Enabling the Teenage Brain – Blog 9?
Book: Coming of Age – How Adolescence Shapes Us (Lucy Foulkes)?
Chapter: In Defense of Risk Taking??
Are Teenagers taking risks?? Or are they learning how to make decisions?? All humans learn from their mistakes and decision making improves through lived experience.? So, how are we preparing teenagers for independent decision making, whereby they can limit the number and severity of mistakes made?? Remember, mitigating risk is not eliminating risk, it is minimizing the impact of any hazards that may cause risks.???
All human beings seek experiences and teenagers are no different.? They are seeking or forging towards independent living, finding their own identity vs being the child of a particular parent.? They are transferring to independent and perhaps unique person status and part of that is deciding for themselves what they want to experience.? They are drawn to new fads, they have the time, no dependents and a drive to experience new things.???
Some take aways from the chapter:?
- Why do teenagers take risks – one explanation is that they have more time, opportunity, are supervised less and have more independence.? Bur risk taking declines in the early to mid-twenties?? ? ?
- Perceived invulnerability – we need to understand what teenagers seek to gain from risky behaviour.? Perhaps they don’t understand how to assess whether something is risky or not, but the evidence demonstrates that is not the case.? ? ?
- Sensation seeking – is a recognised personality trait and it temporarily increases during teenage years.? It does so for good evolutionary reasons – it enables teenagers to learn what is and isn’t safe and how to judge between the two.? It enables the drive towards independence and if blocked by parental micromanagement can cause developmental delays.? ?
- Dual system model – hypothesizes that there are two systems in the brain: cognitive control and socioemotional, with the former system developing much slower than the later.? Yet, evidence of impact is mixed.? ?
- Peer influence - most teenagers take risks in a group.? Yet evidence shows that even adults take more risks when in a group.? It could be a mix of evolutionary push towards independent living and thinking for oneself and peer influence.? Risk taking could also be a signal to others in a peer group that they are ready to stride towards independence. ? ?
- Avoiding social risk – teenagers overestimate the possibility of bad outcomes but what they perceive they stand to gain outweighs the downside.? Also, what do they stand to lose if they don’t take the risk?? By conforming to peer influence (the group of people I am most likely to live independently with vs my parents) they are mitigating the risk of rejection.? Studies shows that peer influence decreases in strength (influence) as we age.? ? ?
- The myth of peer pressure – when teenagers go along with their peer group it is most often a willing and deliberate decision and can be a “consciously employed strategy to enhance personal and social power.”? Repeated studies demonstrate that teenagers are not simply at the mercy of their peer group.? ? ?
#risktaking #teenagebrain #youngpeople #peerpressure #peerinfluence
