not Mad, I Just Hate You. Although the book  

focuses on mother-daughter conflict, its title seemed emblematic of parent- adolescent conflict. Everyone recognized that irrational yet deeply emo-tional conflicts developed between parents—or authority figures gener-ally—and teens. Despite the sense of recognition that develops around the idea of difficult relationships with teens, most problems are not perva-sive and the vast majority of teens see their parents as supportive. Parents, 

in  fact,  typically  enhance  their  teens’  abilities  to  cope  with  discomfort during adolescence

For  example,  a  study  about  young  people’s  proneness  to  worrying found that when teens confided in their parents, they were less likely to report concerns about peer pressure and popularity. Additionally, teens who  talked  with  their  parents  reported  feeling  less  worried  than  those who turned to their peers.2 Elsewhere, surveys have found that teens do speak with their parents about issues like sexuality and regard them as a preferred source of information about these sensitive matters. Similarly, parents have been found to be very influential in the personal decisions teens make. Overall, statistics indicate that nearly 80 percent of teens be-lieve they have good relationships with their parents

A library director whom I have interviewed was adamant about the threats  parents  might  pose  to  their  children;  she  insisted  on  the  need 

to protect children’s borrowing records and other library activities from parents who might not act in their children’s best interests. Recognizing that the situation she feared is not typical seems like an important step in 

understanding the lives of the young people we serve. Librarians need to consider how they might protect children at risk without assuming poten-tial malice in all parent-child relationships. Finding ways to encourage dialogue between teens and parents, instead of assuming disconnection, would  reflect  the  types  of  efforts  other  professionals  invested  in  young people’s development are making.

MYTH 3

Adolescents Lead Unhealthy Lives

    It’s not  hard for a reasonable individual to suspect that adoles-     cents’ health is jeopardized by multiple sources. With their still-developing abilities to make sound decisions, they may fail to negotiate difficult situations, such as peer pressure to experiment with illegal drugs 

or to be a passenger in an intoxicated driver’s car. News reporting on the serious problems of bulimia and anorexia abounds. Then there are the less dramatic matters, such as diets that increase young people’s risk of diabetes through poor food choices and weight management

In  many  respects,  though,  teens  are  in  good  health.  Recently  leased federal statistics show that teen pregnancy rates have dropped, for example.3 Additionally, adolescents die at lower rates from car accidents,  suicide, and homicide than do their slightly older, newly adult peers. The same trend is true of drug use, alcohol consumption, and cigarette smok-ing. Current public health data acknowledge variations by sex, race, and ethnicity but show teens also tend to be more likely to have health insur-ance than those who have achieved status as legal adults.4 This research holds true for young people between the ages of twelve and seventeen, with sometimes dramatic differences between their health status and that 

re-of young people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four.5 While public health professionals continue to strive for gains in all age groups’ health and well-being, they find that at least in comparison to those who are only a few years older, teens seem healthier. Enhancing teens’ health remains an important goal

MYTH 4

Teens Are More Technologically

Savvy Than Adults

    Teens’  predilections  for  technological  devices  are  well  docu-     mented,  yet  the  question  of  how  well  they  navigate  electronic  

it conveys is less than perfectly understood. Scholarly studies report that teens’ attention is fragmented by their efforts to manipulate multiple elec-tronic devices at the same time, that they have weaknesses when it comes 

to evaluating the materials they retrieve online, and that basic mistakes—like spelling—can prevent younger users from finding what they want on the Web. While teens may have a facility for text messaging and an incli-nation to multitask, there are real areas of weakness in their technology skills. Librarians’ skills and enthusiasm for understanding young people’s technological aptitudes are well suited to addressing teens’ weaknesses in managing the information they obtain electronically

MYTH 5

We Can Understand the Interests of Twenty-

First-Century Youth by Paying Attention to the Entertainment Media Marketed toward Them

