I-talk, from maltreatment to risk, and weight-lifting power
Life On Mars #16
This week’s Life On Mars examines I-talk – the amount of times teenagers mention the word ‘I’ when they speak – and whether this tells us anything about their mental health. It looks at links between childhood maltreatment and areas of the brain that are related to processing risk, and at why teenagers (and their parents) should be lifting weights.
Can the amount of time teenagers spend using the word ‘I’ tell us anything about their mental health?
Study title: Linguistic Self-Focus, Depression, and Life Stress in Adolescents: Leveraging Archival Interview Data to Capture Psycholinguistic Markers of Psychopathology (June 2025)
This study investigated whether the frequency of teenagers’ use of the word ‘I’ might reflect their emotional health. The frequency of so-called ‘I-talk’ (and we all know someone who does a lot of this, teenager or adult) might signal an inwards focus that is linked to brooding on events or feeling depressed. This is an emerging area of research when it comes to adolescence.
Researchers recorded interviews with teenagers about their stressful life experiences, and conducted separate research on their emotional functioning. They then checked the audio recordings for instances of ‘I’. The first set of analyses showed a link: teenagers who engaged in more I-talk were more likely than other teenagers to report high levels of stress, brooding and depression. These findings didn’t hold in more rigorous analyses that controlled for certain other variables, but the links were enough for researchers to suggest that the findings ‘offer tentative support for a link between I-talk, depression, brooding and key environmental factors (life stress) among adolescents.
Takeaways: it would be interesting to see a similar study using recordings of conversations with teenagers that are less self-focused: it seems fairly inevitable that asking someone about their stressful life experiences will lead to a lot of I-talk. It might be more telling to analyse I-talk in conversations that are, on the face of it, on more neutral topics – social media, music or pets, for instance.
Results suggest (although only very lightly, for now) that how teenagers talk may give us clues about how they are coping emotionally. There’s lots of promise for future research that uses language patterns in transcripts to make these kinds of connections.
Childhood abuse is linked to delayed connections between regions of the brain that process risk in adolescence
Study title: A Six-Year Longitudinal Study Examining Chronicity and Timing of Maltreatment Effects on Risk-Related Functional Connectivity Change Across Adolescence (August 2025)
We already know that tough early experiences like abuse and neglect can have lasting effects on mental health. What’s less clear is exactly how these experiences affect brain development as it relates to later risk-taking. The aim of this study was to investigate these links and, specifically, how different types of earlier maltreatment shape adolescent brain networks involved in risk-related decisions. The risk-related task here was about gambling, but findings are likely to apply more widely – to things like smoking, drinking and underage sex.
Adolescent brain activity was tracked annually over six years, with the research team focusing on two areas of the brain that are involved in processing risk. The 167 participants also took part in a exercise in which they were presented with a sequence of gambles and asked for each one to choose between two options, one of which was always more risky. Researchers also asked about teenagers’ retrospective experiences of childhood neglect and abuse.
They found that in general, connections between the two areas of the brain in question strengthened over adolescence. In teenagers who had experienced abuse (though not neglect), however, connections developed more slowly, suggesting a developmental delay in the areas of the brain that process risk. This may explain, at least in part, why teenagers who have been abused are more likely than others to take drugs at a young age and to act out. The study’s findings, though, didn’t extend to behaviour – teenagers who’d previously been abused were not more likely than others to take the risky gamble.
Takeaways: abuse seems to have a long-term impact on developing brains and to teenagers’ ability to process risk. The findings may explain, at least in part, why those who have been abused are more likely than others to take drugs at a young age and to act out, though it probably needs a degree of caution given that there was no clear link with risky gambles. This research also needs to be understood in the context of previous research showing that adolescents who have been maltreated may not be able to differentiate between safe and threatening situations.
Lift weights to feel better, and lift often to stick with it
Study title: Exercise Types for Efficacy and Adherence in Adolescents and Young Adults with Depression: A Systematic Review with Network Meta-Analysis (October 2025*)
*Not an error – just a very eager publisher.
Exercise is often suggested as a remedy for depression – but which kinds of exercise work best for teenagers and young adults, and which kinds will they be most likely to keep doing without wanting to drop out? This study used data from 48 trials involving almost 4,000 participants to compare outcomes of four types of exercise – aerobic (such as running, swimming or circuit classes), resistance (grunty weights, as I like to call them, or a more refined, lighter, less satisfying version), mind-body (such as yoga) and mixed types of exercise.
The winner, I am pleased to say from my grunty weights corner, was resistance training. Teenagers and young adults are more likely to benefit from resistance training in terms of improving symptoms of depression, and they are more likely to stick with it. Older teenagers and young adults were most likely to benefit, and those who do resistance training more often are most likely to keep doing it.
Takeaways: encourage your teenager to lift weights and lift often (and maybe do it yourself, if you don’t already. It’s brilliant.)
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I will add weight lifting to my fitness regime