Today’s teenagers have been stereotyped as adventurous and harebrained individuals.  They are generally fond of experimenting with things until they get in touch with drugs, sex, guns, alcohol among others. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, 16,000 young adults die each year from unintentional injuries and accidents.  The most common justification for teenagers’ care-free attitude is that their brains just aren’t developed enough to know better. However, recent research shows that in some cases the fact is just the opposite, the brain matures not too slowly but perhaps, too quickly.

According to a psychiatrist, an adolescent who engages in more dangerous activities have white-matter pathways that seem to be more mature than those of risk-averse youths.  White-matter is the brain’s wiring, the neutral pathways that connect the various gray-matter regions of the cerebrum that are independent of one another.  Having a mature white-matter is necessary because it allows faster brain processing speed.  Nerve impulses also travel faster in mature white-matter. Experiments also reveal that the more mature the look of the brain, the more adventurous the teenager tended to be.
Another possible explanation is that some teenagers whose brains develop more rapidly than others become uncomfortable and a little confused owing to the gap between their biological capabilities and the social norms they must follow as kids. Precocious development of these neural tracts may make some adolescents more susceptible to engage in behaviors that society considers too adult in nature for their chronological age. It is also a common notion that teens make dumb decisions because their brains are immature. In other words, having a more mature brain may actually motivate some teens to try out new and potentially harmful experiences.
For now, these theories are mere speculation, and the researchers concede that the interaction of white and gray matter is so complex that hard conclusions remain elusive. The results of the study are relatively bare and by no means conclusive. The human brain is so intricate in nature, and one has to consider the fact that there are other factors that come into play such as the environment and certain genetic predispositions that are equally complex to study.

Self-injury can start early in life, research suggests that early onset self-injury is common around the age of 7, although it can begin earlier. Most often, however, self-injury behaviors begin in middle adolescence between the ages of 12 and 15. This is also the time when adolescent mids are open to suggestion from outside sources most specially the media. The disturbing fact is that the media nowadays is filled with extremely negative influences that can affect they way children act. One of the most popular “forms of expression” right now is the emo scene.

Emo is a fad, a musical form, a fashion sense, a subculture and a lifestyle.  The name comes from the musical genre called emotive hardcore. The term Emo itself is usually seen as being short for “emotional.”  The people in this lifestyle are usually in their early teens through the early twenties.  The are most easily identified by their fashion, consisting of black clothes, straight black hair, usually covering one eye, black framed glasses, tight, usually dark clothing, makeup is common, but not required, in both sexes, and gender roles seem somewhat blurred, and great deal of androgyny being indicated.  Emo music often speaks of emotional pain, self-injury, suicide, hopelessness, and death.  Writing poetry is often a common trait among emos.  The poetry often touches on the same themes as the music.  There are, of course, variations, as there are in any fad, but the main themes remain.

The emo fad seems to be a bit different from other previous fads in several very important ways.  The emo subculture, in its glorification of self-injury, suicide and other negative thoughts seems to have caused an epidemic of self-injury among its followers.

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