What are the implications of recent research findings about adolescent brain for social policy? This research is leading to a number of policy discussions about several issues, including the timing of the school day; regulations for adolescent driving, including the legal age of driving, with her evening driving should be allowed, whether other adolescents can be present in the car of an adolescent driver, and so on; the drinking age; and the age when a juvenile can be tried as an adult in a court of law. What opinions do you hold about these issues? How are those opinions shaped by recent brain research? What you recall about your own psychological reactions to your changing body during puberty? What factors do you think influenced your reactions? With which groups did you identify during adolescence? Warrior multiple social identities? Which identities were most important to you during adolescence? Which identities are more important to you now?

Children and adolescents in the United States spend less time on school related activities and students in most other industrialized countries. Do you think children and adolescents in the United States should spend more time in school? How would you support your argument on this issue? How could high schools in the United States do a better job of supporting the cognitive development of adolescents? Should the high school be concerned about supporting emotional and social development of adolescents? Why or why not? What sources of information did you use to learn about human sexuality when you were an adolescent? Which sources were the most useful and accurate? If you were to teach a human sexuality class to adolescents, what type of sources would you draw from?

Adolescence is a time of rapid transition in all dimensions of life: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual. What personal, family, cultural, and other social factors of adolescents cope with all of this change? What factors lead to dissatisfaction with body image and harmful or unhealthy behaviors? How well does contemporary society support adolescent development?