According to AddHealth data ( Bearman, Jones, & Udry, 1997), virtually all American adolescents have received some form of educational intervention designed to reduce smoking, drinking, drug use, and unprotected sex, but the most recent report of findings from the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, indicates that more than one-third of high school students did not use a condom either the first time or even the last time they had sexual intercourse, and that during the year prior to the survey, nearly 30% of adolescents rode in a car driven by someone who had been drinking, more than 25% reported multiple episodes of binge drinking, and nearly 25% were regular cigarette smokers ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2006).Īlthough it is true, of course, that the situation might be even worse were it not for these educational efforts, most systematic research on health education indicates that even the best programs are far more successful at changing individuals’ knowledge than in altering their behavior ( Steinberg, 2004, 2007). There is reason to be highly skeptical about the effectiveness of this effort, however. The primary approach to reducing adolescent risk-taking has been through educational programs, most of them school-based. Because many forms of risk behavior initiated in adolescence elevate the risk for the behavior in adulthood (e.g., drug use), and because some forms of risk-taking by adolescents put individuals of other ages at risk (e.g., reckless driving, criminal behavior), public health experts agree that reducing the rate risk-taking by young people would make a substantial improvement in the overall well-being of the population ( Steinberg, 2004).įalse Leads in the Prevention and Study of Adolescent Risk-Taking Nonetheless, as a general rule, adolescents and young adults are more likely than adults over 25 to binge drink, smoke cigarettes, have casual sex partners, engage in violent and other criminal behavior, and have fatal or serious automobile accidents, the majority of which are caused by risky driving or driving under the influence of alcohol. It is also the case that adolescents engage in more risky behavior than adults, although the magnitude of age differences in risk-taking vary as a function of the specific risk in question and the age of the “adolescents” and “adults” used as comparison groups rates of risk-taking are high among 18- to 21-year-olds, for instance, some of whom may be classified as adolescents and some who may be classified as adults. Although rates of certain types of adolescent risk-taking, such as driving under the influence of alcohol or having unprotected sex, have dropped, the prevalence of risky behavior among teenagers remains high, and there has been no decline in adolescents’ risk behavior in several years ( Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2006). Thus, while considerable progress has been made in the prevention and treatment of disease and chronic illness among this age group, similar gains have not been made with respect to reducing the morbidity and mortality that result from risky and reckless behavior ( Hein, 1988). It is widely agreed among experts in the study of adolescent health and development that the greatest threats to the well-being of young people in industrialized societies come from preventable and often self-inflicted causes, including automobile and other accidents (which together account for nearly half of all fatalities among American youth), violence, drug and alcohol use, and sexual risk-taking ( Blum & Nelson-Mmari, 2004 Williams et al., 2002). The differing timetables of these changes make mid-adolescence a time of heightened vulnerability to risky and reckless behavior.Īdolescent Risk-Taking as a Public Health Problem These changes occur across adolescence and young adulthood and are seen in structural and functional changes within the prefrontal cortex and its connections to other brain regions. Risk-taking declines between adolescence and adulthood because of changes in the brain’s cognitive control system – changes which improve individuals’ capacity for self-regulation. First, why does risk-taking increase between childhood and adolescence? Second, why does risk-taking decline between adolescence and adulthood? Risk-taking increases between childhood and adolescence as a result of changes around the time of puberty in the brain’s socio-emotional system leading to increased reward-seeking, especially in the presence of peers, fueled mainly by a dramatic remodeling of the brain’s dopaminergic system. Two fundamental questions motivate this review. This article proposes a framework for theory and research on risk-taking that is informed by developmental neuroscience.
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