    A  great  deal  of  writing,  past  and  present,  supposes  a  common      youth culture. From Disney and other animated films to MySpace, 

it is often assumed that young people consume certain media products that result in common understanding and shared cultural references and reflect enthusiasms that aren’t necessarily shared by adults. These assump-tions are true, up to a point. Researchers have come to recognize that the national and international popularity of works like the Harry Potter books 

or other top-selling media is the exception rather than the rule. There is increasing cause to doubt the extent of tweens’ and teens’ core entertain-ment interests

Increasingly, the nature of the contemporary media market reflects 

a phenomenon called segmented programming—the idea that instead of 

putting out television programs, for example, that appeal to as broad an audience as possible, programming proliferates so that more specialized programs attract particular kinds of viewers. This practice has become a defining feature of television. In a survey of thousands of middle school-ers, researchers saw little overlap among demographic groups’ television preferences. In other words, there were significant differences between the programs girls tended to watch and those favored by boys; further, viewing  preferences  differed  by  race  as  well.  The  survey’s  researchers noted, “There is little evidence of a common teen culture across race and gender among adolescents in this sample.”6 In other words, the increas-ing numbers of minority characters were being seen by other minorities, 

rather than by white youths, and the on-screen presence of female char-More recently, analysis of teens’ use of social networking sites also revealed some key differences. While 55 percent of all U.S. teens had presences on sites like MySpace and Facebook, site use differed. Older female teens were more likely to have profiles and to maintain connec-tions than were male teens, and they reported that they used online ven-ues to maintain friendships rather than to seek out new ones. Both sexes reported that online flirtation via such sites was relatively rare, and over-all, the majority restricted access to their profiles. Still, researchers saw distinct, gender-related preferences in teens’ site selections, which they attributed to the extent to which sites reflected real identities and con-nected  to  actual  geographic  locations.7  The  number  of  teens  who  use  social networking sites, then, is significant, but so is the number who do not use these much reported-on sites. Research results also indicate that use of Facebook or MySpace varies by age and sex, so a young woman’s use  of  a  social  networking  site  may  mean  something  entirely  different from a male peer’s use of the same site

Together,  these  research  findings  indicate  some  of  the  ways  teens differ from one another. Popularity does not equal universality or even sameness. In seeking cues from popular culture, librarians will want to recognize that they are selecting for particular kinds of teens rather than for all young people

Our interests in engaging teens with books and other media are best served  by  good  information  about  adolescence.  Dispelling  myths  and misperceptions  is  a  starting  point  for  dialogue,  with  young  people  and with one another, about the ways librarians can support tweens and teens. With recent population figures indicating that there are more than 16 mil-lion teenagers in the United States, we can expect that the generalizations about their lives will challenge us to understand them as individuals

FOr FurThEr rEADING

DeBord, Karen. “Parenting Teens.” http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/fcs/human/pubs/ parteens.html.

This list of myths about teens offers strategies to parents for managing seemingly  unruly or unpleasant behaviors but is still relevant to librarians who may find  themselves confronting some stereotypical actions from young adult patrons.

Males, Mike. “Debunking the 10 Worst Myths about America’s Teens.” Teacher

Librarian 28, no. 4 (April 2001): 40–41.

This list of ten myths about teens focuses on perceptions of violence and other  antisocial behaviors. Males counters these ideas with statistical data and argues  that adults should work with teens to ensure a good future for all individuals Shoemaker, Kellie. “Top Ten Myths and Realities of Working with Teen Volun-

teers.” Voice of Youth Advocates 21, no. 1 (April 1998): 24–27.

Compiled by a librarian, this list of myths frames a discussion of considerations  for  working  with  teens.  Assessing  teens’  interest  levels  and  relationships  with  their  parents,  as  well  as  coordinating  volunteer  supervision  with  other  library  staff, is advised.

Tkacik, Maureen. “Interns, the Founts of Youth.” New York Times, July 30, 2006, 

sec. 9.

Marketers seeking sources of authentic perspectives on contemporary teen life  are enlisting young people as interns, or in the words of this article, “around- the-clock muses and ambassadors to youth culture.” What do others think about  these adult efforts to capture the essence of what it means to be a teen by trying 

Differences in Adolescents’ Television Diets,” Journal of Broadcasting and

Electronic Media 48, no. 2 (June 2004): 272.

