« Sorry! | Main | Subprime policy recommendations »
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
