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Why do teenagers take too many risks?
It turns out they estimate the costs of drinking and drug-taking pretty accurately, they simply see the benefits as higher than older people do. If anything the teenagers see the risky activity as riskier than it really is. For that reason, a focus on informing teenagers about the true risk of the activity might alleviate rather than heighten their concerns.
Obviously the teenagers are wrong in pursuing so much risk.
There is then a breathtaking conclusion. First, teenagers need to be taught how to recognize the "gist" of a situation, namely to go beyond explicit calculation and see it as older people do. Second:
Dr. Reyna warned: “Younger adolescents don’t learn from consequences as well as older adolescents do. So rather than relying on them to make reasoned choices or to learn from the school of hard knocks, a better approach is to supervise them.”
In other words, young teenagers need to be protected from themselves by removing opportunities for risk-taking — for example, by filling their time with positive activities and protecting them from risky situations that are likely to be tempting or that require “behavioral inhibition.”
Here is the full article. I conclude that we still don't know why teenagers take so many risks.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 21, 2007 at 04:48 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
I wasted five years of my life as a teenager and I still can't figure out why, at least beyond anything as simple as peer influences, a love of blowing things up, the thrill of rebellion and drinking a lot.
Posted by: Rue Des Quatre Vents at Dec 21, 2007 7:00:31 AM
They live in a command economy with no property or legal rights and behave accordingly.
Posted by: bob at Dec 21, 2007 7:20:09 AM
How about signaling and evolutionary fitness. The risk takers supposedly get the girls and propagate into the future, the rest don't.
Posted by: Mark at Dec 21, 2007 7:52:34 AM
What if they take exactly the right amount of risk? Parents and other persons of authority, as noted, see the direct negative risks involved in risky activities but not the often long term and indirect positive benefits of risk taking. Taking risks "builds character" in various ways. It gives these young people experiences to talk about and to draw upon, it forms connections, it makes them believe in themselves, etc, etc. Adults tend to be risk averse, even in their mathematical calculations - the very idea that the stock market has a 7% risk premium is one abstract way to understand how big that bias is, as is the premiums they'll pay for various forms of insurance and protection from unlikely events. As a society we've made a lot of choices, especially recently, that greatly overestimate dangers and pay a giant price to avoid them. If you think the average 35-year old is risk averse for themselves, watch them with respect to their daughter or son. They're making their OWN calculation - that for them the risks matter more, the benefits matter less, and they're already risk averse. Meanwhile, if the average teenager is risk neutral and understands all these other benefits, any sane pattern of activity would come off as "risky behavior." What is the result? Parents will always seek to have their children take less risk even if everyone's trying to do the right thing for all concerned. When parents succeed in preventing risky behaviors, oftenthey take it way too far and the result is a scared, lonely, socially awkward virginal geek. If life is short, the good things in life must be worth taking chances; parents simply won't accept that for their kids. Meanwhile, the article talks about Russian roulette for $1M as an insane choice, but if our financial calculations reguarly value a human life at $5M or so (IIRC that's actually the number) and his life is below average or his benefits from the money are unusually high then he's getting the right price.
If we wanted teenagers to take less risk, and believed they were overestimating the benefits, wouldn't the logical response be to educate them on the benefits rather than the costs? That's where they're making their "mistake." I find it strange the article doesn't consider this option if it's so clear that the teenagers are making an error.
Posted by: Zvi Mowshowitz at Dec 21, 2007 8:28:34 AM
I'm with Zvi and Mark - why not believe the gains from risk are in fact higher for teens?
Posted by: Robin Hanson at Dec 21, 2007 8:51:10 AM
Me three - although, Mark, I don't think "teenagers" is limited to straight boys and gay girls.
Posted by: tom s. at Dec 21, 2007 9:00:08 AM
or, come to think of it, that evolutionary fitness has anything to do with it at all.