  7.   Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden, Social Networking Websites and Teens:

An Overview (Washington, D.C.: Pew Internet and American Life Project,  2007), http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/198/report_display.asp.

t

Taking On the Teen Brain: Scientific Perspectives on

Adolescence

ne thing is readily apparent about the field of brain research: it is growing and changing all the time. Re-cent  years  have  seen  the  proliferation  of  studies  in this  area,  in  part  because  of  the  availability  of  new means of analyzing the brain that add to and modify what is known about this central, controlling organ. It’s not unheard of for an idea that was tentatively accepted to be rejected—or at least modi-fied—only a few years later. At the same time, because the data are so new, there are areas in which scientists are not yet able to draw conclu-sions that can be applied in a practice-oriented environment. A diverse group of researchers is involved in creating new, more sophisticated un-derstandings of the adolescent mind. Work done by specialists in psychol-ogy, psychiatry and neuroscience, of course, is key to what we know about how the brain develops. Yet, as has been cautioned elsewhere, “even the wide range of recently uncovered changes will not, in the end, prove to 

be the full story of the dynamic teenage brain.”1 This means any number 

tion environments, yet there are important caveats about how we might apply new findings

of things for those of us who work with adolescents in library and informa-It  has  been  argued  that  the  brain  changes  taking  place  during  olescence “provide librarians with an opportunity to turn young adults into lifelong readers and library users.”2 In actuality, there is little direct  scientific evidence for this claim. It might be more accurate to say that 

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an adolescent uninterested in reading during these formative years would 

be rather unlikely to acquire an interest in novels or nonfiction later in life. A teen who enjoys reading, on the other hand, is likely to continue reading in adult life. Thus, the changes taking place in the teen brain may represent an open door, a time when new paths for information process-ing can more readily be developed

These ideas, which result from the work of researchers in multiple specialties, challenge us to begin rethinking how we engage young peo- ple’s  minds  in  libraries  and  other  information-rich  environments.  The  science-based findings may encourage us to revisit our policies, our pro-gramming,  and  even  our  one-on-one  interactions  with  younger  users. This does not mean science will simply tell us what to do. It reflects the idea that new information, relevant to though not produced by our field, can offer us an enriched context for how we think about the needs of younger users. Any number of LIS studies have observed teens’ informa-tion-seeking  activities,  relying  on  interviews  or  journals—often,  teens’ own  accounts  of  their  intentions—to  clarify  researchers’  observations. Now the resulting findings can be augmented by new ideas about the un-derlying cognitive changes that play a part in user behaviors. Respecting teens’ voices and their perspectives on library services, while still impor-tant, should be supplemented by emerging scientific understandings of the complex changes taking place inside adolescents’ heads

We  have  new  research  that  helps  us  to  reflect  on  whether  the  vironments we construct in our libraries enhance youth development as well as they might. We can consider if even simple changes in our in-teractions  with  young  people  could  encourage  the  maturation  of  their decision-making and communication skills. In other words, with more information available to us, we are better positioned to ensure that the uses of libraries that we promote are truly in teens’ best interests. Are we 

en-supporting their long-term development and their short-term satisfaction 

with  our  facilities  and  resources?  Such  an  approach  can  be  construed 

as polarizing because it suggests that what teens want may not be good for them, and vice versa. Rather than opting for such ready and even re-ductive answers, we should consider how our young constituency might gain from reevaluation of our ideas about their capabilities and needs that takes emerging brain research into account

entific research will one day tell us exactly what kind of programming 

This does not mean that scientists will run our libraries or that sci-is  appropriate  to  newly  understood  phases  of  brain  development.  Few  

researchers endorse this sort of biological determinism. Many prominent brain experts, though, argue that the implications of newly demonstrated changes  taking  place  during  puberty  and  early  adulthood  should  alter the way we think about adolescence. Those ideas are worth librarians’ attention.  We  are  learning  that  the  brain  is  continually  changing,  and that knowledge, in turn, directs attention to the nature of the environ-ments that teens experience during this uniquely important phase of de-velopment. Youth advocates have asked that we design library spaces that will appeal to adolescents and that we consult teens during the process 

of planning services for them. Scientists, by offering insights into factors involved in young people’s perspectives on and responses to the world around them, can help librarians evaluate what teens tell us. Their re-search has the power to challenge and refine our ideas about teens’ use of libraries’ services and resources

