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Texting, Teens, and Driving
There is an interesting summary of a study that reveals that while the number of teens who are texting while driving is decreasing, they are still doing everything else while they are supposed to be driving. Reading this reminded me of three factoids about teens that I encountered over and over again while researching and writing The Middle School Mind: Growing Pains in Early Adolescent Brains.
1. They don’t believe what adults tell them about focusing only on driving when they are behind the wheel. They are convinced that they are good enough to do something else while driving.
2. They are convinced they are immortal and nothing bad is going to happen to them.
3. They are convinced that they can multi-task–which they can’t, of course. There is a mountain of neuroscience research demonstrating that our brains do not multi-task. It seems like they do because they are so fast. But they don’t. More on multi-tasking later.