Posted by: tom s. at Dec 21, 2007 9:02:07 AM
One successful formalization of the idea of signaling for fitness is Zahavi's handicap principle, which may explain peacock tails and eagle-mobbing by crows. Risk-taking by teens may have evolved as a costly but honest - and thus sexually attractive - signal of good underlying performance. Selective pressures for sexual attractiveness are less intense after the teenage years.
Posted by: Biopolitical at Dec 21, 2007 9:32:40 AM
The trouble with the idea that teenagers are acting wisely but simply profit more from risky behaviour is that the age group 'teenager' is small, and both slightly younger and older people behave different. I would say 15-year old are more or less the 'stupity peak', and even people a few years older already think teenagers take stupid risks and have superficial opinions. I find it hard to believe teenagers can get rational gains from certain risks that college age people can't.
Posted by: GreatZamifr at Dec 21, 2007 9:36:01 AM
This is the simple difference between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance. Older people have both; younger people only have the first. You can hear about a hangover, but it's not the same as having one. Do you really know anything about coitus until you do it?
Those of us that survive teenagerhood--a remarkably high percentage, let's remember--probably have done some crazy and potentially life-threatening things during the years from 13 to 19. It's just luck that we make it. And we're smarter for the experience.
If you're hyper-risk-phobic for your precious little teenager, then it's true: the best answer is to turn them into a square. If you fill their days with swim practice, ice skating lessons, piano, foreign language tutoring, etc. etc. in addition to a full school day, they really won't ever mess up. They won't have the time.
But good luck trying to do that without going bankrupt. And expect your teenager to wonder why (s)he can't have fun like the others.
(Another reason for teenag antics: the pre-frontal cortex isn't fully developed until, like, 25.)
Posted by: pm at Dec 21, 2007 9:41:55 AM
Because they're stupid. They think they are indestructible. We used to have chaperones. They supervised and prevented teen pregnancy. Ms. Spears could have benefitted from one.
Posted by: jorod at Dec 21, 2007 9:57:52 AM
Also, read "Only Yesterday" by Frederick Allen about the Roaring Twenties and how the automobile changed the behavior of young people.
Posted by: jorod at Dec 21, 2007 10:00:54 AM
If teenagers are actually better at evaluating risks and rewards the question becomes "why don't we subject the risky decisions made by adults to supervision by teenagers". Maybe assign "Well Being" to the teens in high school first.
Posted by: michael vassar at Dec 21, 2007 10:10:35 AM
I never understood what my friends got out of being falling down drunk.
I am only half kidding here:
Since I see it as related to the sex drive, perhaps if they married at 14 it would help. Do mennonites, who marry young have this problem? In the past when people married at 14 was the drinking as prevalent?
Posted by: Floccina at Dec 21, 2007 10:23:55 AM
I have to go with some of the others here. Teenagers are not 'Obviously' pursuing too much risk. Our culture treats teenagers and younger adults in terrible ways. They have every right to make choices about their lives, and to judge the risks and benefits according to their own criteria. The more we attempt to impose some universal measurement of risk, the more we damage their ability to develop their own personality and sense of choice.
Posted by: theo at Dec 21, 2007 10:23:59 AM
I must be missing something here, first, it's established that Joe Average teen is over-estimating his risks from risky behavior. It's never established that (s)he is similarly (let alone to a much greater extent), over-estimating his benefits from risky behavior. What follows both here, and in the article, is:
"Obviously the teenagers are wrong in pursuing so much risk. "
I'm not understanding how that can be said considering that we've just proved the counter-point to that statement.
As an aside, benefits may be much higher for teens than for adults (as Zvi stated above), and risks for adults are usually also higher (spouse, kids, career).
So instead of asking "Why do teenagers take to many risks?", we need to ask "Do teenagers take too many risks?" It seems we've already assumed the answer to that question, and that we've also assumed that that answer is common knowledge, to boot.
Posted by: Mike at Dec 21, 2007 10:25:08 AM
They live in a command economy with no property or legal rights and behave accordingly.
Alex, is this really you? :-)
Posted by: MostlyAPragmatist at Dec 21, 2007 10:48:37 AM
There have to be a half dozen or so posts on this blog in the past couple of weeks on subprime mortgages ... and teenagers are the stupid ones and/or take too many risks?
