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5 Facts About Decision Making and Emotional Regulation During Adolescence

5 Facts About Decision Making and Emotional Regulation During Adolescence

Image of a youth considering information from a military recruiter.

Adolescence is an important window for developing the skills to manage our emotions, control our behavior, and make good decisions. The social and brain development that happens during this period help us tune in to the information we need to master these important skills. But still, like every skill, these require opportunities to practice in real-world situations with room to make and learn from mistakes.

Following are five facts about navigating strong emotions and decision making during adolescence:

  • Changes in the way our brain processes emotions combined with the novelty, uncertainty, and high stakes of our adolescent years can contribute to emotions that can be more intense compared to adults.
  • Some of these changes make us more sensitive to social feedback and belonging during adolescence. This increased sensitivity can make us more likely to make risky decisions when our emotions are high–but can also encourage positive decisions like advocating for a cause or sticking up for a friend.
  • Other aspects of brain development during adolescence increase our abilities to think abstractly, solve problems and understand the perspectives of others. By the time we are about 16 years old, these changes help us reason and make decisions as well as adults when we have the time and space to consider our options.
  • Support to build emotional regulation skills can help youth build decision making skills–young people who strengthen their capacities to navigate emotions are less likely to engage in unhealthy risk taking.
  • These skills don’t develop in a vacuum. Youth need real-life opportunities to practice navigating strong emotions and making decisions, along with support to learn from the outcomes. Adults can also help by modeling healthy expressions of emotions and communication and teaching positive coping skills.

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Additional Resources

The Connecting Adolescent Brain

Fact Sheet

This fact sheet gives an overview of adolescent brain development and explains how access to resources, opportunities, and meaningful relationships during adolescence can build connections within our brains and with the world around us that support us into adulthood.

Brain development during adolescence is fundamentally a story of connections.

Around age 9 or 10, hormonal changes kick off a period of intense learning and development, when brain cells form, strengthen, and streamline connections in response to our experiences more rapidly than in any period of life after early childhood.

Activity increases especially in the brain networks that propel us to explore the world, learn from our mistakes, and connect with others in new ways. In turn, these new experiences prompt our brain cells to connect with other neurons in ways that help us adapt to new events and new information. These neural connections become stronger the more we use them, while unused connections are pruned away, helping the brain become more efficient at acquiring and mastering new skills and new ways of thinking.

This brain-building learning happens through direct experiences in our environments and interactive, responsive relationships—with our families and peers, in our classrooms and neighborhoods, in community activities, and even online. The resources, opportunities, and experiences we as adults provide in and out of school can help young people’s brains build the extensive networks of connections that will manage the complex knowledge and behaviors needed to navigate adulthood.

Learning by Exploring the World Around Us

One of the networks that changes significantly with the increase in hormones and dopamine at the beginning of puberty is the “reward system” in our brain. Heightened activity in this system increases the feeling of reward we get from exploring the world, taking risks, and learning from the results.

Meanwhile, the network of brain regions that make up the “social brain” also changes during adolescence. These changes help us tune into social and emotional cues, like facial expressions or social rejection and approval, and increase our desire to earn respect and contribute to others. It also enables us to learn the nuances of changing social contexts in ways that help prepare us for adult relationships.

The prefrontal cortex (the region of the brain that orchestrates critical thinking and behavioral control) undergoes its most rapid period of development during adolescence. It builds on many other systems within the brain to manage our responses to the flood of new information and intensifying emotions. Engaging with other people and our environment and learning from our successes and our mistakes, known as “action-based learning,” helps shape the prefrontal cortex by strengthening the connections within it and between it and other brain networks. We learn through repeated practice—which includes trying and sometimes failing—what is adaptive and appropriate in different situations and how to guide our behavior accordingly, in ways that equip us to pursue new forward-looking goals.

When adults provide youth with opportunities to try new things, to practice navigating emotions, and to learn from failures along the way, it helps build the brain connections that we all need to grow into healthy, thriving adults.

Policies, Experiences, and Mindsets Shape the Connecting Brain

Although we can continue to learn new skills and behaviors as adults, the adaptability of the brain during adolescence means that these connections are much more likely to form quickly in response to experiences. The extent of these changes make the adolescent years a critical window when investments in the right policies and programs for youth can shape long-term positive development.

