Youth and Risk-taking Behavior: Why Safety Isn't Always a Priority for Teens

As we begin to usher in the seasons of warmer weather, the news is filled with warnings, statistics, hoping it will do somebody some good, hoping some will pay attention. Unfortunately, too many do not-- which is why warnings go unheeded, and those to whom the warnings are directed needlessly become statistics.

Those who brush it off with a casual "Nothing can happen to me" proceed to go about their everyday plans with the thought "You only live once!" And it's those who espouse this principle who bypass an even more important fact: "You only die once," too.

It has been proven that young people do not acquire a clear grasp on the concept of death until they are in their late twenties-- although one can easily find middle-aged people who, through personality defects which include a lifelong degree of immaturity, never grasp it either; the part of the brain which regulates the connection between risk-taking behavior and the potential consequences thereof is not fully developed during adolescence and early adulthood when the focus of much of American youth is on newfound independence and the desire for "freedom." This is why young people are more prone to reckless and even life-endangering behavior-- odd as it may sound, neither the correlation between risk and death, nor the mature definition of mortality, have yet "sunk in": they do not yet have the full development which leads adults to realize either that dangerous behavior can result in death or the full comprehension of what that word means.