THE FIELD OF nEuROSCIEnCE

Many of the researchers who offer us new ideas about teens’ brains are neuroscientists According to the Society for neuro- science, neuroscience is a relatively new yet burgeoning spe- cialty linking biology, medicine, and other disciplines Essentially, neuroscience is the scientific study of the brain More specifi- cally, the society says, “neuroscience, the study of the nervous system, advances the understanding of human thought, emo- tion, and behavior.” The society identifies three key areas of re- search undertaken by neuroscientists: “Through their research, neuroscientists work to describe the human brain and how it functions normally, determine how the nervous system devel- ops, matures and maintains itself through life, and find ways to prevent or cure many devastating neurological and psychiatric disorders.” It is a complex type of research, in part because a hu- man body contains approximately 100 billion neurons From its modern origins circa 1969, the field has expanded significantly

in the twenty-first century.3

Change and the

Teen Brain

    What  is  the  single  most  important  finding  to  emerge  from  all      this  research?  Chiefly,  it  is  the  repudiation  of  the  assumption, which had prevailed for many years, that the teen brain is essentially an adult brain. Researchers agree that while most previous developmental models assumed that the brain changed little once young people arrived 

at adolescence, a plethora of studies have debunked this once-bedrock notion

The  old  view  held  that  major  change  was  a  feature  of  the  child’s mind, and teens differed from the very young by their intellectual similar-ity to adults. It’s easy to surmise how research informed by observation of behavior could create this perception. Readily apparent developmental milestones  that  reflected  cognitive  change—say,  language  acquisition, represented first by the utterance of sounds, then the approximation of words, the joining of words into phrases, the construction of sentences,  and  so  on—happened  in  childhood.  The  cognitive  changes  in  young adults—such  as  the  development  of  a  larger  and  more  sophisticated vocabulary  or  the  realization  that  nuances  of  meaning  aid  creative  ex-pression—seemed less dramatic in comparison to those of the early years. 

As  researchers  in  this  area  have  remarked,  “The  cognitive  changes  in adolescence  are  not  as  significant  and  dramatic  as  the  ones  present  in early childhood . . . and adolescence marks a refinement, rather than an emergence, of these abilities.”4 Research conditions reinforced the idea that because teens looked and seemed more or less capable of acting like adults, their brain development was nearly completed. And so the devel-opmental stages proposed by psychologist Jean Piaget ended in early ado-lescence with the acquisition of abstract reasoning skills or the ability to reason about ideas as well as actualities. Many scientific theories mirrored this thinking about the adolescent brain as a more or less fixed, rather than fluctuating, subject

lated research indicates that the changes taking place in adolescent brains are dynamic rather than subtle. Studies have clearly demonstrated periods 

These days, courtesy of new tools and techniques of study, accumu-of significant growth in adolescent brains, notably shortly before the onset 

of puberty. These changes have been compared to the physical growth spurt seen in adolescents’ bodies, but researchers note that the processes manifesting themselves in adolescence begin years beforehand.5 This re-search has produced contentions that some stereotypical teen character-

istics—among them impulsive or risky behavior, explosive responses to even mild comments, a night owl’s reluctance to rise early in the morn-ing, and episodes of forgetfulness—are linked to changes in structure and chemical levels in the brain. Additionally, it is believed that this results in changes in motivation. The teen brain is in transition as the proliferation and  then  the  pruning  of  neural  pathways  provides  teens  with  new  ap-proaches to problem solving. It is not enough, though, for those pathways 

