5 Ways High School Really Does Suck (According To Science)

4 Teenagers Experience Stress as Being More Stressful

Like Grandad always says, these damn kids today don't know how good they have it. They act as though their lives are so hard even though they've never had to deal with a mortgage, or with yelling at people to get off their lawn. But there's a reason why teens are so whiny about their relatively insignificant problems -- quite simply, they actually do feel stress more strongly. It's another symptom of the not quite fully formed "risk vs. reward" part of the brain we mentioned above.

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The part of the human brain that makes you stop and reconsider doing stupid shit is called the prefrontal cortex. It regulates decision-making and helps control impulses. So let's say a girlfriend or boyfriend breaks up with you, and in your emotional distress you are considering doing something that could get you thrown in jail (such as spray painting the word "SLUT" on his or her car). It's the prefrontal cortex that lets you stop and look into the future and weigh whether or not a criminal record is worth the short-term satisfaction of turning that Honda Civic into the Slutmobile.

"Dude, quit fucking around and hand me a dictionary. If we do this, we do it right."

Now, when the cops arrest an adult who has done something like that, there's a good chance he or she was drunk -- alcohol messes with the prefrontal cortex. But in a teenager's brain, that part is still growing. It's more fragile and sensitive to stress -- you can put a stressed-out teenager under a brain scan and watch his prefrontal cortex activity shut down. And with it goes his ability to accurately calculate risk.

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So when the dad goes to pick up his kid at the police station after hearing that he got caught pooping on the lawn of the math teacher who gave him a bad grade, the dad may be tempted to say something like "What are you, high?" (since narcotics also mess with the decision-making part of the brain), but he doesn't realize that a stressed-out teenager's brain is working with impaired judgment. It's not just a failure to listen to all of Dad's lectures on the subject.

"What did we tell you about dongs and babies?"