Immature Brains in Charge of Deadly Serious Stuff
Although the brain stops growing in size by early adolescence, the teen years are all about fine-tuning how the brain works. The brain finishes developing and maturing in the mid-to-late 20s. The part of the brain behind the forehead, called the prefrontal cortex, is one of the last parts to mature.
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Those of you with kids or even grandkids know exactly what this statement means. This statement holds great truth with serious implications.
If anything, social media has made this worse. Our kids have been granted great power during their most immature teen years and the implications mean that “bad stuff happens.” It seems, even as they hit their early 20s, there is a lot of maturing needed.
Consider the news story of the week. 21-year-old Jack Teixeira of the Air National Guard appears to have been able to access some ridiculously high level security information. Recalling my own active duty security briefings, the favorite phrase was “need to know.” So how in the heck would a too-young and obviously immature airman need to know information that is so sensitive it is wrecking our country’s foreign policy with other superpowers.
The harsh reality is we task very young and mentally immature people with some insanely important duties.
I vividly recall, as an Airbase Hospital physician, dealing with recently arrived Airmen, fresh from training, living in the dorms. It reminded me of the most rowdy of college freshman dorms. The same folks we entrusted to safely handle high powered nuclear weapons were engaging in risky behavior which boggled the imagination.
“Let’s just hope there is good supervision,” I thought.
Now, we have several problems emerging. Military deployments are more frequent and longer. Recruitment troubles mean we are not necessarily getting the “cream of the crop.” As we rely more on the military to get us out of trouble, the tasks for each active duty member increase. The responsibilities increase. Does this mean the supervision has diminished?
…And, based on only my pure opinion, social media is everywhere and it is wrecking the brains of our teenagers and young adults.
Age 25 or 26 is the age we throw out as the time when brains, especially the prefrontal cortex, mature. Is social media impairing this?
I cannot get past the fact that this 21-year-old that we now universally consider as a horrible traitor seems…well… just a kid.
I know what my kids were like at this age. I’ve seen a lot of kids at this age. Many are more mature than their years, but far too many have displayed awesomely irresponsible behavior. They act without thinking. They do really stupid things. Even the “best of kids” get into trouble because they just are not thinking. Flash forward as they approach 30 and they are different people. They are responsible and they resemble real adults. Often, I barely recognize them.
Without a doubt, this person will spend the rest of his life in jail. Is that appropriate? There were some far older and higher ranking people who should have known better. Yet, they will probably get off easily.
Which brings up the issue of Nurse Practitioners. We know that doctors don’t go unsupervised until they hit age 30 or beyond. What does Google say?
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics… the nurse practitioner age range starts between 20 and 24 years…
Yikes!!
“Now, we have several problems emerging. Military deployments are more frequent and longer. Recruitment troubles … we rely more on the military to get us out of trouble … Does this mean the supervision has diminished?”
I think it might be tenuous to link the increasing infantilizing and dumbing of the 20-something’s in the military without first examining that bent organization on its own.
This is not the Cold War where we at least had faith that the senior political and military leadership were on our side. That is demonstrably no longer the case, and it is evident in a military that is fast becoming an anti-Constitutional defender not of the citizens, but of the state. There is not a sense of unified purpose, because it is obvious that there isn’t one, and the troops are now as likely to be sent into a war where we have no strategic interest, or for more nefarious aims at home. The troubles that the military has been required to get us “out of” are those that a traitorous administration and senior officers got us into in the first place.
Youngsters ARE different now, but so is this military, each to our detriment. As a sociological concern, physicians may have some useful comment in flailing youth (and consider our guilt in promoting such). But giving the military a de facto pass by establishing it as a worthy standard by which we might measure proper behavior is a political evaluation, one that ignores that this military has become a corrupt, dangerous mess that young people of good quality should avoid at all costs.
And yes, I’m a vet, proud to have served.
On the other hand, my two college-age daughters are convinced that at age 64 I’m too old, ossified, and outdated to comprehend the complex issues of the modern era (climate change, institutional racism, the vast superiority of socialism vs. capitalism, etc., etc) and that only young people with recent college degrees are fit to run the country!
Yes RN’s need supervision,all NP’s and PA-C’s need 3 to 5 years of closely supervised practice,after they graduate from their respective programs.. If you supervise them you will partially maintain control of Medicine. If not you will continue to lose more control. Good Luck,
and Good Hunting..
Everything is a BUSINESS MODEL, WAR,GOVERNMENTS, MED SCHOOL,NURSING, MARRIAGE.
ALL CAN BE GOOD OR BAD.THE CHOICE IS YOURS.
I was the second youngest in my med school class at 22. 26 graduated. 29 before out of residency. The youngest went to the same residency and she was a few months younger. So 29 at the minimum age realistically for doctors. Add to that the fact I am still an idiot making bad choices, I sure wasn’t ready for huge responsibilities at 21.
Exactly. There’s a good chance he did NOT have that kind of access. Anyone think its a strange coincidence that Congress is in the process of (hopefully) shutting down the RESTRICT act (the one that gives unelected government officials incredible censoring power on the internet) and just when the act is on the verge of getting shut down, here comes a “leak” that will give the current administration the chance to now say, “Hey! Look! If we had the RESTRICT act in place, this kind of thing wouldn’t have happened!”
It would have been a matter of time before this young Incel took an AR-15 into a mall or church or school. Can’t compare these young men to NPs who are mostly, if not all, women—with guardrails, the Nursing Boards, which are arguably too lenient!
WOW!!! Judge, jury, and executioner. I hope you (Bill Ameen) never serve in any of those capacities. The “young incel” as you describe him is, as far as we KNOW at this point, only guilty of whistleblowing about THE FACT THAT TOP MILITARY REPORTS TO THE PUBLIC AND TO CONGRESS ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR WERE BLATANT LIES. This sort of ‘traitorous’ activity is not well tolerated by those top military people who are so sophisticated that it took them over ten days just to find out that they’d been outed.
Maybe more enlisted people will step up and fulfill their oath to the US Constitution as a result of his whistleblowing; an oath which the career military seems to have forgotten entirely.