Posted by: AZ at Dec 21, 2007 10:53:26 AM
I wasted 3 years of my life in college, and deeply resent not wasting that 4th, and at least 2 out of 4 of my years in high school. The different valuation makes a lot of sense. I don't value being falling-down-drunk as an adult, but it really was a lot of fun when I was 17-18. And I don't necessarily think this was a false perception, either. But, of course, now in my 30s, I find such activity by today's teenagers obnoxious. And since I vote and have more money than teenagers, of course it should be banned and discouraged.
Posted by: M.D. Fatwa at Dec 21, 2007 11:22:19 AM
Hopefully the spam filter doesn't nuke my comment today!
“Parents will always seek to have their children take less risk even if everyone's trying to do the right thing for all concerned”
"There have to be a half dozen or so posts on this blog in the past couple of weeks on subprime mortgages ... and teenagers are the stupid ones and/or take too many risks?"
I am in agreement with the above statements, and thus am quoting them.
I'm also confused about this "gist" approach that the article recommends we take to teach teens not to take on so much risk. What does the author mean when she says "seeing the forest instead of the trees?" Is the author saying that we need to teach the 15 year old girl to embrace a larger view of life than her boyfriend when he pressures her for intercourse?
Regarding car swerving: Sounds like an undeestimation of risk. I certainly never thought that something like that could result from swerving a car to miss a squirrel, unless one was speeding. Then the issue is speeding, not swerving.
I also wonder how the issue of time perception plays into this. As a 20 year old, I view a time a LOT differently than I did when I was 15. A week can breeze by now, whereas it would seem to never end in a boring high school class. Under such time distortions (or time preference, if that's what you'd like to call it), wouldn't we expect a higher emphasis on benefits in the here and now, especially when teenagers have yet to experience many things in life?
Posted by: Robert Olson at Dec 21, 2007 11:30:50 AM
@pm: "(Another reason for teenag antics: the pre-frontal cortex isn't fully developed until, like, 25.)"
I have heard this is somewhat of a myth. The brain never stops developing, and delayed emotional maturity is more a result of culture than genes. We treat teens like children --> they act like it. And vice-versa in other cultures. Causation/correlation, etc.
Posted by: Cliff at Dec 21, 2007 11:39:59 AM
The solution is to set up a market for risk offsets. Saudi teenagers can sell their foregone drunkenness opportunities, and world youth as a whole can hedge its risks and pursue a risk-neutral strategy.
Posted by: at Dec 21, 2007 12:18:05 PM
So, while driving to work, I was mulling over this post a bit, and it came to me that what we're looking at here is almost preaching an "abstinance only" theory for teenage risk... Anyone think that'll work? I sure don't.
Posted by: mike at Dec 21, 2007 12:20:09 PM
It seems like the "gist" the article is talking about is just the parents' decisions about what actions are too dangerous. Teenagers are (obviously, apparently) taking too many risks, but their cost/benefit analysis seems correct. Therefore, rather than trying to correct their cost/benefit analysis, tell them to throw that out the window and just do what their parents say. Needless to say, if teenagers are actually weighing potential risks and benefits as accurately as the article seems to imply, this strategy has no chance of succeeding.
Posted by: jhr at Dec 21, 2007 1:33:15 PM
Also, about the theories derived from prefrontal cortex development, it seems to me that most of the reasoning comes down to the fallacious, "teenagers' brains are different from adults' brains. (By assumption) teenagers are less intelligent than adults. Therefore, adult brains are superior to teenagers. Hence, teenagers' Therefore teenagers are less intelligent than adults." In other words, the only evidence for the differences constituting superior mental ability on the part of adults comes from the presupposition that the behavior of adults is better and indicative of superior intelligence. In the case where the experimental evidence simply indicates that teenagers' brains are still developing, I find it particularly galling that people assume that the absence of development in adult brains indicates *superior* intelligence.
