Your teenager comes home upset. Instead of answering your greeting, they just walk past you and disappear into their room. You’re left wondering what went wrong.
The answer is written in neuroscience. In the teen years, the brain undergoes significant changes, and this development has profound implications for empathy levels. A study published in Psychiatry Investigation found that both cognitive and emotional empathy were significantly lower in teens aged 13–15 compared to adults, while teens showed greater brain activation during empathy tasks. Teen brains are working harder to accomplish what adult brains do with less effort. Teens are not incapable of empathy. They are simply burning more cognitive fuel to get there.
The Brain Behind the Eye-Roll
The smart responses and apparent indifference can make parents and teachers wonder if something has gone fundamentally wrong. But the science tells a different story. The human brain doesn’t fully mature until the mid-to-late twenties. Three regions central to empathic processing are the amygdala, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the lateral prefrontal cortex.
The adolescent brain is not a finished product. The prefrontal cortex is still being wired. The capacity for perspective-taking is still being built. The hormonal tides that temporarily suppress empathy will subside as they grow. But that would take some work from the adults in their lives.
Girls and Boys: Different Roads
One of the most useful findings in empathy research concerns the different developmental timelines for girls and boys. A longitudinal study tracked 497 Dutch adolescents from ages 13 to 18. Girls showed more advanced perspective-taking at 13, which rose steeply before leveling off. Boys showed a decline in empathy from early to mid-adolescence before rebounding in the later teen years, partly driven by rising testosterone levels.
Social pressure compounds the biology. Boys who check in on a struggling classmate run a real social risk. As researcher Tara Kuther put it, there is still a widespread trend for young boys to be told to “act like a man”, which means to act tough and resist showing emotion. The crucial message is that although boys may show less concern for others during early and mid-adolescence, these changes are often temporary.
Empathy Is Contagious
Researchers divide empathy into two types: Cognitive empathy and affective empathy. Cognitive empathy is the ability to understand another person’s perspective, and affective empathy is the ability to actually feel what another person is feeling. Both are still maturing in the teenage years.
Jessica Stern, a developmental psychologist at the University of Virginia, conducted a 25-year-long study in which she and her team followed 184 diverse teens from age 13 into their mid-thirties. They discovered that empathy travels across generations.
“What we found was that mothers’ empathy for their teens at age 13 predicted that teen’s empathy for their friends across the adolescent years,” says Dr. Jessica Stern, Developmental Psychologist at the University of Virginia. “Then, that ability to show empathy toward your friends when you’re a teenager predicts that you’ll be a more supportive parent much later on in adulthood.”
A separate UVA study found that teens who were more secure in their family relationships at age 14 provided more empathetic support to their friends. Less secure teens showed lower empathy at first, but improved significantly and nearly caught up by age 18.
What Parents Can Do
- Model it visibly. “If you notice your teen being indifferent to a struggling friend, ask how that friend is doing,” says Dr. Stern. Then help your teen brainstorm what might be most helpful.
- According to researchers, the most powerful approach is giving teens the experience of being understood. When your teen comes home upset, try saying, “That sounds really hard,” or “Tell me more about it.”
- Ask questions rather than handing down verdicts. Responding with “What do you think has been going on with your friend?” or “If you were in your friend’s shoes, what would you want others to do?” activates both cognitive and affective empathy simultaneously, according to Melbourne Child Psychology.
- Be patient with boys. Understanding that a 14-year-old boy’s temporary dip in empathic concern is partly driven by testosterone and puberty should reframe how parents respond. Keep the channel of conversation open.
What Educators Can Do
- Rethink how you label teen behavior. A student who doesn’t react when a classmate is distressed isn’t necessarily cold. They may be overwhelmed, unsure what to do, or mid-puberty. Sometimes kids who act tough actually want to help but get tongue-tied in the moment.
- Build perspective-taking into lessons. Literature, history, and science offer constant opportunities to ask how a person might have felt or why they made the choices they did. Discussing fictional characters stretches cognitive empathy in a low-stakes environment. Sparks and Stitch Institute suggests that reading literary fiction genuinely improves young people’s ability to understand and identify with other perspectives.
- Create psychological safety. Friendships provide a key context for adolescents to practice giving and receiving empathetic support. Schools where students feel genuinely seen and supported are natural incubators for empathy. Exclusion and clique dynamics aren’t just behavioral problems; they’re empathy-development problems. “What is especially interesting is that teens’ friends were more likely to seek out support from secure teens, and friends who sought more help were more likely to receive it,” says Dr. Stern.
- Rethink anti-bullying programs. Psychology Today reports that younger teen brains may not yet have the perspective-taking capacity to fully inhabit a victim’s experience. Campaigns that assume teenagers can readily empathize with those they harm may need to be redesigned to meet students where they actually are developmentally.
Perspective-taking is a work in progress during the teenage years. As a parent and educator, approach the adolescents in your charge with compassion. With consistent, patient modeling by you and other adults in their lives, your teens will become deeply empathetic people.
Contributed by Saumin Mistry, 10th grade