to be available; teens must learn to use them, and to use them routinely, 

in order to achieve patterns of thought and action that will mark them as adults. This is often a process of trial and error. In short, teen behavior is linked to ongoing brain development

haviors on ongoing brain development. It has been pointed out that some adults,  whose  brains  presumably  have  completed  these  late-occurring phases of development, can still be prone to rash and at times unpleasant conduct,  so  such  behaviors  cannot  be  linked  simply  to  developmental factors.6 The ways biology responds to environment have also been noted. That is to say, environmental conditions may either facilitate or discour-age biological inclinations. One example is the contemporary environ-ment,  which,  through  its  electric-powered,  multimedia  entertainment options, allows teens to engage their natural drives for stimulation and late-night activity with relative ease. Still, since the changes taking place 

Yet researchers are cautious about blaming all troublesome teen be-in adolescence both facilitate and limit cognitive activities, a great deal of teen behavior may be affected by these conditions. Key to understanding these new findings, though, is seeing them as contributing, rather than controlling, factors

The brain development that takes place during adolescence increases young people’s abilities to understand the world around them and to re-spond reflectively, yet this development also has limitations. Thinking of development as a transitional process affected by environment and other conditions, rather than as an on-off switch that suddenly and dramatically changes teens’ perceptions or skills, is crucial to understanding teens’ atti-tudes and actions. Adolescent brain development, then, is only one factor contributing to young people’s behavior during a time of life that is often characterized as turbulent or unpredictable

When I’ve talked about some of these findings with my students, they are quick to observe that younger children have some of the skills and intellectual abilities now thought to be points of weakness for teenagers. I once described research that found disparities between adolescents’ and adults’ abilities to interpret facial expressions. To many of the students in 

It  is  common,  perhaps  even  desirable,  to  think  of  young  people’s development  as  a  trajectory  of  increasingly  sophisticated  abilities.  The way we talk about early childhood—a baby’s progression from crawling 

flects this sort of assumption. Yet young children sometimes continue to depend on earlier habits of locomotion and speech rather than making immediate and exclusive use of their newly developed skills. Adolescents, too, are likely to waiver between moments of maturity and behavior that belies their nearness to adulthood. In other words, just because you see a teen demonstrate good judgment in one situation doesn’t mean that she will do so every time

to walking, from social smiles to babbling before uttering first words—re-Development  involves  multiple  processes  that  do  not  begin—or end—at the same time. Also, some aspects of brain development recur; they are not completed in a single execution. And as scientists have cau-tioned,  new  cognitive  skills  are  only  one  component  of  teens’  actions; changes in the brain make an increasing array of activities possible but do not cause a particular outcome

Researchers are still working to understand fully the implications of their discoveries to date. Some things are clear—specific parts of the brain are still in development even as teens reach the end of the period that librarians have labeled young adulthood. Some things are not, such as all the specific entailments of that ongoing change. As the producer of a documentary examining the work of National Institutes of Health neuro-scientist Jay Giedd and other researchers observed, these findings enrich our understanding of adolescence as a time when cognitive development 

is  taking  place,  making  it  “a  time  of  both  heightened  opportunity  and risk.”7 After scientists marvel at the implications of the new knowledge they are gaining, they note that the ability to draw conclusions about the implications of these changes is, as yet, limited. Some of the earliest data that pointed to the malleability of the teen brain came from researcher Giedd’s analysis of data revealed by MRIs in 1997. The first report on this data, the work of Giedd and his co-investigators, was published in 1999. That  data  showed  significant  growth  at  a  time  when  such  growth  was  assumed to be essentially completed, causing a powerful reexamination 

of assumptions about brain development. In the scientific world, the time 

we had supposed and to understand the full meaning of that knowledge, which is still being generated

ians to do with young adult users, whose brains are more complex and malleable—and  more  vulnerable—than  we  had  previously  thought? What sorts of services and resources are appropriate for a young person when  the  physical  structure  of  that  individual’s  brain  is  still  construct-ing itself? Librarians who advocate for teens have argued, essentially, that these young users should be offered full access to all materials, included 

