-
Asked by anon-215930 to Laura, Kathryn, Ian, Chris, Bogdana, Alex on 10 Jun 2019.
-
Ian Cookson answered on 10 Jun 2019:
I think I’ll let Alex answer this! As a father of two teens I might get in trouble 😀
-
-
Alex Lloyd answered on 11 Jun 2019:
Haha, thanks Ian!
I could write 100 pages on this, but I’ll try to keep it short. The research we have at the moment points to a number of different reasons why teenagers take risks, these are 1) the brain 2) our friends 3) the situation and 4) environmental factors.
1. During the teenage years the brain goes through massive changes. There are two in particular that make teenagers more likely to take risks than adults or children. There is an area of the brain responsible for recognising and giving you a good feeling when you receive rewards. For example, finding a £20 note on the floor. When you start puberty (when you are about 10-12), this area of the brain grows really quickly which means that teenagers get a big boost when they receive rewards. On the other hand, there is an area of the brain responsible for stopping us from doing silly things (called self regulation). This grows a lot more slowly and doesn’t fully develop until we get to age 21-24. So, these two areas are unbalanced, which means that teenagers are get a boost from the rewards you can get from taking risks, but do not have the ability to stop themselves taking these risks! If you are having trouble imagining this, think about the characters in the film Inside Out. These two areas of the brain are like two of these characters fighting for control of our actions. During teenage years, it is usually the reward area that wins control!
2. Our friends can have a massive influence on why we take risks. We know that teenagers really value their friends opinions and want to have their friends approval. So, if teenagers have friends that encourage us to take risks, they are more likely to go for these risks so that they have their friends approval. But, it is also important to know that friends can also be a positive influence in teenage years, and if your friends encourage you to do positive things (like give to charity) teenagers are more likely to do these things as well. So, our friends’ influence is not always a bad thing!
3. There are loads of different situations we come across day to day. Some of these are familiar, while others are not. We now think that teenagers take risks in situations that are new to them because they like to explore these new experiences. This can help them to learn new things about the world which actually helps us in adulthood!
4. Our past life events can influence how we take risks in our teenage years. For people who have had bad life experiences, like unstable families or domestic abuse, are more likely to take risks as teenagers. This is because they don’t expect stability and so want rewards straight away, rather than thinking about the long term consequences of these actions. It is our job as psychologists and mental health workers to help these young people to take less harmful risks!
If there are any you are interested in then I am happy to talk about these in more detail 🙂
-
Laura Fisk answered on 11 Jun 2019:
I’d echo what Alex has said (he said it very well!). Here’s the answer I wrote before I saw his 🙂
My short answer, and one I use all the time in working with people (particularly frustrated parents!) is ‘the frontal lobes are developing’! Basically, we can think of the brain as going through a couple of significant changes in life: one when we’re babies (the brain is learning and absorbing everything), and then one when we hit puberty. During this second big change , it’s a bit like everything the brain has learned so far is broken down and built back up again – because puberty marks the start of adulthood and your baby brain isn’t really fit for purpose any more. This takes time, and different parts of the brain get ‘sorted’ at different rates.
One of the parts of the brain that has a lot of work done to it is the front part (those ‘fontal lobes’) – and that’s the bit that is involved with starting and stopping behaviour and developing personality. You can think of it as the ‘controller’ of the brain – the bit that says, ‘yes do that’ or ‘ooh, best not do that’. There’s individual variation in how naturally strong that bit of the brain is (some of us are better at inhibiting – saying no – than others). But adolescence is the big time when that part of the brain is coming into action and really being put to the test – so we all tend to end up making decisions in adolescence that we might not make when we’re older (and the brain has settled down a bit – around age 25 onwards…). Things like life experience (for example, how safe you felt as a baby and child growing up) can also impact on how easy it is to say ‘do it’ or ‘don’t do it’.
One of the challenges faced by humans – and particularly adolescents who are first exposed to the full amount of stuff the world has to offer – is that there are some behaviours that give a massive ‘reward’ but which come with massive costs (downsides). These are ‘risky behaviours’. Things like taking drugs – they can give a massive short term ‘rush’ that feels excellent in the short term, but which has massive downsides in the medium or long term (like health problems, addiction etc). Choosing not to take a drug therefore means prioritising the long term outcome (sensible, more ‘boring’) over the short term (exciting) outcome. You need the controller of the brain to be strong enough to make that decision. Sometimes during adolescence, it’s not strong (practiced) enough. Sometimes, people never really learn to strengthen that bit of the brain enough (in fact, some behaviours themselves also impair the development of that bit of the brain) and so they need help during adulthood to learn to do differently. -
Bogdana Huma answered on 13 Jun 2019: last edited 13 Jun 2019 6:15 am
I would have said that our friends and the situations we co-create (such as daring each other to do more and more outrageously dangerous things) make us take risks as teenagers, but having read Alex’s very comprehensive answer, I’m better informed about how biological and environmental factors can also explain teenager risk-taking behaviour. Thanks, Alex!
Comments