Posted by: jhr at Dec 21, 2007 1:45:51 PM
I led a risk-free square teenage existence in part because I got satisfaction out of feeling like I was better than the rest. So perhaps they need to be more dickish.
Posted by: TGGP at Dec 21, 2007 2:12:28 PM
Teenagers have not experienced life fully, so they do things that other people have already done, but learned to stop doing.
Sometimes teenagers do things that they know they shouldn't do simply because they need to become autonomous individuals and learn how to live without their parents. This may be "rebellion," but it is not done out of rejecting their parent's values, but simply because they psychological need to break their own mentality of dependence.
Posted by: Chris Durnell at Dec 21, 2007 2:13:13 PM
Well, considering that most people's most intense and best memories come from their teenage years, isn't taking extra risk to make them even better worth it?
I remember being 15 and sneaking out on my friend's Dad's boat in the middle of a summer night with some hot girls. We we drinking and boating at 2am. Did I mention these were speedboats?
In retrospect this was insanely dangerous, with tremendous potential for drowning.
That said, it's one of the greatest memories of my life. And to this day I can recall it and feel intensely alive. Much more memorable than all the books I read or video games I played.
My point is that if I were to do the same thing now I wouldn't remember it as much. The formative years are seared into my memory in a way that is likely impossible to replicate now, short of having my life directly threatened.
The benefits of risky behavior really do go down as you age. A risky action in your 30s is less enjoyable in the moment, and provides drastically weaker memories for future enjoyment.
Posted by: jim at Dec 21, 2007 2:28:52 PM
I thought the reason was hormones.
Posted by: Lord at Dec 21, 2007 2:40:19 PM
The life expectancy in Africa 5 millions years ago was 19 years.Only able warriors and hunters survivied and had offsprings.Over the centuries military service age was 18-20.In the Gauls War, Caesar observed that germans were forbidden to drink before being 20 years old to preserve war abilities.If you ever had childrens was because you were a risk taking freak.In 5 millions years , only 250 have beeen peace years.But today war is widespread as ever, today there are 50 wars in the world ,the same years of Irak ,two weels before, France invaded the " French " Congo. But is specialized like every other himan activity.In Sudan or Somalia there is still total wars and wars of attriions.But war is not a common day fact like was until 1945.So 5 millions of evolution to make warriors and now they are not needed anymore .They can no kill anymore but they have to use that force in sports.But boxing have been forbidden in many countries, football players seem to worried about their secutity, they use armors.Some they go to xtreme sports.Others run in the streets, jump the bungee, it was a proof of masculinity in Polynesia.Or drink like cosacs, warriors , by the way.Or kill themselves in street fights.
And women preffer those guys . remember nice guys always finish last.
Posted by: Juan at Dec 21, 2007 2:55:15 PM
They live in a command economy with no property or legal rights and behave accordingly.
Agreed. Teenagers are, for the most part, not allowed the freedom of voluntary association which most adults are. Because of this, the supply of social acceptance is very limited, and social acceptance has a very inelastic demand curve. So they are willing to pay more (in the form of risk-taking) to be accepted. To make matters worse, they have nothing but second-hand knowledge of how the world works outside of what they are allowed to experience.
Imagine for a moment that, as an adult, the only people you were able to interact with would not willingly engage in much of any voluntary exchange with you. You also have no first-hand knowledge of any other sort of social arrangement beyond your current situation. What lengths would you go to gain the cooperation of your peers?
Maybe if we got them out of coerced schooling, let them start working at a young age (I can hear the cries of "child labor!" now) and make their own choices about their lives, they'd seem more reasonable to us.
Posted by: G at Dec 21, 2007 4:00:43 PM
Obviously the teenagers are wrong in pursuing so much risk.
To say that with no analysis seems very high and mighty, and not very economist-like. How much risk is right? Did you really do some Sharpe Ratio computation that you're not reporting?
I think you're committing a second fallacy in this post when you assume that it's a teenager's fault if they take "too much risk" (whatever is meant by that). We're the adults. We're in charge of this world. We design their educational systems. We provide them with their incentives and protect them from some forces. It's all artificial and we're in control. If they don't see risk clearly, perhaps we're sending them false signals.