Questions necessarily arise from new conclusions. What are librar-in discussions about meeting their needs, and respected as adults. The assumption has been that young people’s maturity meant that they were capable of making sound judgments about their information and recre-ational reading needs, even in the potentially controversial and sensitive matters of sexuality and drugs. Do Giedd’s findings, which suggest that brain development doesn’t finish until nearly the midtwenties, indicate that our faith in teens’ decision-making abilities is overstated? In other words, are our post-1967 professional ideals and policies congruent with post-1997 research on adolescents’ cognitive abilities? Giedd has, for in-stance, said that given the state of knowledge on the adolescent brain, it seems inappropriate to ask teens to make adult decisions.8 What does this conclusion suggest about librarians’ professional ideals, which recognize teens’ rights to access any sort of material and to have privacy that may exclude even their guardians’ scrutiny?

sider  while  informing  themselves  about  revised  notions  of  adolescent development. The widespread research taking place offers many pieces 

At this time, these questions are ones that librarians will have to con-of new information about invisible processes occurring in the teens and tweens who visit our libraries. At minimum, it gives us real reasons to re-visit our own assumptions about this group of library users. Additionally, 

it asks that we not oversimplify or make reductive arguments based on its earliest conclusions. Some scientists can offer us ideas about what might 

riencing; these ideas may yet be modified as research continues. Other researchers are, for now, indicating only that there are grounds for contin-ued examination of teens’ development

go awry in interactions with teens because of the changes they are expe-WHAT’S In A BRAIn?

In a recent conversation, a colleague who studies learning and the brain told me, “Many areas of the brain are engaged in even the simplest of tasks.” Yet there are still reasons for thinking about the brain in terms of its parts For instance, recent neuroscience findings indicate that not all areas of the brain undergo develop- ment at the same time Historically, the brain has been under- stood as comprising different areas, which have been further defined by the specific functions that they are associated with Those who haven’t been in a science or biology class in some years will see that there are some significant differences in the way scientists now think about the regions of the brain and their functions Acquaintance with the regions of the brain is useful when considering recent scientific research on the brain since those reference points are still used, even as the thinking about their purpose and scope changes In almost every instance, the ways in which the brain functions are more complicated than had been thought In response, many researchers prefer to talk about the brain in terms of distributed functioning and neural pathways The brief glossary below, then, necessarily simplifies scientific thinking about the brain in the interest of indicating how research has progressed in recent years While neither com- prehensive nor fully technical, it identifies and describes some areas of the human brain.

The cerebrum is the upper part of the brain, which is divided into left and right hemispheres The cerebrum plays a role

in much conscious thought and is extremely important to processing conscious thoughts.

♦ The frontal lobe is one of four lobes whose parts make

up the cerebrum It is responsible for logic or reasoning, including the abilities to consider future events and to think about how to obtain goals, as well as for voluntary movement Scientists have recently identified the frontal lobe as one area that undergoes critical development in young people.

♦ The temporal lobe is a region used in speech and ing tasks, as well as in recognition.

hear-♦ The parietal lobe processes sensory input, including pain signals The ability to pay attention and to plan actions are associated with this part of the brain, as is language.

♦ The occipital lobe is a region associated with processing visual information.

The hypothalamus is a small yet important part of the brain that regulates numerous functions, including sex and sleep.

The thalamus plays roles in motor control, as well as in ordinating information among other parts of the brain The cerebellum is associated with the control of movement but also with aspects of thinking that involve “precise timing, such as playing a musical instrument.” 9 Recent research has indicated the importance of the cerebellum’s role in coordinating thinking, whereas older models understood it

co-as primarily involved in controlling physical activity.10 It also plays a role in the processing of social cues and, some scientists contend, is the last part of the brain to mature 11

The pons serves a relay function, communicating information between the cerebrum and the cerebellum.

