Why do teens do risky things?

Описание: Elizabeth Shulman
Assistant Professor, Psychology
Faculty of Social Sciences

For a while, it was believed that teenagers took more risks because they just really didn’t understand, they weren’t able to really apprehend the risks, or to believe that they applied to them. However, research in the lab had been unable to detect differences between adolescents and adults when sitting them down and asking them questions like, ‘how dangerous is it to drive above the speed limit?’ In that kind of situation, adolescents provide answers that are very similar to adults, so that doesn’t help us understand why it is that, in the real world, adolescents do engage in risky behaviours at a higher rate than adults.

There are two parallel tracks of development happening in the brain across adolescence that are relevant for understanding increased risk-taking in adolescence. On the one hand, across this period, you have a gradual, steady increase in the ability to control your impulses and in functions related to that like regulating emotions and planning ahead.

On the other hand, we have this other neurological network that is responsive to reward. That reward could be social approval, which is particularly important in adolescence. The network that responds to potential reward gets really excitable in early adolescence right around the time of the onset of puberty and it increases in strength rapidly, so it’s outpacing the development of impulse control. So, they’re going to go for that exciting activity even if there’s a little risk involved especially in the presence of their friends. They lack the mature level of impulse control that might put the brakes on that.

We know it does not work to reason with them about it because in the moment, when they’re excited, all of that goes out the window. What works is reducing the opportunity to engage in the risk-taking behaviour.

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