Summary Of Elizabeth Kolbert's The Terrible Teenagers

In Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Terrible Teens,” she asserts that teenagers take risks because of their brains. Teenagers are known for making impulsive decisions that may lead to tragic events. Kolbert believes that teenagers make rash decisions because their frontal lobes are immature, their nucleus accumbens are augmented, and their primate ancestors were also rash.
The frontal lobe of the brain is “responsible for planning, for self-awareness, and for judgement”(84) and they are the last to fully develop. According to neurologist Francis Jensen:
The brain is still busy building links between its different regions. This process involves adding myelin around the axons, which conduct electrical impulses. (Myelin insulates the axons, allowing impulses