TikTok reels, attention grabbing headlines and AI that spits out instant answers. The way teens engage with the world today often lacks depth.
But at this age, where the teen brain is rapidly developing, deeper thinking — dubbed by psychologists as transcendent thinking — is vital not just for self-reflection and problem solving, but also self-esteem and better relationships in adulthood.
Many of us spend a lot of time in what researchers call “surface-level” thinking — reacting to what’s in front of us. Transcendent thinking, though, is when we go beyond concept descriptions, to wrestle with questions like, What does this say about justice? How do systems work? Where do I fit in all this?
“Young people get so much information fed to them through social media, influencers and podcasts and AI, and this is such a passive way of learning,” said Marcy Burstiner, News Decoder’s educational news director. “Dangerous, really, if they aren’t critically thinking about the information they are getting.”
That’s why for 10 years News Decoder has used the lens of journalism to engage students in the process of learning. Through our educational programs, students are encouraged to ask big questions, identify problems they see around them and talk to people to get their questions answered — classmates, neighbours, family and experts. In doing this, they find out information themselves.
Spoon-fed learning
This is more important than ever as the internet transforms from a place where people would lose themselves as they “surfed,” stumbling upon all kinds of new and interesting information along the way, into a place where an AI bot does that for them and spits out summarized results.
For 10 years, we’ve been asking teens to find real people to interview, to compare their different perspectives and from that to come up with their own original thoughts about complex topics where there isn’t a clear right and wrong, where there are layers of inequity.
Student Jack McConnel at The Tatnall School in the United States did this when he interviewed his state’s congressional representative, Sarah McBride, the nation’s first transgender representative in Congress.
Through the research he did, and after interviewing McBride, McConnel came to the conclusion that voters in his district didn’t elect her because of gender identity, but because McBride pledged to help solve the more mundane issues they cared most about — protecting consumers from getting scammed, for example, or helping farmers to lower food prices. Gender identity wasn’t their most important concern.
Students, like McConnel, who work with News Decoder often start with a “pitch” — a proposal for a news story. In the pitch, we have them ask a big question that their story will answer. McConnel’s asked three: “What role does identity play in our elected officials? Has this fixation from both sides made congressional and senatorial positions simply for show? Does it matter more who the person is or what the person does, and have we lost sight of what matters about our politicians?”
Through his research and his one-to-one interview with McBride, he was able to answer all those questions.
Beyond facts
Hannah Choo is a student at an international school in South Korea, and is working with News Decoder as a summer intern. As part of her work, she creates video content for social media based on articles published on News Decoder.
Choo has found that through engaging with these stories, she’s forming a deeper connection with the issues the stories explore. She said the challenge is to go beyond merely summarizing the information. The goal is to connect with an audience.
“And that puts me in a position where I need to really focus on why this issue matters and why I should care,” Choo said. “And that gives a lot more of a sense of purpose.”
Choo remembers talking to a biology graduate student, who told her about apoptosis, a process whereby cells die off — a way our bodies get rid of unneeded cells. Alone, this concept feels meaningless, even dry.
But the grad student told Choo that when we’re initially formed in the womb, we have paddle-shaped hands with a webbing of skin connecting the fingers and toes. This webbing disappears as we form, due to this apoptosis. Choo remembers looking at her own hands in fascination.
“And so later, when I actually got to learn biology and learn about the cell cycle, it was a lot easier for me to engage with the topic,” Choo said. “I wasn’t just studying science but I was studying my own body.”
From deep thinking to deeper relationships
A five-year study, published in 2024 in the journal Scientific Reports, followed 65 teenagers aged 14-18 to see how transcendent thinking shapes their brains, and how this further shapes their lives.
The teens were shown emotionally rich mini-documentaries featuring real stories of adolescents around the globe — a method that triggers transcendent thinking. They then talked through what the stories meant: how they felt, why they mattered, and what bigger ideas they raised.
They found that teens who engaged in this deeper style of thinking showed stronger connections over time between two key brain networks — those involved in self-reflection and big-picture thought, and focus and problem solving.
Crucially, they also found that these teens went on to have a clearer sense of identity in late adolescence, which later linked to greater self-esteem and better relationships in young adulthood.
One way News Decoder helps young people understand deeper meanings and broader implications is by having them look at societal problems and possible solutions.
Searching out solutions
At News Decoder we ask students to identify a problem in their community and then see if they can find people working to solve that problem.
“In the process they see at first that a lot of problems seem to have no solution or the solutions are so far off,” Burstiner said. “But all the complications that prevent solutions are like protective layers around the problem. They are like the levels you need to surmount in a video game.”
If a teen has the patience and persistence to work through those complications they can not only see the solutions but they can see what is preventing those solutions, Burstiner said.
One News Decoder student in India wondered what might happen when climate change causes massive migration.
“In exploring the topic she hit on the idea of lost languages — that a language is what often ties a community together and connects generations. But if a community is forced to disperse and the people end up integrating into other lands, the language that connected them could die out,” Burstiner said.
Connecting dots
Another student at The Tatnall School played soccer, and began thinking about how much it cost his family for him to play at a competitive level. “In exploring this he realized how much of competitive sports is elitist and how much more difficult it is for someone to go into professional sports if they are poor,” Burstiner said.
When students conduct interviews with people who understand these topics in-depth or who are affected by these issues, they can further connect their sense of self with these stories.
Choo, during her internship, pitched a story about cancer, because a close family member was undergoing cancer treatment. She asked this question: “How does climate change affect the quality of healthcare for cancer patients?”
In doing the research, uncovering connections and conducting interviews, she connected the often-abstract issue of climate change to her own life.
“This was the first time I could really connect climate change to my own life and my own loved ones,” Choo said.