How Social Threats Shape the Developing Teenage Brain

The following is excerpted from an online article posted by MedicalXpress

Researchers at UCL Institute of Education, King’s College London, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and UCLA report that perceived social threats in early adolescence are associated with altered connectivity in default mode, dorsal attention, frontoparietal, and cingulo-opercular networks and with higher mental health symptom scores months later.

Adolescence is a difficult age, a time of rapid neurobiological and psychological change amidst shifting social standing. In 2021, CDC reported that 40% of U.S. high school students struggled with persistent sadness or hopelessness, and more than one in six had made a suicide plan.

Perceived threats in a child’s social environment, within the family, at school, and in the neighborhood, are known risk factors for adolescent psychopathology.

Social Safety Theory offers a framework for why such experiences matter, positing that humans detect and respond to cues of safety or threat in their surroundings. In contexts perceived as unsafe due to conflict, violence, or instability, neurophysiological responses that aid short-term survival are triggered.

Source: MedicalXpress
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-10-social-threat-perceptions-youth-linked.html