Young Adult Literature by Michael Cart

Author:Michael Cart [Cart, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LAN025000 Language Arts & Disciplines / Library & Information Science / General
ISBN: 978-0-8389-1476-2
Publisher: American Library Association
Published: 2016-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

Note

1. You can download a five-page list of small publishers at the CCBC website, www.education.wisc.edu.ccbc.

11

Reality Redux

Risky Behaviors

“Adolescence is practically synonymous in our culture with risk taking”1

—Richard A. Friedman

Ranging from physical and emotional violence to drug and alcohol abuse, from risky sexual behavior to driving recklessly and carrying weapons to school, risky behaviors remain very real factors in the daily lives of twenty-first century teens. Indeed, the top three killers of teenagers are accidents, homicides, and suicide (Friedman 2014).

But why should this be? Is it sheer perversity on the part of teens? In a word, no. The answer now seems to be that their brains are wired for risk.

Frances Jensen, author of The Teenage Brain, likens teen brains to defective spark plugs, writing, “Teens are not quite firing on all cylinders when it comes to the frontal lobes. Thus, we shouldn’t be surprised by the daily stories we hear and read about tragic mistakes” (Kolbert 2015).

“The problem is that the incentive/reward system matures earlier than the cognitive control system” says Dr. Lisa Freund, a developmental psychologist and neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Freund, 2011). That “cognitive control system” is the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which governs reasoning, impulse control, and emotion regulation, and that doesn’t fully develop until the age of twenty-five, making it one of the brain’s last regions to mature. “In other words,” Freund continues, “the brain’s ‘that’s so cool, I want it now’ part develops well before the ‘stop and think twice’ part.”

Elizabeth Kolbert puts it simply: “Adolescents are designed to sniff out treats at a hundred paces!” (Kolbert 2015).

Freund amplifies: “The reward centers of their [teens’] brains respond in heightened fashion to the neurotransmitter dopamine, which may explain why they are particularly vulnerable to addiction” (Schaffer 2015).

The problem is exacerbated when a teen is with peers. “We have also shown that the reason teenagers take more chances when their peers are around is partly because of the impact of peers on the adolescent brain’s sensitivity to rewards. When teens were with people their own age, their brains’ reward centers became hyperactivated,” according to Dr. Laurence Steinberg (2014). It appears the stereotypical parental concern about their child’s “dangerous” friends may, in fact, be well founded in physiology!

Not all of this is necessarily bad. Author Arthur Allen writes, “The brain development that can make teens and young adults take scary risks also motivates them to go out on their own, seek new experiences, and sometimes create new things” (Allen 2014).

Adds Maria Szalavitz, “Their greater tolerance for uncertainty and the unknown—and an increased desire for and focus on rewards—probably helps them leave the nest” (Szalavitz 2012).

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