Notes

Most teens have a group of friends that have been hanging out together for years which sit together in lunch, go out together and are into similar things.

In most groups of friends, there is at least one friend that just wants to have fun and will do anything to fit in with the crowd. They go through high school with the mentality of ‘high school is the best four years of your life’ and just want to have fun and not take school serious.

Briana Torres, senior, has been hanging out with the same friends from elementary all the way through high school. Entering her senior year, she has realized that some of those friends are not good for her or her future.

“As I got to know certain friends more and more, I realized that the goals I had for myself are different from theirs and theirs are not in the direction I want to live my life.” Torres wants to surround herself with people who are going to help her accomplish her goals rather than be in her way.

According to licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Jasmin Jourdenais, a loss of interest across a vast array of activities and relationships causes teens to consider anhedonia which can be one of many symptoms associated with a depressive state.

“During our teen years, there is a lot done “just because” or for the “I don’t know why” reasons. The reason is because as teens, we seek novelty! We are excited about the world around us, and life. It’s not unlike toddlerhood. “What happens when I drop my sippy cup” is not all that different from “What happens if I drive 90mph down this road”.”

Javier Hernandez, senior, has been cutting out people from his life that don’t focus on their future like he does. Throughout the years, Hernandez has let go multiple of his best friends because unlike them, he has found himself.

Teens are interested in rewards and trying new things. Incidentally, it is worth mentioning a lot of the friction between teens, friends and their adult parents can be the discrepancy in novelty seeking and creative exploration between the two ages.





Although a teens brain does not have major developments as teens turn 18 and get to enter the 'real world', there is a great brain development at the time of adolescence; there are very real brain changes that make the adolescent period quite different from childhood. These changes can be grouped into 4 areas: Increased Social Engagement, Novelty Seeking Behaviors, Increased Creative Exploration, and Increased Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity

As specified by Jourdenais, dealing with detachment varies based on the individual.

Generally speaking teens are all about their peers and push away from their parents and other adults. This is normal, and if you think about it, essential for the human community. Historically, as human beings braved adolescence, they would band together – think safety in numbers. “I don’t know what’s going on with me, or the world, or why we’re even here… but neither do you!” This grouping together and pushing away from other, older adults, is a source of comfort and aims to establish independence. It may be easier to understand why fitting in can feel so important to a teenager. A key difference between historical human communities, and today’s modern world, is that then adolescents would maintain interactive, and instructive relationships with older adults. In today’s day and age these relationships are stretched and strained to the max - which is unfortunate.