Posted by: infopractical at Dec 21, 2007 4:22:42 PM
Could be a manifestation of the Doomsday Hypothesis. The longer you live, the longer you are likely to live, and so your discount horizon increases, and risky behavior becomes more expensive on a PV basis.
Posted by: JPC at Dec 21, 2007 4:57:37 PM
I think bob nailed it with this:
They live in a command economy with no property or legal rights and behave accordingly.
Couldn't the same reasoning be applied to the irrational behavior seen in certain parts of the population in heavily commanding religious countries?
Posted by: Sune at Dec 21, 2007 5:42:12 PM
"Obviously the teenagers are wrong in pursuing so much risk."
That is clearly said as a parent, not as an economist.
I agree with everyone else here who suspect that teenagers are pursuing the proper level of risk. (It doesn't mean that when I'm a parent I won't try to get my teenager to pursue less risk.)
Posted by: Sameer Parekh at Dec 21, 2007 7:46:07 PM
"The life expectancy in Africa 5 millions years ago was 19 years.Only able warriors and hunters survivied and had offsprings."
19 yrs life expectancy AT BIRTH. If you made it to being a teenager (11?, 12?) your chances of seeing 40 were much much much better. So I don't think this works.
Posted by: notsneaky at Dec 21, 2007 7:58:47 PM
Really, the only response worth posting to that "obviously, ..."
is
fuck. you.
Posted by: yoyo at Dec 21, 2007 10:47:26 PM
This is idiotic. Clearly there are many ways of raising a child, and sometimes one might want to harness a child's risk-taking side to more productive activities. But "supervision" to reduce that sensibility by "protecting" a child from his more "dangerous" impulses is the product of an American suburban inversion, a fear of the outside world. Why do we let economists conduct such studies?
Posted by: Gyokuro at Dec 21, 2007 10:58:30 PM
Juan is partly on track, but then fell off. For one thing most of these comments
are way off. The issue is young adolescents, not teenagers in general. So, we are
talking about middle schoolers, or maybe ninth graders at most. Think those 13 year
old girs who are so insanely and irrationally unpleasant to their mothers, or the
boys of the same age who are just completely alienated.
So, there would appear to be several factors at work. 1) Thousands of years ago there
were not as many dangers from acting out as there are today, no cars, no killer drugs,
no booze, no guns, and so on; 2) puberty has just hit, but one does not understand it
or know what is really about, or is getting laid, so crazed frustration (and were any
of you socially satisfied in middle or junior high school, and I am not just addressing
all the geeks here); 3) the sudden appearance of puberty means that one is now ready
to attempt to become independent of one's parents, the "command economy," which was
probably as repressive and demanding and onerous 40,000 years ago as it is today. So,
one acts out, does not fully understand why one is doing so, and does not understand
the consequences.
Heck, what we are dealing with here is why one is allowed to drive at 16, but not 14.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Dec 22, 2007 1:59:50 AM
I can't believe the recommendations at the end of the article. What seems completely glossed over is that, in many cases, while teenagers are not risk-averse they also aren't actively pursing inherently hugely risky behaviors. Take, for example, unprotected sex as a risky behavior. Do teenagers really desire unprotected sex, or do they just desire sex regardless of the protection? Obviously, many of people every day have protected sex without getting pregnant or catching a disease, so protected sex really isn't hugely risky. Similar situations come up with drinking and driving. The driving drunk is the risky activity, but the drinking is actually (typically) the desired activity. Are teenagers harmed by drinking? Depending upon how much they consume, probably. But the risk is not nearly so high as that of drinking and driving.
Since the study shows that scare-mongering pretty much completely fails to work for most teenagers, wouldn't risk-reduction in the form of making sure that teenagers who have sex use protection and who drink don't drive afterwards work much better to alleviate the negative results of teenage risk-taking?