The medulla oblongata is also sometimes referred to as the brain stem and is involved with communication functions

neurons are nerve cells involved in conveying information Dendrites are branchlike structures that allow the transmission

of information among neurons.

Synapses are a particular sort of small space between neurons across which information is carried by chemi- cal impulses The chemical signals are then converted to electrical ones in order to continue transmission.

Myelin, a fatty substance that covers connecting tissue in the brain, aids the speed of transmission “An electrical charge travels a hundred times faster on a myelinated axon than

an unmyelinated one, reaching speeds of more than 200 miles an hour,” according to a science editor for the new York Times Levels of myelin change dramatically during adolescence 12

Readers who want to learn more about brain terminology

or to check the meaning of additional technical terms may go online to consult the Society for neuroscience’s “The Short An- swer: Definitions for Common neuroscience Terms.” 13

Insights and Explanations:

What’s Going On in a

Teen’s Brain

    We’ve all had moments of witnessing teens choose some seem-     ingly inexplicable course of action, of wondering what was go-ing on in their heads. Now, scientists are able to offer some insight into exactly that, in part because MRIs allow researchers to see adolescents’ brains actually at work while posing no risks to the subjects. To make a discussion of such research manageable, we can observe that the brain research of interest to young adult librarians concerns aspects of the teen brain that can be categorized as pertaining to structures and to resulting behaviors. Work has been done to understand what the parts of the brain are doing during the adolescent years of change. Where does growth or other development take place? There are also studies of what capabili-ties or behaviors can be connected to the identified areas of the brain. What happens when changes take place during adolescence? Admittedly, this framework simplifies research paradigms; there is certainly work that crosses even these simple boundaries. This emphasis on structures and behaviors,  however,  ignores  disciplinary  lines  in  an  effort  to  focus  on  hypotheses and conclusions of interest to librarians. Doing so follows the lead of researchers in this area who seek interdisciplinary connections to enhance their knowledge by learning from each other.14

Few researchers argue that the brain alone determines teen behavior. Cognitive capabilities, although admittedly significant, are just one factor 

that shapes young people’s actions and interacts with environmental fac-Giedd’s research is often cited as groundbreaking. His work involves taking MRI scans of adolescents’ brains at regular intervals in order to assess changes taking place as young people grow and mature. This re-search project began in 1991, and by 1997, some of the first indications 

of the profoundly different truth about the nature of brain development were becoming apparent. The findings, created in conjunction and con-sultation with other researchers who relied on the same data, are the ba-sis for revising our understanding of teens’ brains. Giedd demonstrated that adolescents’ brains undergo recurring cycles of development, chiefly through alternating cycles of proliferation and then pruning of connec-tions. Changes were observed largely in the prefrontal cortex, or the part 

of  the  brain  associated  with  reasoning  and  making  judgments,  with  a round of rapid growth beginning shortly before puberty. This has been interpreted as indicating that the executive control center of the brain is still being formed. Key tasks that rely on the frontal cortex include plan-ning, foreseeing consequences, organizing, and problem solving.15 To see the part of the brain that is involved in all these activities as in the midst 

typical teen behaviors. Other conclusions resulted as well

of change, rather than fully operational, offers new perspective on stereo-One  fact  determined  by  Giedd  and  the  other  researchers  who  amined a succession of brain scans of young people was that the brain takes a long time to mature. Researchers now believe that the brain ac-quires adult form when an individual is approximately twenty-five years old. Another researcher, also a parent, has commented, “With teenagers, it’s especially hard to remember that their brains are developing because they look like adults. . . . But even though teenagers have the bodies of adults, they are not adults.”16 Far from being nearly finished at the start 

ex-of  adolescence,  the  brain  is  still  forming  connections  needed  to  make controlled and reasoned decisions. Teens, especially younger ones, are still developing brain mechanisms that will allow them to check impul-sive responses and to think rationally when confronted with exciting or compelling situations. As Giedd has said, “This whole concept of adoles-cence being stretched out longer, not just socially, but biologically was an important impact from the imaging studies.”17