from YAPRap February 2007
by Clinical Associate Professor David Bennett, The Children's Hospital*
Recent research from the field of neuroscience is shedding new light on the question of why teenagers engage in reckless risk taking behaviours. In the past we've blamed raging hormones and peer pressure, but some neuroscientists believe there may be more to it...
Life is a risky business. We all take chances, and there are risks involved in practically everything we do. Taking risks is certainly a natural part of growing up. Teenagers have a special thirst for new experiences. They experiment with new activities, test their limits, explore new skills, and enjoy the often exhilarating sense of freedom involved.
Our understanding of adolescent risk taking has been greatly enhanced by recent findings from neuroscience - research using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on the brains of children at two year intervals. While some areas of the human brain are mature by the end of childhood, the prefrontal cortex - responsible for such things as impulse control and strategic planning (anticipating the likely consequences of one's actions) - continue maturing through the teenage years.
In other words, the adolescent brain is still developing and the highest-level areas may not be completely mature until kids hit their twenties. This also means that teenage brains may be constructed in a way that makes their owners more open to ideas, more amenable to change (a time of heightened opportunity), but also makes young people more likely to experiment and take risks (a time of heightened risk). An immature brain, together with the hormones that stir them up and drive them to be thrill-seekers (especially for boys), is a potentially dangerous mix.
What are the implications of this research?
The prefrontal cortex has been called 'the area of sober second thought' because, as this part of the brain matures, teenagers can reason better, develop more self control and make better judgements. This is a helpful insight for those who may be struggling to understand an early adolescent's erratic and otherwise 'infuriatingly normal behaviour'. Since adolescence tends to be a time of increased freedoms and decreased parental monitoring - what most teenagers seem to want - these research findings also suggest we may sometimes be giving young people more freedoms than they can handle.
Research into parenting styles over the past quarter century or so shows that the most effective approach, so-called 'authoritative parenting', has three main characteristics:
- Parenting that is warm, involved and responsive
- Parenting that is firm and strict (with developmentally appropriate expectations)
- Parenting that fosters and encourages psychological autonomy.
Adolescents from authoritative (warm and firm) homes achieve more in school; have better self-reliance & self-esteem; report less depression and anxiety; show more positive social behaviour, self-control, cheerfulness & confidence; and (most importantly) are less likely to engage in anti-social and risk-taking behaviour.
These outcomes confirm that teenagers are safer when their parents take a close and caring interest in what they're getting up to and set appropriate ground-rules in advance. In the light of the MRI brain research, better monitoring, negotiated boundaries and predictable consequences are needed to better protect young people!
What are the implications for those working in youth injury prevention?
The MRI brain researchers caution us not to 'jump to conclusions' in regard to drawing too close a link between structure and function; they say there is more work to be done in terms of understanding human behaviour. But there are potential implications for safety related to what we now know about adolescent brain development. For example:
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Should we consider raising the driving age to 18 years (as in some areas of the United States) to allow time for young drivers to acquire better impulse control?
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Should we establish passenger limits for teenagers with P1 licences to lessen distractions and enable better concentration while driving?
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Should we (an even more draconian idea) create curfews for adolescent drivers, because of the special risks of late night/early morning accidents, especially after parties?
There are no simple answers to these questions, but if our goal is the avoidance of unintended injury and premature death in young people, then neuroscience may be pointing the way to new ways of thinking about protective factors in this area.
More information
Here are some short and longer articles in plain English about this research.
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This article is a bit outdated but it provides a good summary in plain English:
www.actforyouth.net/documents/may02factsheetadolbraindev.pdf -
This targets parents but is a useful 1 page summary (108KB PDF):
http://wwwstatic.kern.org/gems/schcom/EyeonPreventBrain.Dev.1.pdf (Note there is no dot in wwwstatic) -
TIME magazine article: "What Makes Teens Tick" May 10, 2004
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,994126,00.html -
Written from the point of view of mental health workers (775KB PDF):
http://youngminds.org.uk/sos/SOS_YM_AdolescentBrain.pdf -
Spano, S (2003) "Adolescent brain development" Youth Studies Australia Vol 22 (1):36-38
Notes
*Clinical Associate Professor David Bennett AO FRACP FSAM, is Senior Staff Specialist in Adolescent Medicine and Head, NSW Centre for the Advancement of Adolescent Health, The Children's Hospital at Westmead
This article first appeared in yRED newsletter Spring 2006.