As far as I can tell, the alternate philosophies of teenager-raising seem to be "Well, they'll do dumb stuff anyway, might as well make sure they come out of that alive" and "We should scare them out of doing the dumb stuff". This study seems to me to be saying that the second option just doesn't work at all.
Posted by: Andrew at Dec 22, 2007 3:09:50 AM
Shouldn't we be careful to distinguish between risk to themselves and risk to others?
Posted by: Eric H at Dec 22, 2007 9:32:18 AM
Duh, people, the line about "Obviously" was a joke...
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Dec 22, 2007 10:19:41 AM
By the time the typical child becomes a teenager, he knows that his parents are grossly overprotective and that most of their fears are overblown. But since one of the things his parents have always tried to "protect" him from is hearing any advice contrary to their own about those same possible risks, to the extent his parents have succeeded in preventing him from getting advice he can trust, he has no way to find out exactly which of those allegations of risk are true and which are unfounded except by experiment.
The solution to this problem is to allow kids to hear advice -- and see examples of behavior -- from sources of their own choosing. Schools ought to adopt the principle of always enabling kids to do this regardless of their parents' wishes.
Example 1: Most countries in Europe have no age requirement for drinking alcohol. As a result, the alcohol overdose deaths common on American college campuses don't happen -- and drunk driving also is much less common, even in countries where the law is no more strict than in the US.
Example 2: The Norse countries are as Christian as America -- arguably more so, since they still have established state churches -- but they don't try to keep children ignorant on the topic of sex. Most of them are told everything well before grade school, and sex can even be seen on over-the-air TV. As a result, there are NO child predators in those countries. If such a crime were attempted, even a preschool child would know to run away.
Posted by: John David Galt at Dec 22, 2007 2:45:16 PM
i thought that the tipping point had a few legitimate points about teenage smoking, drinking, and drug use.
teenagers are less isolated from and more dependent on their peers for socializing than any other age group, meaning that parents and adults don't have as much power over teenagers as they would like to believe.
Posted by: JB at Dec 22, 2007 7:56:40 PM
"Duh, people, the line about "Obviously" was a joke..."
Obviously.
Posted by: eddie at Dec 23, 2007 10:29:02 AM
John David Galt:
"Example 1: Most countries in Europe have no age requirement for drinking alcohol. As a result, the alcohol overdose deaths common on American college campuses don't happen -- and drunk driving also is much less common, even in countries where the law is no more strict than in the US."
Uh, not true - most European countries DO have drinking ages (ranging from 16 to 18), and have similar if not larger rates of alcoholism and "binge drinking (what a stupid term) as the US. They have less drinking and driving because they drive a whole let less due to significantly better public transportation and urban/suburban layouts. It's not better choices; it's less driving!
More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binge_drinking
"Example 2: The Norse countries are as Christian as America -- arguably more so, since they still have established state churches -- but they don't try to keep children ignorant on the topic of sex. Most of them are told everything well before grade school, and sex can even be seen on over-the-air TV. As a result, there are NO child predators in those countries. If such a crime were attempted, even a preschool child would know to run away."
Is that a joke? You can't actually believe that nonsense.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t177360g46631174/
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p2t573r252258168/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3747909.stm
Posted by: Matt at Dec 23, 2007 11:03:38 PM
I know both of these points have already been touched upon, but they bear repeating.
When I look back at high school, once of the dominant characteristics was the social stratification. There seemed to be a continuum of those that were more cool/less cool, and it was always a struggle to strive to the top. Those at the top were almost fawned over in a way, and got the best looking girls. In retrospect it's all silly, but back then these social tensions were very real.
Not only that, but even though the "society" was highly stratified, it was also mobile to some extent. If you've watched the movie Superbad, it is very accurate in the sense that while three kids could be outcasts one day, a fake ID and alcohol connection the next day could change their peer's perception. Moving up and down the social ladder wasn't solely a function of risk taking, but it in many ways played a role.
So of course teenagers have a different risk/return tradeoff when it comes to risk taking behavior than adults do. If you choose not to drink as an adult, usually you don't risk social derision. If anything, it is the opposite.
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