The risky teenager

This week, we home in on one of the biggest mysteries of science: teenagers. Parents of teenagers are often a lot more stressed than they were when their kids were younger. And parents of teenagers also seem to forget how “brain-damaged” they themselves were when they were teenagers. But let’s face it, this stage in life is often the most dangerous. Research has shown that the highest deaths due to risk taking and accidents occur at this stage in human lives. But why so? One of the more common answers we have come up with in science so far is that teenage brains are not yet fully developed, that their emotional centers are still very explosive, unable to be mediated (yet) by the thinking, planning part of the brain.  But if this is so, why is it that teenagers are still riskier than children? Certainly, children’s brains are generally less developed than teenagers’. The hallmark of being a teenager is the strong volunteer spirit to take risks.

A study entitled “Adolescents’ risk-taking behavior is driven by tolerance to ambiguity” by Agnieszka Tymula, Lior A. Rosenberg Belmaker, Amy K. Roy, Lital Ruderman, Kirk Manson, Paul W. Glimcher, and Ifat Levy was published in the recent online issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA. They wanted to find out if indeed teenagers are just “blind” risk takers, oblivious to consequences, known and unknown. I was interested to see what they have come across since I know a few teenagers myself whose decisions always puzzle me.

Experiments involving money have reliably shown similarities in the real world so the scientists designed an experiment involving betting on money. And since it has also been shown in previous studies that when the subjects know that some real money is at stake, they behave more realistically, the scientists told the subjects that in one trial, the winnings will be translated to real money. Most often, risk is associated with boys so it was very interesting to find this experiment since for subjects, it recruited 33 adolescent females aged 13 to 17 and 32 adult females aged 30-50. The bets involved a certain $5 payoff or increasing/varied ambiguity in chances of winning bigger amounts or “0” The researchers distinguished between “risk” and “ambiguity” in that “risk” concerned a knowledge of consequences while “ambiguity” involves the lack of this information. They gave them these tests totaling 160 trials and in the end, the researchers counted the number of times that either the teenagers or the adults selected the certain $5 payoff over the other sets marked by increasing ambiguity of what they could win (or lose).

The results surprised the scientists. They also surprised me. 

Teenagers, compared to their older peers in the study, took much less risk when the consequences are clearly and more definitely stated.  However, as the possible outcome becomes more ambiguous, i.e., increasingly unknown, then the teenagers took more risks. This led the researchers to conclude that teenagers, are not totally blind when they take risks. In fact, the teenagers seem to acknowledge the consequences when these are presented in a clear manner and they take much less risk than older people. The fact that teenagers do take more risks as the ambiguity of the consequences increases, is, the scientists think, evidence that the teenagers just have a greater tolerance for ambiguity than older people. In other words, they see “unknown” and they more likely will read it as “go.” Even more, when the less is known about what the outcome will be, the more teenagers seem to want to place their bets on it.

The study acknowledged the evolutionary advantage of this kind of what I will term “selective” risk-taking. As young humans, teenagers should be less fearful of trying things because this would accelerate their learning and thus, would equip them more with survival skills. But then if they push it too far, they may just end their lives too early. With these finding, we know now that we have better chances with talking to teenagers about risk-taking if we clearly make them see the possible consequences of their actions.

I don’t have children but I know many teenagers, and am particularly close to three in my family. I hope they never get to read this column because the next time I see them, I shall be armed with a full-blown presentation of the consequence of every risk they are thinking to take in their teenage brains. Their parents will shake their heads as usual for sure at what Tita is again attempting to do. But I think when it comes to dealing with teenagers, most of us would be willing to try anything to put the occasional lid on their explosive spirits.

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