Likewise, this makes the adolescent years a time when negative experiences including racism, other forms of discrimination, poverty, or abuse can create steeper hills for young people to climb toward a healthy adulthood. When adults ensure that all young people, especially those who have experienced earlier adversity, have what they need along their journey, they can build the skills and capacities they need to thrive as adults. This includes opportunities to explore and take healthy risks, to connect with and contribute to those around us, to make decisions and learn from the outcomes, to develop a healthy sense of identity, and to rely on support from parents or other caring adults.

Understanding how and why the brain develops during adolescence lets us provide the support young people need to build healthy connections—in their world and within their brains—that will help our youth and our communities thrive.

Adolescents Learn Essential Skills for Adulthood through Exploration, Discovery, and Taking Healthy Risks

Fact sheet | Education | Community Engagement | Out-of-School Time | Digital Tech | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination

This fact sheet reviews research that explains why adolescents are more motivated to take risks, why that’s important to learning and development, and how policies and practices could support healthy risk taking to promote positive development.

When policies and programs support adolescents to explore their world and take positive risks, it leads to healthier, more connected communities.

Being able and willing to take risks and try new things is a part of our natural tendency to explore the world during adolescence. It’s a fundamental aspect of learning that helps us develop our skills, discover who we are, and ultimately expand our worlds beyond the familiarity of home.

Research on adolescent brain development helps explain why we’re more motivated to approach things that feel uncertain or scary during these years, and why these risks are so important to learning and development. It also provides insights into how policies and practices could recognize this drive for new and exciting experiences and provide opportunities for healthy versions of risk taking that can support positive development.

Brain development during adolescence encourages exploration. The increase in hormones at the beginning of puberty launches changes in the “reward center” of our brain. Heightened activity in this area of our brain during adolescence, compared to early in childhood or adulthood, makes us more sensitive to the rewards and good feelings that come from surprises and new experiences. This increases our motivation to explore the world, take risks, and learn from the results.

This enthusiasm to try new things is important: new experiences cause new neural connections to form and, with repeated use, strengthen within our brain. When we have opportunities to safely try new things and to learn from mistakes along the way, we build connections that support learning.

Exploration and risk taking are an important part of healthy development during adolescence. Research has shown that adolescents are more willing than adults to lean into uncertainty and explore situations in which there is a potential for a reward (in whatever form) but the outcome is not assured, and this exploration can lead to a more positive mood.

This tolerance for ambiguous outcomes is essential to learning and development during adolescence. Anything that runs the risk of failure or rejection—like attempting to learn a new skill, running for student government, trying out for a team or school play, asking someone out, or standing up for a friend—can feel uncertain or even scary, especially during adolescence when most of us are trying these things in new ways or for the first time. Adult support can help young people to take on new challenges, even those that seem intimidating.

Racism and other forms of discrimination curtail opportunities for healthy risk taking. Unfortunately, opportunities to learn from exploration and risk taking are not equally available to all of us during adolescence. A history of racial and economic inequities has led to fewer resources for organized activities in schools and neighborhoods with higher populations of youth of color.

Racism and bias, such as Black and other ethnic minority youth sometimes being perceived as more adult-like than their same-aged White peers, often result in harsher consequences (such as suspension, expulsion, arrest, or incarceration) for mistakes that might be labeled “learning experiences” when made by White adolescents.

Adolescents need healthy outlets to channel their motivation to take risks. Although not all adolescents are comfortable with risks, our reward system during these years is generally more excited by risks than at other times in our lives. Without healthy outlets, the attraction of risk and novelty can make us more vulnerable to unhealthy behaviors, such as reckless driving or drug and alcohol misuse.

Avenues to channel this motivation for new experiences into positive exploration include:

Policies and programs can provide outlets for healthy risk-taking to support the developmental need to explore during these years and direct the desire for new experiences toward positive activities such as trying a new sport, engaging in activism, or making new friends.

➢ Secondary schools and college admissions processes should encourage adolescents to take academic risks. For example, high schools could provide broad access to advanced classes and new subjects for all interested students—and college admissions offices could value attempts at challenging coursework that may result in lower letter grades.

➢ Identify and counter racism and other forms of discrimination that ultimately result in young people from different backgrounds facing disparate consequences for taking risks. Recognize that racism and bias can cause adults to perceive Black and other minority youth as more adult-like than their same-aged White peers.

➢ Fund and support an array of opportunities for youth to try new activities at school, at home, in the community, and in the digital world.

