What's wrong with the teenage mind?

What is the result of adolescents reaching puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer, according to Alison Gopnik, is "a good deal of teenage weirdness." Gopnik tries to dissect the pubertal mind and its numerous complexities:

One of the most distinctive evolutionary features of human beings is our unusually long, protected childhood. Human children depend on adults for much longer than those of any other primate. That long protected period also allows us to learn much more than any other animal. But eventually, we have to leave the safe bubble of family life, take what we learned as children and apply it to the real adult world. Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers. Puberty not only turns on the motivational and emotional system with new force, it also turns it away from the family and toward the world of equals.