Addressing Chronic Absenteeism by Aligning School Settings with the Developmental Needs of Adolescents

Science Spotlight | Education | Community Engagement | Adversity, Bias, & Discrimination

This spotlight highlights adolescent development research aimed to help school leaders and policymakers more equitably meet the needs of adolescent learners and enhance their attachment to school.

Adolescence is a time of remarkable opportunity and growth. We know from extensive research about adolescent brain development that these are critical years for learning and development. In addition to academic learning, the social and emotional learning that occurs through lessons, experiences, and relationships within school settings are important for youth to thrive, making chronic absenteeism particularly concerning among middle and high school students.

High rates of chronic absenteeism–a measure that describes the number of students who miss, for any reason, at least 10 percent of school days in an academic year–have persisted since in-person schooling was first curtailed by COVID-19. School districts that served students from neighborhoods with high levels of poverty tended to see the highest rates of chronic absenteeism prior to the pandemic and the rate of chronically absent students significantly increased in these districts following the pandemic, raising urgent questions about how best to mitigate a trend that contributes to historical inequity.

Research indicates that there are multiple underlying causes of chronic absenteeism ranging from structural conditions, such as poor transportation infrastructure and teacher shortages, to student-level factors, such as students’ health, home responsibilities, and feeling of connectedness to supportive adults., Initial efforts to understand the continuing effects of the pandemic-specific spike in chronic absenteeism indicate that these causes remain relevant today.

For example, in spring of 2023, Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) conducted a series of statewide interviews to investigate the root causes of student absenteeism and a range of societal, family, and school-related factors emerged. PACE also noted student-level factors, including inconsistent access to basic needs, uncertainty about safety, lack of a sense of belonging and connection, and inability to experience “competence, independence, and freedom” within school settings.

Approaches to addressing these underlying challenges at the middle and high school levels should be responsive to the developmental needs of adolescents, which can be distinct from those of younger learners. School leaders and policymakers can leverage insights from decades of research in the developmental science of adolescence to help navigate a path toward more equitably meeting the needs of adolescent learners and enhancing their attachment to school.

​Adolescence is a unique period for learning and development

Adolescents are motivated to explore, discover, and connect with the world around them. Regions in the brain responsible for motivation, learning, and feelings of reward become more active and responsive to social experience during adolescence. Connections between these regions and the networks responsible for planning and social cognition are strengthened and refined in response to experiences and relationships throughout the years between childhood and adulthood, providing new capacities for learning, emotional development, and social behavior.

Together, these changes create unique opportunities for adolescent learning and development. Youth are more likely to take risks to learn about the world around them. They also are more tolerant of uncertainty and more likely to update their prior knowledge in response to new environments or making errors. Adolescents are driven to understand the world and their place in it, both among their peers in school as well as broader society. Conversations with youth about their future goals can help them cultivate a sense of purpose and encourage a desire to have an impact upon their worlds. Understanding these unique capacities for learning can help spark ideas about how to ensure that schools can best engage adolescent learners as an attempt to address at least one contributing factor to chronic absenteeism.

There is no universal solution to chronic absenteeism, and experts in education suggest that districts will need to develop strategies tailored to their local settings. As leaders partner with young people and their communities to create and test new approaches to restore attendance, they should aim to close the gap between the developmental needs of adolescents and the school-based settings young people encounter. Specifically, they can:

➢ Provide compelling and supported ways for middle and high school students to explore and learn from experience. Thoughtfully designed efforts both inside the classroom (such as project-based learning) and after school (for example, interest-based clubs and activities) leverage the natural inclination to explore and learn from experience during adolescence.

➢ Incorporate ways for students to contribute to others at school and in their broader communities. Longstanding research on classroom environments points to the ways in which incorporating student participation in decision-making promotes motivation and achievement. Similarly, extracurricular programs that encourage adolescents’ contributions to their school, teams, and communities enhance students’ attachment to school.

➢ Build supportive relationships between adolescents and caring adults in their schools and communities. Having these relationships at home and in the school and community is predictive of virtually every aspect of healthy adolescent development, including engagement with school.

➢ Identify and eliminate inequities in the availability and quality of adolescents’ opportunities to have these vital experiences and relationships. Ensure that all youth, including those impacted by racial, ethnic, or other forms of discrimination as well as those facing challenges related to poverty or financial instability, can meaningfully access opportunities to explore, contribute, and form strong relationships with trusted adults.

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